My ThinkPad T43 type 1871 upgrades

[Droider]

Had my fair share of experience with the T40, T41 and T43 before but i had to sell them all cause there were always some minor issues with either cosmetics of the housings or those little white spots on the displays which my stomach didn't quite like. Recently a mint conditioned T43 type 1871 was introduced to me for cheap, i couldn't let it go but buy the little original devil. Original configuration was 1.86ghz, 512mb ram, 2915abg wifi, 40gb 5400 hdd, 14" xga, pretty standart T43. What i liked about this one was the display still so bright and white like its ccfl tube shines like day1, keyboard or touchpad has no signs of wear, the original battery still has %70 life in it. I decided to spend some money on it to maximize to my liking cause i like the T43 series, it is worth it for me what its worth.

1- Bought a Toshiba Tecra A4 complete laptop from thriftstore just for its Pentium M 770 2.13ghz cpu. This costed less than ordering the cpu from ebay or aliexp.
2- Bought a 1.8" sata to 44pin ide converter to use the 64gb samsung ssd salvaged from Thinkpad X300. The adapter costed more than Tecra S4, go figure.
3- Bought a TP-Link WL-861N cause why not. This card is said to be the best for mini pci socket, 9$ including shipping. Reasonable purchase.

* Installed WinXP SP3, some of my fave old games, music and movies. Flys through youtube with VLC.
* PM770 temps 46c idle and 67c load (max performance mode) not different than PM750 it had before. Maybe even runs cooler, using arctic mx-4 2019 edition.
* 64gb 1.8" samsung ssd, 70mb read and write and usual access times of an ssd brings new life to the olddog.
* Wifi card was totally worth it compared to the darn intel 2915abg, it really sucked.

I read people saying T43 being the last true IBM made THINKPAD, true or not. This particular T43 is my fave thinkpad for now.

[RealBlackStuff]

Congrats on your new baby.
Just remember to NEVER lift it up by any corner with one hand.

[Droider]

She is being picked up with care. Does it make speed or heat difference if i used 2gb single stick ram versus 1gb x 2 sticks ?

[Cigarguy]

Dual channel and a little bit cheaper. Speed difference? Doubt anyone will notice.

[kfzhu1229]

She is being picked up with care. Does it make speed or heat difference if i used 2gb single stick ram versus 1gb x 2 sticks ?

1gb x 2 config means dual channel, thus effectively double the speed of 2gb x 1. Though for a single core Pentium M Dothan, even with the 780 you can barely notice it.
If you have the latter one, I am sure an owner of a core duo gen laptop (T60, R60, Dell Latitude D820/620, etc.) will be more than happy to pay a decent amount of money and make use of that 2gb stick (max configuration for them), or if you are lucky and own the 2GB stick you can trade with them to get 2x1gb sticks and get some money at the same time. I got a total of 6 of 1GB sticks because they came off the Core duo and Core 2 duo and dead Pentium M Dothan gen laptops in China (Dell Latitude D610, D630, HP Compaq 6531s, Asus F83se, Toshiba Satellite A200).

[Droider]

Run passmark memory bench and results aren't different for 2gb single vs 1gb x dual sticks. Just tested.

2gb single scored 337 points
1gb x 2 sticks scored 347 points, dual channel my

[Cigarguy]

Told you.

Having said that, synthetic tests is not the be all and end all. There's a time and place for it.

[kfzhu1229]

I think with graphical intensive tasks such as games you may notice it - especially since you are on iGPU.
I remember that I restored a Dell Latitude D630 with NVidia graphics with 128MB VRAM, and 4+1GB asymmetric dual channel DDR2 667mhz. When playing league of legends it starts to stutter randomly because it runs out of VRAM and the system RAM is too slow. However replacing the RAM with 2x4GB dramatically reduces the random stutter (And no we checked task manager it wasn't running out of RAM).

[Droider]

Got myself another T43 type 1871 today, she is also in very mint condition like my last one that started this thread. I feel like this is the best T4x machine for its display temperature and cpu temps. The ones with X300 graphics tend to have a yellowish hue while type 1871 intel t43 tends to be blueish which looks better. Not to mention i can safely put intel t43 on my lap without burning myself.

[kfzhu1229]

Got myself another T43 type 1871 today, she is also in very mint condition like my last one that started this thread. I feel like this is the best T4x machine for its display temperature and cpu temps. The ones with X300 graphics tend to have a yellowish hue while type 1871 intel t43 tends to be blueish which looks better. Not to mention i can safely put intel t43 on my lap without burning myself.

Ah nice. But there are three downsides to the iGPU model though:
1. XGA only for 14.1" and SXGA+ is the max for 15"
2. no DVI output. For those rare times that I would like this thing hooked to our TV, I rather have a dock with a DVI plug and passively convert it to HDMI.
3. no DirectX 9 support. That can be a big deal though because it means you can forget about using Windows 10 on that and Windows 7 won't have Aero.
Well I think it is just a pure coincidence that the ATi ones you have had more usage under the sun thus the white is more yellowed instead of snow white. You can use a display profile to make it more blue but it doesn't look natural at that point.

[Droider]

Dx9 support aint much of an issue nor the windows 7. As these machines will be running with XP and playing older titles. DVI support is not essential for me. Never needed to connect these oldies to a TV. Though i connect them to my 27inch monitor through vga from time to time. I have assembled a perfect condition T43 x300 yesterday with a perfct xga lcd transferred from a T42. I have the following devices and i want to make video comparing and bechmarking them. It is obvious that my Intel T43 has seen less use compared to my other radeon t43 's. Hence explaining the yellowish hue. T43 's never die. Such a great thinkpad.

T43p 15"uxga, fire gl v3200
T42p 15" uxga, fire gl t2
T43, 14.1" xga, radeon x300
T43, 14.1" xga, gma900

[kfzhu1229]

T43 's never die. Such a great thinkpad.

Well they don't die metaphorically but they die literally... I have had my hands on like a dozen of T43/p boards with ATi graphics (Some bare motherboards, others with their bodies) and so far I have like 3 of them failed: 2 T43 boards with southbridge desoldering (One died on my hands, the other was advertised as a broken hard drive but I knew what's coming), 1 T43p board with GPU desoldering as I have made my own heatsinks for the southbridge this time around (It also had a F grade bin for the GPU as it ran hotter than all my other T43p boards)
I have since moved whatever I was doing on the T43p to a Latitude D610 and D830 (not a single D610 I saw on eBay have a failed motherboard).
Treat your T4x machines delicately.

[Droider]

Everything literally dies, t43 has a community and fans of its own till this date. I dont see that happening with any dell d610 or d830. Those dont hold any value while a thinkpad does, the existance of thinkpads.com or many other thinkpad communities around the world still kickin as a living proof why T43 doesnt and cant die. MEANWHILE D610, i have owned 3 of them in different periods, they just worked like my T43's. I hunt fleamarkets i see many of those d610 waiting in piles with broken hinges for their new owners and nobody really gives a darn about them. Every consumer device has its flaws. if abused, they just break either from mainboard or hinges. Thanks.

T43's never die !

[kfzhu1229]

Everything literally dies, t43 has a community and fans of its own till this date. I dont see that happening with any dell d610 or d830. Those dont hold any value while a thinkpad does, the existance of thinkpads.com or many other thinkpad communities around the world still kickin as a living proof why T43 doesnt and cant die. MEANWHILE D610, i have owned 3 of them in different periods, they just worked like my T43's. I hunt fleamarkets i see many of those d610 waiting in piles with broken hinges for their new owners and nobody really gives a darn about them. Every consumer device has its flaws. if abused, they just break either from mainboard or hinges. Thanks.

T43's never die !

Yup totally true though, which is why I am also preserving a T43p for my own collection. Mine is largely unmodded though, with a 120GB HDD that has a ThinkPad firmware flashed to avoid error 2010 and a 2915ABG card that does the job just fine since for my use case 802.11a is more important than having 802.11n if it doesn't have 5Ghz here. But I have my nerves up every time I run games on it fearing that the motherboard will fail again.
Having a pile of those broken ones means a good thing if you are using it though - it means that you can get parts for extremely cheap price. It's more of something that you can abuse on and not worry about draining your wallet rather than collection. It's only the older C series Latitudes that have any resale value in them but they are much harder to maintain.

[cadillacmike68]

Why the ban on one handed or corner lifting? Is it because you'll flex it and crack solder joints on the mobo or something? These are the lightest of the T20 / 30 / 40 / 60 / 500 groups, so I can understand if they are more prone to being damaged by handling in such a manner.

[kfzhu1229]

Why the ban on one handed or corner lifting? Is it because you'll flex it and crack solder joints on the mobo or something? These are the lightest of the T20 / 30 / 40 / 60 / 500 groups, so I can understand if they are more prone to being damaged by handling in such a manner.

Well because the front of the laptop near where the speakers are have NO magnesium support of any kind, and the thickness both for the entire bottom chassis and the plastics are thinner than the predecessors. Moreover the graphics chip and the southbridge are conveniently, right at the centre of where the laptop bottom chassis bends the most. Plus the flops of first generation lead free solder on T40-T42 series and hot hot southbridge on the T43 series, you have a recipe for disaster if the solder balls get too much repetitive stress from the bending of the chassis, which can happen easily when you lift the laptop on its corner, especially when you rotate the laptop from horizontal to vertical with one corner.