Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

I bought a nice and little bit beaten up thinkpad s30 from Japan.
I'm happily trying to restore it to working order.


At first, I will need :
- a new screen (both broken and vineagered),
- a new HDD
- and a new battery


I'll focus on the screen first
1/ the orginal model (TX26D20VC1CAB) is a little bit expensive (around 130$). And I would like to explore some other possibilities.
Mostly, try to find a model with close pinout and specs and adapt

-does anyone know if any other screen is compatible with s30 ?
-does anyone have the datasheet of the stock panel ?

2/ using an external screen is also a solution
- does anyone have the s30 vga adapter pinout ? (and a reference for a compatible connector )

I will try to get you updated if I make any progress !

Thank you

I think the HT10X21-100 might work, it's cheap and has wide viewing angles, worth looking into.

I've restored about a dozen of these and always settled on the original $130 screen from China (sold as NOS and *sometimes* are).....

A guy in australia had the external video adaptor advertised on ebay for ages but wasnt entertaining offers less than about £500. Joker.

What makes you think the "HT10X21-100" is compatible?

IIRC you can have a 240z (or iSeries 1124) XGA LCD with a little modification on the CCFL cable.

solidpro wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 11, 2025 11:30 am

I've restored about a dozen of these and always settled on the original $130 screen from China (sold as NOS and *sometimes* are).....

A guy in australia had the external video adaptor advertised on ebay for ages but wasnt entertaining offers less than about £500. Joker.

What makes you think the "HT10X21-100" is compatible?

Someone modded the HT10X21-100 in a 240Z in the big Thinkpad discord a few years ago, and looking back at the messages they actually modded it into an S30 as well. Not sure how intensive the mod is as the poster didn’t go into much detail and their account is now deleted… fair warning

I nearly pulled the trigger on one - just to see - and then I changed my mind. I think I'll just stick with the overpriced OEM....

solidpro wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 13, 2025 11:42 am

I nearly pulled the trigger on one - just to see - and then I changed my mind. I think I'll just stick with the overpriced OEM....

Yeah, that’d be the safe pick. Maybe one day I’ll nab an S30 and try the mod myself, or an XGA 240Z (but I’ll never find one lol).

I may well have one. Likely a 2Mb VRAM one. But let me know if you're desperate for one.

HT10X21 should totally be okay to swap if you have some soldering experience and know how to use an oscilloscope. They are both 1ch 6bit LVDS but have different connectors so you need to buy a DF19-14P cable off ebay or aliexpress to plug into the HT10X21, splice the other end of that cable, pull off the FFC to JAE connector, and solder your wires directly to the FFC. I did this for the XGA 240Z and have a S30 that I'm going to do this on in the future. I couldn't find any datasheets for the original TX26D20VC1CAB datasheet so I probed the pins to see which pins are the power and data lines. I don't remember what the pinout is but there are a few LVDS standards and you should be able to figure it out pretty quickly. The main concern is just to not toast your display so if you mess up only the data lines its probably not a big deal. Dropping $130 on an original TN screen is actually insane when you can buy the HT10X21 (A?)FFS screen for $15 off ebay (I think they were used in elevators or something). On the 240Z, I had to remove some plastic screw posts because the mounting holes are different, but there's plenty of space. I believe the S30 is a slightly tighter fit but some deleted user got it working a few years ago.