Upgrading 390E to 390X system board

[engmong]

I wanted to upgrade one of my thinkpad 390E by changing to a 390X system board. In this way, I will be able to use a Pentium 3 cpu for the notebook. If I simply replace it with a 390X system board, will there be any incompatibilities with my 13.3" lcd and other parts of the 390E? Has anyone tried upgrading the 390E before?

[lilserenity]

If the 390X board is cheap by your definition, then I'd go for it. Just take your time doing it. Make sure the 390X board you get is the PIII variant with the 100MHz bus capability to be sure. (Some 390X's were Celeron/PII based as I'm sure you know, but just in case)

The only possible problem would of been in my mind is if your 390E was the 12.1" screen variant but it's not so give it a shot.

Make sure you get a hold of the 390E and 390X hardware maintenance manuals and do some comparisons.

Also - you'd need to replace the 66MHz SDRAM on your 390E to 100MHz SDRAM or PC100.

Hope this helps

Vicky

[robskorner]

I wanted to upgrade one of my thinkpad 390E by changing to a 390X system board. In this way, I will be able to use a Pentium 3 cpu for the notebook. If I simply replace it with a 390X system board, will there be any incompatibilities with my 13.3" lcd and other parts of the 390E? Has anyone tried upgrading the 390E before?

You'll be best off finding the whole bottom half of the 390X and swap you LCD, drives, etc onto the 390X chassis. The right hand side of the 390X by the audio connectors is different and requires the plastics to be modified by hacking a section of the plastics away. The 390X board is slightly longer. One of the memory slots also does not line up right. You can't install/remove memory in the one slot.

I tried to make it work, but I gave up and bought a 390X with bad mb and lcd for cheap. I'd say I'm much happier.