Thinkpads Forum

I just picked up a 240x with PIII-500 MHz off Ebay recently and this thing is sweet!

Bumped the RAM up to 192, got a Samsung 40-gig (quiet!) drive from NewEgg and it runs XP like a champ!

I did a *little* XP tweaking though. After OS install I unset paging, then rebooted and defragged. Then set paging to a fixed 768 megs. This way I can lock the paging chunk into a contiguous block near the front fast part of the hard drive.

Performance with my usual stuff is terrific. Especially versus the 240 (300 MHz) it replaces. The things the 240x can do that the 240 got swamped by:

1) Playing DivX movies
2) Running Street Atlas 2006 without stuttering on the voice-nav

Now if I could figure out how to wedge a good 802.11g card into the Mini-PCI slot and antenna into the body I'd be done with it. Any advice?

Intel 2200BG or Agroes A/B/G. Both have to be in type 3b form factor.

What is "Agroes" never heard of that company.

Also, will 240X BIOS accept these cards? Have heard that the BIOS is very picky about what cards it will boot with.

Do you think that it is supposed to be "Atheros"?

It is my bad. It should be Atheros. Spelling is not one of my strength. :p

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Also, will 240X BIOS accept these cards? Have heard that the BIOS is very picky about what cards it will boot with.

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240x doesn't have IBM lock mechanism since IBM only start doing such kind of annoying thing since X series.

Teetee,

you have written on your Picture site, that you have removed one of the 64mb chip on your 240X motherboard and so the installed 256mb ram could be recognized also as 256mb.

Can you give more info about it please ?

here is your site, and the photo :

http://lmm.homeip.net/~sclan/xjv/index. ... lters=#pic

Whic ram have you used ? Should it be a 16 chip PC100 Ram ? or 8 chip PC133 256 mb ram can be also used ?

another question is, what are the differences of IBM 240X LCD " type A" and " type B" ?

Thanks

s.

Wow, those are some good questions!

You should perhaps start a new thread about that LCD business.

I just looked at my serial number and the IBM Hardware Maintenance Manual I downloaded and printed, serial numbers ending -ZAAAA through -ZZZZZ are of the type-B variety. Not sure what that means either as far as difference between A and B. The HMM mentions A and B but doesn't explain how they differ.

I'm planning to open mine up next week and look around. Planning to replace the CCFL backlight tube myself as my screen is good but a little dim for my tastes, thought a new tube would help out.

Okay, the previous postings inspired me to try harder on the RAM upgrade to get beyond 192 megs.

So I ordered a KingMax TinyBGA 16-chip "low-density" 256-meg SODIMM. Hopefully in a week I'll find out whether this will allow me to at least get up to 256 megs. Not sure about the reference web page, says something about removing the RAM on the motherboard, but no further information or picture about doing that.

The memory I tried and succeed were all low-density ones including 256mb and 512mb ram modules.(Though 512mb one could only be recognized as 256mb)

My guess is any low-density CL2 PC100 SODIMM memory module will do.

As Vincent said IBM repair manual has the details about LCD type.

sloomy wrote:Teetee,

you have written on your Picture site, that you have removed one of the 64mb chip on your 240X motherboard and so the installed 256mb ram could be recognized also as 256mb.

Can you give more info about it please ?

here is your site, and the photo :

http://lmm.homeip.net/~sclan/xjv/index. ... lters=#pic

Whic ram have you used ? Should it be a 16 chip PC100 Ram ? or 8 chip PC133 256 mb ram can be also used ?

another question is, what are the differences of IBM 240X LCD " type A" and " type B" ?

Thanks

s.

teetee, hello glad to have you here!

I looked closely again at that photo of the SODIMM and it looks like you removed one of the chips from the SODIMM board itself, not the motherboard. Is that right? It sure looks like on the left side there's a blank area where a chip would be, althought maybe that's just a reflection or the camera angle.

thanks!

240/240x LCD screen's two top casing screw sockets are really fragile as well as the edge of the LCD galss panel. I was lucky that I didn't damage the glass when I was cleaning the white screen plate.

Disassembling/Reassembling the bulb/wire/rubber cover and the LCD panel are somewhat tricky but it should be ok with careful fingers and patience.

teetee

vincentfox wrote:Wow, those are some good questions!

You should perhaps start a new thread about that LCD business.

I just looked at my serial number and the IBM Hardware Maintenance Manual I downloaded and printed, serial numbers ending -ZAAAA through -ZZZZZ are of the type-B variety. Not sure what that means either as far as difference between A and B. The HMM mentions A and B but doesn't explain how they differ.

I'm planning to open mine up next week and look around. Planning to replace the CCFL backlight tube myself as my screen is good but a little dim for my tastes, thought a new tube would help out.

Yes. I removed one of the on-board memory chips so that the computer can locate 256mb of memory instead of 192mb.

It doesn't matter if you remove just one or all of them. Just make sure you won't accidentally short anything by the metal dust.

I don't encourage you to do this because I found many people don't really care about the static which could easily destroy your mainboard during the operation.

So do this at your own risk.

teetee

PS. The chip I removed was the ON-BOARD memory chip. Not the one on the SODIMM.
PS. The memory module I use is on the left side of this picture:
http://lmm.homeip.net/~sclan/xjv/index. ... lters=#pic

vincentfox wrote:teetee, hello glad to have you here!

I looked closely again at that photo of the SODIMM and it looks like you removed one of the chips from the SODIMM board itself, not the motherboard. Is that right? It sure looks like on the left side there's a blank area where a chip would be, althought maybe that's just a reflection or the camera angle.

thanks!

On the motherboard, do you have any picture of that removal process, or can you tell us how to do it safely? Can we just use cutters and snip the legs off the chip and remove it?

My confusion probably stems from this picture, which looks like at first glance, a SODIMM with one chip on left removed:

http://lmm.homeip.net/~sclan/xjv/index. ... lters=#pic

OH I see now. There is no SODIMM in that socket. You had removed the SODIMM to take that picture. What we are seeing is the motherboard memory underneath the socket. So you did remove one from mainboard, I get it now. Sorry for being so slow...

I found the utitlity knife is useful here. Cut the legs of the chip on one side and be careful not to cut it straight down otherwise you'll very likely damage the mainboard. After you finish cutting one side of the chip, just use a small flat-head screw driver to lift that side of the chip up. Giggle the chip until the other side is off the board.

Carefully collect the metal dust while you are at it. You might also need to do some work on the pins to make sure they are not touching each other.

teetee

vincentfox wrote:On the motherboard, do you have any picture of that removal process, or can you tell us how to do it safely? Can we just use cutters and snip the legs off the chip and remove it?

My confusion probably stems from this picture, which looks like at first glance, a SODIMM with one chip on left removed:

http://lmm.homeip.net/~sclan/xjv/index. ... lters=#pic

OH I see now. There is no SODIMM in that socket. You had removed the SODIMM to take that picture. What we are seeing is the motherboard memory underneath the socket. So you did remove one from mainboard, I get it now. Sorry for being so slow...

A step along the way.

I followed your idea, used a utility knife to cut the legs along one side of that memory chip. Like you said, easy then to bend the chip up and remove it by bending it up and down until the other legs broke off.

Then I put in a 256-meg PC133 SODIMM, and it showed 128 megs of it. So not so successful as I had hoped.

But, good to know removing a single RAM chip from motherboard does disable that RAM without the BIOS complaining about it or anything. So once I get that 16-chip RAM I ordered, hopefully it will see all of the 256.

Thanks a lot!

Update, got in the 16-chip 256-meg SODIMM I mentioned.

It works and all 256 recognized after disabling motherboard RAM.

Great idea!

Next project: Brighten up LCD. Perhaps new CCFL backlight tube? Or since mine is Type-A and I have an old 240 (plain 240) with bright Type-B LCD, perhaps I could just cannibalize the one from old machine?

perfect !

i have 3 IBM 240x Notebook and all of them had type A. You mentioned type B would be more brighter ?

I am always using with middle brightnes , then i do not want that the LCD looses his power so quickly.

I think, that it should be wihout any problem possible to change the blacklights. but maybe it would be better to completely change the LCD and not opening it ? Any suggestions ?

Let us know about your updates.

s.

I just know that my 240X screen is dimmer than my old 240 screen. The 240X is Type-A, the 240 is Type-B. I can't find any source indicating if the A is just normally dimmer than B or not. Perhaps I will do another post with good subject line....

Update:

Got the 240-Type-B screen swapped onto the 240X body, works great!

Looked through the Hardware Maintenance Manual thoroughly and started unscrewing things. Originally thought I would have to transplant the internals of the LCD panel from one top bezel to the other. Somewhere along the way it became obvious that the whole top-piece FRU could just be swapped.

So now I have the brighter Type-B LCD on the 240x.

The Type-A LCD and the 240 lower I just put in a box for spares.

Conculision:

Type B screen is brighter than the Type A screen. And this is the difference ?

Are both screens from Hitachi ?

Thanks for updates =)

I did not note the maker while I had them apart, sorry!

Also, I cannot state that Type-B is brighter than Type-A I just know that to be the case for the 2 units I have on hand.

With old LCD you do not know if maybe just the bulb is getting dim, or it's always been that way.

Hi,
I would like to ask if there have been any side effects to the RAM
memory upgrade? Any increase in speed? I own three 240Xs and have done some upgrades. This one sounds like my next project since I already
the have 256 chips. Thanks for any info, Mike.

sloomy wrote:Conculision:

Type B screen is brighter than the Type A screen. And this is the difference ?

Are both screens from Hitachi ?

Thanks for updates =)

Type-A panel is made by Sharp, the one with the electric board mounted at the bottom on the back of the panel.
Type-B panel is from Hitachi, the board is hidden on the right side on the back of the panel.
Please refer to twbook.pdf for their FRU #

I didn't aware of any issues due to the onboard memory stripping. However I might have just been lucky.

Someone on this forum mentioned a while ago that there are 192MB PC66/100 SODIMMs in Japan, and these can be used on the TP240X. If you can find one, then you can achieve 256MB of memory without disabling the 64MB onboard.

Hi,
Yes I read that post a while back. I've spent a lot of time looking for such
a chip but have had no luck. I already own two 256 chips that I mistakenly
purchase for my TP240Xs because I was not not carefull when I read the post on the RAM upgrade. They will only work on the TP240!
If anyone knows where to buy a 192 chip please let me know. Thanks, Mike

Would this one work?

Yes I read that post a while back. I've spent a lot of time looking for such
a chip but have had no luck.

The memory you have been looking for is this.
http://www2.ocn.ne.jp/~vertexm/products/VN10S-192M.html
This is available only in Japan, and the price is 13440yen (=110USD). This is a very
expensive and hard to find item even in Japan.

Would this one work?

I would say NO, because it looks like the same as this.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=99259
This is a 256MB High Density PC133 SODIMM. If my guess is true, it is not only having a
wrong capacity (256MB, as opposed to 192MB) but also high density chip based. No way
it can work with TP240X.

I wasn't sure if it would have the extra chips or not, since it is in between the 128mb and the 256mb chips.

Hi,
This is correct. It has to be low density. Has anyone else tried disabling the motherboard RAM by removing a single chip and then installed the 256
low density chip without any side effects? Mike.

Hi all;

Help me out. I was under the impression that if you installed a 256MB, low density sodimm a 240X would recognize 320MB total ram, without deleting the onboard chip. Is this only the case for the 240's?