T480 guts into T25

[theterminator93]

Anyone seen this? Looks intriguing. Although I won't do this to my T25 quite yet... unless I get another one to play with...

https://kitsunyan.github.io/blog/frankenpad-story.html

[dr_st]

It's good to know it can be done.

[w0qj]

End result: it's also 150 grams lighter, which is a BIG piece of candy bar in my book

[dr_st]

End result: it's also 150 grams lighter, which is a BIG piece of candy bar in my book

Yeah, but this can (mostly) be achieved with a far simpler mod - just swapping in the magnesium lid:
https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comme ... id_report/

[ZaZ]

That's the T25 I would have wanted to buy.

[theterminator93]

I finally went through with assembling mine. I bought the best spec'd T480 made, with the i7-8650U and nVidia MX150 dGPU and the WQHD display, 20L5000XUS, with the intent to do this to it. I tried using it a few times as it was but it never really felt right with the keyboard. Otherwise it was a fantastic experience; noticeably more responsive than the T25 with twice the CPU cores and a higher max turbo.

It didn't get used much and I shelved it for a few months - finally placing the order for all the pieces I needed for the conversion this winter. The T25 trackpad FRU went obsolete by the time I ordered it, so I substituted it for the X1C G5 without NFC and it is a direct fit, with no apparent differences from the T25 trackpad. Now that I verified it works, it gets disabled in BIOS. Today I finally put it together. Well, mostly (a friend of mine is printing the brackets to secure the end of the motherboard by the power connector) - but for now it's together. I took a few photos of the T25 and the 'Anniversary T480' FrankenPad, as I guess I'll call it.

I'm on the fence about ordering the T25 top cover so it matches the palm rest logo. Convince me to do it, or otherwise.

I guess in the end, I didn't do "T480 guts into T25" because the T25 is a bit too rare and special (IMO) to chop up. I'm leaving mine as-is for the collection. This is just modding a T480 with the T25 keyboard and top cover. T480s are very readily available, and for now, so are the T25 parts.

If only there was a published guide to modding the EC (or whatever) to get the function keys remapped! For now I can live with them being incorrectly labeled but I don't think I'll be content with this until someone finds a way to do that. Hopefully it's a matter of time - for minds more sophisticated than my own.

Click thumbnails for higher res (~250-400 KB). I need to re-seat the keyboard over the ribbon cables, there's a slight bulge there. And I didn't go crazy with photos, you've seen this before. But I wanted to capture how the T25's FHD panel at full brightness looked next to the T480's WQHD panel at full brightness..

[RealBlackStuff]

Nice job!
Does the 'new' KB-backlight not work?
As for key-remap, see if the X230 EC-mod helps (zmatt website).
And this: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/make-certai ... ther-keys/

[dr_st]

Congratulations on the awesome mod!

The T25 trackpad FRU went obsolete by the time I ordered it, so I substituted it for the X1C G5 without NFC and it is a direct fit, with no apparent differences from the T25 trackpad.

It's great that my workplace had given me an X1C; I wouldn't have known this otherwise.

I'm on the fence about ordering the T25 top cover so it matches the palm rest logo. Convince me to do it, or otherwise.

I remember some talk that the best thing to do is actually to use a T470/T480 magnesium top, since it is ~100g lighter than the CFRP of a TP25.

guess in the end, I didn't do "T480 guts into T25" because the T25 is a bit too rare and special (IMO) to chop up. I'm leaving mine as-is for the collection. This is just modding a T480 with the T25 keyboard and top cover. T480s are very readily available, and for now, so are the T25 parts.

I think this was the better way to do it.

If only there was a published guide to modding the EC (or whatever) to get the function keys remapped! For now I can live with them being incorrectly labeled but I don't think I'll be content with this until someone finds a way to do that. Hopefully it's a matter of time - for minds more sophisticated than my own.

What about this?

I need to re-seat the keyboard over the ribbon cables, there's a slight bulge there.

I was going to ask about it... Speaking of, how's the seam between the palm rest and the bottom cover? Experience shows that half the time the clips don't close properly after you open one of these systems up, leaving a small gap.

I wanted to capture how the T25's FHD panel at full brightness looked next to the T480's WQHD panel at full brightness..

It's interesting that the TP25 panel seems brighter head-on, but darker and more reflective from an angle. Effects of the touch screen, I suppose?

[theterminator93]

Thank you. The keyboard backlight does indeed work; it's activated with Fn+Space. I need to do a little more trimming around the power/USB-C/dock connector as the plastics from the T480 base cover that would normally fit into slots on the T480 top cover are keeping it from sealing flush. There's a small gap presently of maybe 1mm because of that. A friend of me is printing off the plastics to reinforce that area as I type, so I'll be reopening it to install them - I thought I'd fix that then.

I also am thinking about buying another 16GB SODIMM and a 512GB M.2 SSD to go into the 2242 WWAN slot. I found what I want to get last night; only about $130 between the two, surprisingly. I was also surprised to see two memory slots on the T480. I'm not sure where I read it but I had thought the first 8 or 16GB were soldered to the board. I was quite glad to have been wrong!

I was looking at the post by leokim (as well as others) but it seems none of them who have had some success at remapping the function keys have published a comprehensive how-to guide on the process. They have shared the modifications to the code required, but there are references to decrypter tools that get soldered to the board that are not elaborated upon whatsoever.

Fortunately all the "white" keys on the T25 keyboard are perfectly functional as-is, and with time I will get used to the "phantom hotkeys" until some way is discovered for the common thinkpadder to repair the hotkeys. I am looking at a few tools that might be able to remap that within Windows, but my first attempt last night was futile. If I find a way to make it work, I will most certainly share a guide.

Funny you mention the lack of apparent head-on brightness difference. In reality it is every bit as apparent as the high or low angle comparisons - I'm guessing the phone did an HDR exposure for that shot, which makes them look roughly equivalent.

There are also no gaps whatsoever along the front of the system. The trick is to install the base cover at a moderate (maybe 25 or 30 degrees) angle to the top cover to get the tabs to interface into the slots, then pivot it down against the top cover to fully engage the tabs and clips without stressing or breaking them. The reverse applies for removal.

I also understand there's a 4K panel that can be retrofitted into the T480? Who knows, more might be in store for this FrankenPad in the future... I really like the itsy-bitsy, un-scaled screen real-estate of WQHD at 14". Nice and tiny - at least, while my eyes are still young and sharp!

[dr_st]

There are also no gaps whatsoever along the front of the system. The trick is to install the base cover at a moderate (maybe 25 or 30 degrees) angle to the top cover to get the tabs to interface into the slots, then pivot it down against the top cover to fully engage the tabs and clips without stressing or breaking them. The reverse applies for removal.

That's pretty much what I did with mine (or at least what I aimed to do), and still ended up with a gap. I know for sure that none of the clips were broken. Maybe I made a mistake and they were temporarily overstressed, and got permanently warped, but it sure didn't seem so. The problem is only with the small center clips - the wider side clips are fine. A sh!tty design, no matter how one looks at it.

[RealBlackStuff]

Just saw this on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comme ... i_like_to/
He bought it from xueyao (known on this forum as xytech)

[theterminator93]

I was asked by another member to provide the 3D-printed brackets necessary to help secure the USB-C side of the planar to the top cover. They also asked if I had any photos of that area.

For posterity, I took the bottom cover off and snapped a pair of impromptu images - one as-is with everything screwed into place, and another with the planar lifted slightly to reveal the bracket installed. I circled three areas in that photo - the two screw standoffs that I had to insert/epoxy into the 3D printed bracket, as well as the screw that goes through the bracket into the ground-down screw casting in the top cover (covered with kapton tape).

http://wannerweb.ddns.net/Public/Photos ... 57-800.jpg
http://wannerweb.ddns.net/Public/Photos ... 18-800.jpg