Thinkpads Forum

Hello. I am from India and have been using SL400 from 3 years now. Now because of my rough use, it has started to give me problems with display. The display trembles/shakes and the nearby laptop store hinted at LCD going bad and expense he says would be around Rs. 5000 (US $100).

Then, I looked up some laptops on ebay.com and I see used X61 available under $150. I think that would be okay for me, as I need a smaller laptop than my SL400 and do not want to spend a lot of money on something like a laptop.

However, most of the laptops that I came across on ebay.com say they are without HDD/HDD caddy, battery, AC adaptor. So, I was wondering if I would be able to use the same hard disk, battery and AC adaptor that I have with this SL400. I understand that laptops are not being sold with a HDD because of data privacy issues but the AC adaptors? Also, what really is a HDD caddy? On a little search on google.com, I got to know that they are the enclosures where the hard disks fit in. Now, I wonder why are they not being sold along with the laptop.

I am afraid of falling into a situation where I buy a used X61 without adaptor, HDD, HDD caddy and still cannot use these parts from SL400 in X61. The whole deal will then turn out to be costly for me and I would rather be better off getting SL400's LCD replaced.

Please suggest if I would be able to use the said parts (HDD, HDD caddy, battery, ac adaptor) of SL400 in X61. Thank you very much for reading this far.

HD, caddy and adapter can all be used in any T6x, R6x and X6x machine.
The battery is a different format, however it would fit in 14.1" NON-widescreen T6x and R6x, but not in an X6x.

Hello Tourist.

As mentioned, you can reuse your hard drive, caddy and AC adapter (on many Lenovo Thinkpads). It would also be nice to re-use your battery if it's in decent shape.

Here is the common family for your battery:

Fits: All T60 or R60 laptops whether 14.1" or 15.4", standard or widescreen. Will also fit Z60m,z61m,z60p,z61p (but not Z60t, or z61t), and also 15.4" R61, 15.4" T61, R500, SL300, SL400, T500, or W500

So your battery will fit any T60 or R60 laptop, 15.4" T61 or 15.4" R61 (but not 14.1" widescreen T61 or R61).

Daniel.

Thank you very much RealBlackStuff and Thinkpad Lover. Both of you have been of great help.

Yes, the battery of this SL400 that I have is in good condition and still gives me around 2 hours on a full charge. But I would now prefer a smaller laptop, if at all I need to replace this laptop, as I think it gets quite cumbersome carrying this 14 inch laptop with me all around. And, those 12 inch laptops will serve me just fine.

However, I am still trying to isolate the issue that I have with this SL400. Right now, the screen is not shaking, like it mostly does in a very systematic fashion, as in every second it moves down and then it moves up to the actual place. I think it gets worse with increase in temperature. I suspect the processor fan to be bad because it sometimes throws up 'fan error' when I start the computer. Right now, the screen is not trembling and there are two blinking horizontal lines near the top of the LCD.

I will go show this to the shop here but they cannot be trusted. Even if the LCD is fine, he is going to ask me to get it replaced. That is why I am avoiding it at first go.

I have disassembled my desktop computer many a times when I was a kid but then with laptops, I have never tried.

Thank you very much.