Thinkpads Forum

I am hoping someone more familiar with these can tell me if this is possible before I tear into my only working thinkpad.

Long story short: I bought a t420 on eBay that arrived smashed and cracked. I took a partial refund on it thinking I could buy parts to fix it myself. The parts machine I bought on eBay also arrived smashed and cracked and was unusable. The current state of the t420 is:

1. Needs an LCD panel (1600x900)
2. Palmrest cracked, but acceptable
3. LCD back cover cracked and needs replacement
4. Magnesium chassis cracked

I also have a working t410 here with a 1280x800 display. My thought is to merge my remaining parts together with the t410 into a "frankenpad." My concerns are: are the t420 parts compatible enough to fit into the t410 chassis? Also, will the NVidia graphics in the t420 work with the 1280x800 display in the t410?

Specifically, I want to take the motherboard, processor, and NVidia graphics from the t420 and drop it into the t410 chassis, and use the t410 lcd panel. I would be connecting a t410 lcd panel, webcam, keyboard, touchpad, and fingerprint sensor to a t420 motherboard.

Does anyone know if this is possible before I trouble myself with taking it all apart and trying?

Or...does anyone have a t420 1600x900 panel they aren't using?

Welcome to the forum.

If you had joined us sooner, you could have found a much better machine, arriving well-packed.
Unfortunately that's water under the bridge...

If you just look on e.g. eBay at pictures of a T410 motherboard and a T420 motherboard, you'd immediately notice the differences.
Which means a T4102 or T4201 FrankenPad is highly unlikely.
I know that keyboards, RAM and drives are swappable between them...
I never had a T410 as I jumped from T400 to T420, I'm sure others will chime in next.

RealBlackStuff wrote: If you had joined us sooner, you could have found a much better machine, arriving well-packed.

I regret going with eBay now but there's not much I can do about it other than .

If merging is not possible I'll either need a replacement panel, or maybe I'll just part out what's left and start over.

This is highly unlikely. The motherboard, chassis, palmrest, port layout, etc. are completely different. If you had a T420 and T430, the swap would be much more doable. I would try contacting the seller again for a last attempt at getting a full refund.

Ebay can be a place to get great deals, or terrible ones. You just have to make sure that the seller has at minimum 98.5% seller rating (100% ratings are more common than you think). Also look for ample pictures to help make sure nothing is being hidden.

Thanks for the advice guys. The first laptop purchase was genuinely the fault of USPS; the box had a huge crease down the center and aligned with the cracks on the laptop. It must have been stuck on some equipment, or some employee decided "fragile" actually means "punching bag."

I have an extra 1600x900 screen left over from a screen upgrade on my T420
that you can have for free if you have a UPS or Fed Ex ground account,
and can make my shipping it to you as painless as possible.

bit_twiddler that is very generous, I will send you a PM. Thank you very much.

Its unbeleivable to me that someone was able to crack the magnesium frame while the laptop was still packaged up.

I have a T400 that was dropped and landed on the heatsink and it cracked up the casing and it blew out an inch long piece of magnesium but that was a freak.

If the packaging was not well padded and USPS was very careless with the machine, then it would be possible for severe damage to occur.

I have heard that putting the word 'fragile' on the packaging has 2 effects:
-at best, the package will be treated normally as any other
-at worst, and more likely, the package will be treated worse than other packages.

All of the ebay purchases I have made so far that included heavy padding (often 5+ layers of bubble wrap wrapped around the device) had no problems during shipping. The one time I ordered a T23 lid with a single layer of bubble wrap, it came with a huge crack extending from the front to the middle of the lid.

I'm not defending UPS but what I had delivered early last week survived nicely. It was a ThinkPad in original box and internal support. Problems I have had have been crockery supported not so well even though they seemed to be well padded, even in bubble wrap. I think the pieces slipped in the bubble wrap.

I always wrap my stuff in loads of bubble wrap and, even more important: double-box them before they go out.
I do not apply any FRAGILE stickers and have shipped stuff all over the world via USPS.
Never one breakage!

My worst delivery ever:
in 2008 I sold an expensive set of 6 rare porcelain plates to a friend of mine in Brazil.
It was an identical set of Astrolabio plates by Fornasetti, as seen here: http://portuondo.com/gallery/archive/se ... lan-italy/
On the day that my package with these plates arrived in Brazil, the postmen there went on strike.
Apparently incoming stuff was just unloaded and thrown into a warehouse, where this huge stack of packages stayed for nearly 3 months!
Once the strike was over, the package (without a FRAGILE sticker) was eventually delivered, with some dents and wrinkles in it,
but EVERY plate was still in perfect condition! Ooff..

Applying a FRAGILE sticker is bound to cause trouble, if you ask me.
Once they see this, it's an open invitation to play football or basketball with it...