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Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

X200/X201/X220 (including equivalent tablet models) and X300/X301 Series
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kosyx
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2018 1:34 pm
Location: Bakersfield, CA

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#961 Post by kosyx » Sun Jun 24, 2018 8:46 am

omgitsaheadcrab wrote:
Sat Jun 23, 2018 8:50 am
As someone who filled out the form about two weeks ago, check my spam folder daily :[ I think there's a fair few people ahead of me..
Probably the same boat for me. Got my iron and screen ready for when I can order one of these

financialwar
Posts: 40
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2015 10:30 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#962 Post by financialwar » Mon Jun 25, 2018 8:33 pm

Thinking about getting a x230 and doing this mod. How long does the process take all together?

ZorgeHT
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:13 am
Location: Moscow, RU

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#963 Post by ZorgeHT » Thu Jun 28, 2018 12:50 am

Got my x230 working and shiny with a mod.

It was a long way, since February 2018, when I've got a mod board from Nitrocaster in Moscow.

First, I could not find win0win on ebay (link from the thread did not work, and ebay search returned nothing), so I've ordered display from some chap in UK. Unfortunately, he sent me Samsung, despite I ordered LG SPB3.
He refused to accept it as his mistake, so I payed for shipping from UK and back. But at least he refunded payment for the screen itself, when I sent it back to him.

Then I ordered the screen again, this time from win0win (link from this thread started working again). This good man sent me LG SPB3 as ordered. Two days ago it arrived to the post office.
And yesterday I installed the mod.
My x230 is six years old. So, solder joints on a dockstation connector are a little bit crusty - no rust or anything, just some oxidising from an air.
Thus, point-by-point method with flux going through holes (as described in the installation manual) did not work for me.

First, I tinned the motherboard dock-station connector pins with good amount of flux and a pb61/39 solder (russian ПОС-61 rulez!).
Then I cleaned it off with some isopropanol.
Then I tinned all connecting pads on a mod board with the same solder.
All this was done one-by-one with a needle soldering tip (900M-T-I).
Sense wire to a cap, power wire - both was soldered as they described in the installation manual.

Then I changed iron tip to a good 3mm oval tip (900M-T-3C), put the mod board to the pins, and applied the tip over the top of the mod board contacts with a little pressure. All pads melted, and sat right on pins. I heated them two or three times more, just to be sure.

My not-so-pro soldering iron Lukey 936D and even cheaper CT-61A flux worked fine. Just don't forget to use good amount of alcohol and thoroughly clean off the flux. It has a nasty feature to add connectivity over time.

Everything works nice. Display frame fitted the screen as it was factory installed.
I've added dithering tool to the autostart with Windows. External displays also works - both VGA and miniDP.
Brightness control works only if no external display is connected, and display switching with lenovo hotkeys works incorrect, but I have now FullHD on a good old 12.5 thinkpad. Nice.

P.S. All process - soldering, modding display lid and assembling - took me around 3 hours.

Gnark
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jun 08, 2018 7:06 am
Location: Paris, France

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#964 Post by Gnark » Fri Jun 29, 2018 9:28 am

nitrocaster wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 3:18 am
The last thing I thought would be a problem is to get payments from people who placed pre-orders. I have about 70 kits ready for shipping and people just ignore their invoices. I'm not sure if that's their spam filters or just a passive way to say 'no, I'm not interested anymore'.

Probably I should cancel all pre-orders, make a new form, send everybody a link to it and then immediately reply with an invoice.

What do you think?
Привет Павел,
Yes, I think it's good manner to freeze all your pre-order & resend an email with a google form & a formal quote. And in the order of each payment, release the individual shipping with your invoice.
Furthermore, in your Pre-order form, it could be useful to encourage people to append your contacting email in their address book. Personally I have appended your nitrocaster at yahoo c0m in my contact list, in order to prevent spam boxing (I'm still expecting your email ;)
Thanks for your great hardware hack !
omgitsaheadcrab wrote:
Sat Jun 23, 2018 8:50 am
As someone who filled out the form about two weeks ago, check my spam folder daily :[ I think there's a fair few people ahead of me..
Perphaps put nitrocaster at yahoo c0m in your contact list !
X230 i7

omgitsaheadcrab
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2018 5:27 pm
Location: London, UK

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#965 Post by omgitsaheadcrab » Fri Jun 29, 2018 10:22 am

Gnark wrote:
Fri Jun 29, 2018 9:28 am
Perphaps put nitrocaster at yahoo c0m in your contact list !
Got my invoice & paid earlier this week, didn't receive in my spam folder either :]

evening_hunger
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Location: Normandy, France

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#966 Post by evening_hunger » Fri Jun 29, 2018 10:28 am

kosyx wrote:
Sun Jun 24, 2018 8:46 am
omgitsaheadcrab wrote:
Sat Jun 23, 2018 8:50 am
As someone who filled out the form about two weeks ago, check my spam folder daily :[ I think there's a fair few people ahead of me..
Probably the same boat for me. Got my iron and screen ready for when I can order one of these
For me, from the moment of filling out the form to having the board, nine months have passed. You want to power that iron down...
Let's just hope nitrocaster's new idea of making a web-shop helps you:)
T14amdR7-4750U/32GB/500gb.ssd/debian_testing (main driver)
X320/i7-2620M/8GB/256gb.ssd/FHD13.3''IPS/debian_testing (ex-main driver)
T30Pentium-M 4 1.8Ghz 512MB RAM - under restoration
X230/i5/8GB/500gb.hdd+256gb.m2ssd/IPS/debian_stable+win7
755CE, 486DX, approx 28MB RAM (Win95 JP)

SamNt
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2018 10:30 am
Location: Melbourne, Vic, Oz

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#967 Post by SamNt » Fri Jun 29, 2018 10:37 am

I filled out and submitted the form around the end of last year and have yet to receive an email (maybe it got sent to my spam folder and was automatically deleted :( ).
Anyway I am now checking my spam folder. Hopefully i receive another email soon :bow: :banana: :).

(edit)
nitrocaster contacted me, send me an invoice and was very quick about replying to my messages :).
Last edited by SamNt on Wed Jul 04, 2018 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
Laptop - Lenovo ThinkPad - x230 *********************************(FreeBSD.)
Desktop - Intel I7 3770K, 8GB 2400 MHz, AMD R9 290 **(Ubuntu Mate.)

kosyx
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2018 1:34 pm
Location: Bakersfield, CA

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#968 Post by kosyx » Fri Jun 29, 2018 3:07 pm

SamNt wrote:
Fri Jun 29, 2018 10:37 am
I filled out and submitted the form around the end of last year and have yet to receive an email (maybe it got sent to my spam folder and was automatically deleted :( ).
Anyway I am now checking my spam folder. Hopefully i receive another email soon :bow: :banana: :).
I received my email the other day. Paid and now waiting for shipping 👍

winhard
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2018 7:08 am
Location: Tours, France

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#969 Post by winhard » Tue Jul 03, 2018 11:58 am

I filled the form something like 10 days ago and received the bill today ! paiement done ! waiting the board and gonna order the screen ! :D
Thank you nitrocaster :thumbs-UP:

omgitsaheadcrab
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2018 5:27 pm
Location: London, UK

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#970 Post by omgitsaheadcrab » Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:30 am

Struggling to find the recommendedLP125WF2-SPB4 screen, everyone seems to ship 'compatible' models instead.

I just received a LP125WF4-SPB1, which is glossy and presumably newer but worse.

Would a LP125WF4-SPB4 work too?

RealBlackStuff
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Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#971 Post by RealBlackStuff » Fri Jul 06, 2018 11:23 am

Read the very first page of this thread, tested displays are listed there.
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
Lenovo: X240, X250, T440p, T480, M900 Tiny.

PS: the old Boardroom website is still available on the Wayback Machine
.

lifftchi
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:16 pm
Location: Mountain View, California

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#972 Post by lifftchi » Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:23 pm

Hi all,

I've been installing my rev. 5 kit, and i've had a lot of trouble with the sense wire. Now that I examine the PCB more carefully, I'm not seeing a passive component on the two pads closest to the sense wire connector, directly under the "b" in "by nitrocaster". Is that okay? If not, what's supposed to be there?

Apart from the lack of sense, things work great. Screen is blank for BIOS, but works fine after Linux boot.

RealBlackStuff
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Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#973 Post by RealBlackStuff » Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:58 pm

There should be a capacitor or a resistor there, can't see what that is.
If that's missing, you may have messed it up when connecting your sense-wire.
Take a close-up/macro picture, put that on e.g. www.Imgur.com and post the link here, so we can see.

lifftchi
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:16 pm
Location: Mountain View, California

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#974 Post by lifftchi » Sat Jul 07, 2018 8:44 pm

It would be difficult for me to get a picture. Believe me, it's gone. Sure, I might have accidentally removed it. But what was it, and what can I replace it with?
RealBlackStuff wrote:
Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:58 pm
There should be a capacitor or a resistor there, can't see what that is.
If that's missing, you may have messed it up when connecting your sense-wire.
Take a close-up/macro picture, put that on e.g. www.Imgur.com and post the link here, so we can see.

RealBlackStuff
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Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#975 Post by RealBlackStuff » Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:03 pm

Ask nitrocaster, he could tell you.

lifftchi
Posts: 16
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Location: Mountain View, California

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#976 Post by lifftchi » Sun Jul 08, 2018 2:08 am

Well, so here's my experience with the mod so far. This is on an X230, without the sense wire, running Fedora 27.

Pros:
* does what it says on the tin. display looks amazing.
* brightness control works (including auto-dim on inactivity.)
* battery life seems about the same as before.

Cons:
* BIOS does not display unless I plug in an external monitor. Probably this is because of the lack of sense wire?
* lid switch no longer triggers suspend. (keyboard shortcut for suspend still works.)

Todo:
* Try kernel patch -- I gather this will allow me to disable the LVDS display? Please confirm.
* Try to fix sense wire. I for some reason (possibly my own fault) don't have the small component next to the sense wire pad, so I need to find out what that is.

All in all, I'm impressed. The new resolution is perfect for the physical size, and it fixes the one complaint I had about this laptop.

henry5
Posts: 11
Joined: Mon Mar 27, 2017 4:20 am
Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#977 Post by henry5 » Sun Jul 08, 2018 2:36 pm

I just added the board and I worked out of the box. Suddenly my bios and Grub does not show up anymore. But it boots in linux normally.

How can I fix it.

omgitsaheadcrab
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2018 5:27 pm
Location: London, UK

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#978 Post by omgitsaheadcrab » Mon Jul 09, 2018 3:29 am

Did you add the sense wire? The guy above you has the same problem and can't see it either without an external monitor plugged in.

henry5
Posts: 11
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Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#979 Post by henry5 » Tue Jul 10, 2018 6:57 am

I did add the sense wire but it seems to disattach by it self. Is there a better sense wire I can add. or is there a better technique to attach it.

RealBlackStuff
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Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#980 Post by RealBlackStuff » Tue Jul 10, 2018 10:56 am

Did you scrape off the lacquer on that sense wire before soldering?

ZorgeHT
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Location: Moscow, RU

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#981 Post by ZorgeHT » Wed Jul 11, 2018 12:42 am

henry5 wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 6:57 am
I did add the sense wire but it seems to disattach by it self. Is there a better sense wire I can add. or is there a better technique to attach it.
First, sense wire need to be scraped of lacquer isolation, as RealBlackStuff mentioned.

Good replacement, that I used - is a single string from multi-thread copper wire. Almost any copper multi-thread wire around 20-30 AWG should fit.
You can get it from old USB cable, IDE or FDD flat ribbon cable and so on.

Anyway, you need to tin the string before soldering - get some good flux (if wire is not old and rusty, rosin will work), then tin it with soldering iron before you trying to solder the wire anywhere.

henry5
Posts: 11
Joined: Mon Mar 27, 2017 4:20 am
Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#982 Post by henry5 » Wed Jul 11, 2018 5:32 am

Thank you for the tips. I did scrap of some enamel but it it might be to little . Luckily I have some left so I will give it another go.

henry5
Posts: 11
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Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#983 Post by henry5 » Wed Jul 11, 2018 3:01 pm

RealBlackStuff wrote:
Tue Jul 10, 2018 10:56 am
Did you scrape off the lacquer on that sense wire before soldering?

Thanks. So I redone the soldering and it might look like a mess but this is my first try.

Picture

I might mod x230 with i7 later on. then this experience will come in handy.

on a side note: Most people said the the battery consumption would be almost the same. but my experience is that the battery drains faster. about 15 to 20 % faster drain. Is this just me?

omgitsaheadcrab
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Location: London, UK

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#984 Post by omgitsaheadcrab » Wed Jul 11, 2018 5:00 pm

It'll be outputting through both DP and LVDS, the latter is about 1W extra I believe. So yeah, normal.

Can you see BIOS when you boot now that you have fixed the sense wire? Soldering looks OK imho

henry5
Posts: 11
Joined: Mon Mar 27, 2017 4:20 am
Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#985 Post by henry5 » Wed Jul 11, 2018 5:23 pm

omgitsaheadcrab wrote:
Wed Jul 11, 2018 5:00 pm
It'll be outputting through both DP and LVDS, the latter is about 1W extra I believe. So yeah, normal.

Can you see BIOS when you boot now that you have fixed the sense wire? Soldering looks OK imho
Thanks for the clarification. So I can see the bios screen. There has been some missed boot ups but after I resoldered to what you see in the picture. I was mostly fine. I can keep you posted if you like

henry5
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Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#986 Post by henry5 » Thu Jul 12, 2018 7:10 am

So this is my third time soldering the sense wire into place since my bios screen seems to disappearing regularly. You might have seen my solder job further up. I can not really tell why it keeps disconnecting.

I have done the steps removed the enamel, tinned capacitor using flux and solder and the sense wire. on the picture I would say it look all right but I really dont understand why the sense wire ist not staying in place.

Sorry I just needed to vent. I am very happy with the mod but this really dampens my experience.

jmill
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Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#987 Post by jmill » Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:05 am

henry5 wrote:
Thu Jul 12, 2018 7:10 am
So this is my third time soldering the sense wire into place since my bios screen seems to disappearing regularly. You might have seen my solder job further up. I can not really tell why it keeps disconnecting.

I have done the steps removed the enamel, tinned capacitor using flux and solder and the sense wire. on the picture I would say it look all right but I really dont understand why the sense wire ist not staying in place.

Sorry I just needed to vent. I am very happy with the mod but this really dampens my experience.
You may want to try solder suspended in flux, if you haven't already -- like the type used for rework that comes in a syringe. I would try applying it to the target cap and suspending the sense wire inside the flux. Mechanically, a 90 degree joint is the weakest, so it must be pretty close to perfect.
ThinkPad X230, i7-3520m, 16GB RAM, 1Tb Crucial MX300, 1Tb Samsung 850 msata, Intel HD4000, 12.5" FHD

lifftchi
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:16 pm
Location: Mountain View, California

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#988 Post by lifftchi » Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:57 pm

So I managed to get in contact with nitrocaster and he informed me that the missing bit on my board was a 10k resistor, but that I should fine just bridging it. So I did, and now everything works nicely. I can access the BIOS just fine.

As to the other annoyances I mentioned in my last post, those were solved by the kernel patch. That allows me to disable the LVDS display and gives me a working lid switch.

lifftchi
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:16 pm
Location: Mountain View, California

Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#989 Post by lifftchi » Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:03 pm

jmill wrote:
Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:05 am
You may want to try solder suspended in flux, if you haven't already -- like the type used for rework that comes in a syringe. I would try applying it to the target cap and suspending the sense wire inside the flux. Mechanically, a 90 degree joint is the weakest, so it must be pretty close to perfect.
I used low-temperature solder paste -- Sn42/Bi58. It's probably the only thing that let me get away with soldering and resoldering the sense wire with the board in place without doing irreparable damage. Melting point of 136C. Flux is very important.

L29Ah
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Re: Upgrading X220/X230 to FHD 1080p

#990 Post by L29Ah » Mon Jul 16, 2018 5:15 pm

I think my eDP cable is damaged: i touch it, and the display blanks frequently, dmesg telling:

[ 135.548959] [drm:ibx_hpd_irq_handler [i915]] hotplug event received, stat 0x00800000, dig 0x00111010, pins 0x00000080
[ 135.548993] [drm:intel_hpd_irq_handler [i915]] digital hpd port D - short
[ 135.549095] [drm:intel_dp_hpd_pulse [i915]] got hpd irq on port D - short
[ 135.549647] [drm:intel_dp_read_dpcd [i915]] DPCD: 12 0a 02 41 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0b 00

Where can i get a replacement/what kind of cable do i need?
51nb X210 with community EC mod, me_cleaner and recelled 99W*h battery; X230 with coreboot, me_cleaner and nitrocaster's FHD mod as a backup; R500 for guests; T60 just for the looks.

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