New Source For LED Mod Kits?

[byritc]

It appears that Monty has disappeared and is no longer responding to inquires for his LED Mod Kits. I've been having a hard time hunting one down for my x61, so I'm curious if there's other sources out there for them.

[wileE]

Unfortunately nothing can compare to Montys kits, especially the daylight kits for AFFS screens.

There are (plug & play) chinese kits which ar good enough for the TN XGA screens from iccfl or xccfl.
http://www.xccfl.com/product_info.php?c ... ts_id=4726
But these have PWM flickering visible for some people. It was annoying for me. There is a PWM mod from Monty (on his legacy webpages) that raises the PWM frequency to non visible levels, but that involves some soldering.

[H-Atkinson]

AliExpress has a guy that sells them. Note that they are not quite as good as the ones that he made, but they are still better than CCFLs.

Ill post a link to the guy when I get home.

[iamdmc]

any updates on this?

I see lots of generic 12" kits, but from looking at Monty's guide it looks like you'll have to solder the LED driver onto the thinkpad inverter (after desoldering the CCFL driver)

[Jake.Werecat]

I might want to acquire one of those sets too, if non-flickering kits were available.

[Kingair]

Did anyone get in contact with Monty recently ?
His website is still up
Would love to get 2 kits

[Kingair]

Did any member bough a AliExpress kit and installed it yet ?
If yes what's the result and how do you like it ?

[Kingair]

Pulled the trigger yesterday
I ordered a backlight LED kit for one of my X61
Probably not an easy mod but we'll give it a shot
Kit is shipped in the meantime

[zoltan87]

Pulled the trigger yesterday
I ordered a backlight LED kit for one of my X61
Probably not an easy mod but we'll give it a shot
Kit is shipped in the meantime

I would be very much interested in the results of your LED upgrade when it's done. Brightness increase compared to ccfl, power usage, colour rendition differences (if any), and any possible PWM flickering.

I have two Daylight kits from Monty in my T60 and T601 Thinkpads. I am hugely impressed with them (I wrote about the modding experience and results here: viewtopic.php?t=129053 ), and wanted to buy some more kits from him for my X61 and X32 units too, but he has just completely disappeared from anywhere online. I have sent multiple messages to him to two different email addresses he has, messaged him on Reddit, but no answer. And it seemed to me that his last Reddit post was made many months ago (but I could be wrong on this one, I never use Reddit, so not sure how thorough/ trustworthy my search there was).

I hope he is still ok, and has just simply moved on with different things in life, or just busy with work/ family/ etc.

So it really seems like his legendary LED kits won't be available any more. It's an enormous loss, especially knowing how good they were. Also his website where he had tutorials and how to-s on things like panel disassembly, comparing different kits and specs, all sorts of info about his inverter boards and much more, is completley gone too. I have one or two pages downloaded from there, but there was so much more I wanted to look up. He even had schematics for his inverter boards that drive his LED strips without PWM flicker. I have zero electronics knowledge, but would have been a great resource for someone more knowledgeable to maybe give it a try and build something like that.

So as things stand right now, we have to use cheaper generic Chinese kits if we want an LED upgrade. And quite frankly I just don't know what to buy. So will keep my eye on this thread, hopefully you will have good results with your purchase.

[Kingair]

I would be very much interested in the results of your LED upgrade when it's done. Brightness increase compared to ccfl, power usage, color rendition differences (if any), and any possible PWM flickering.

Nice meeting you my friend
Actually my intention was to order a few kits from our friend Monty
I contacted him I guess 8 months - probably even a longer time ago
Than I started looking for more info and used several ways to contact Monty but all where dead ends
No reply ever came back
I definitely hope Monty is ok and that finally someone can confirm it !
He vanished from one moment to the other ...
Actually one day I was at his website and 30 minutes later all was gone
Tons of awesome info disappeared into the darkness
Just lost
I would have preferred that someone took over Monty his business so we had a continuation
Now nothing is left of all his knowledge

Since there aren't many options these days I ordered 2 SXGA+ screens weeks ago
Hopefully I like this modification
Later on I started to look for some more info on CCFL since where can we find them if the lamp dies ?
These X61 I use aren't getting any younger
That brought me to LED
I asked on several forum and Thinkpad groups but same thing as with Monty
No reply from anyone
So the only option was to order one what I did earlier this week
I really have no clue what we should expect:
How will color / F be ?
Will it flicker ?
Brightness adjustment ?
I have here a project X61 ready for the transformation
This screen is dead (might work since I still need to check it out)
So if needed I'll use one of the replaced TN with a SXGA+
I'll post my findings here

[zoltan87]

Since there aren't many options these days I ordered 2 SXGA+ screens weeks ago.
I'll post my findings here

I hope you will have luck with both the LED kit and the SXGA+ screen. I hope you saw this post here before you purchased the screens:
viewtopic.php?t=125590
From that post it looks like a gamble whether someone receives a good quality screen, or a reused/ refurbished one with worse specs than it originally came from. Fingers crossed for you mate.

For now I will just LED mod the original TN panels in my X61 and X32 units, at least I will get some practice doing it. I will look up that website you mentioned for the LED mod tomorrow, but before purchase I will probably wait until you report back on your results. If there will be major flaws like flickering or not correct brightness adjustment, I might just abandon the whole project.

[Kingair]

I hope you saw this post here before you purchased the screens

I do know about what's going on with the screens but that another gamble we have to take
It's part of the modding fun and for sure sometimes it can create some additional stress
Overall I have to say that most turned out fine
And hopefully so does this LED upgrade

[iamdmc]

I would be very much interested in the results of your LED upgrade when it's done. Brightness increase compared to ccfl, power usage, color rendition differences (if any), and any possible PWM flickering.

Nice meeting you my friend
Actually my intention was to order a few kits from our friend Monty
I contacted him I guess 8 months - probably even a longer time ago
Than I started looking for more info and used several ways to contact Monty but all where dead ends
No reply ever came back
I definitely hope Monty is ok and that finally someone can confirm it !
He vanished from one moment to the other ...
Actually one day I was at his website and 30 minutes later all was gone
Tons of awesome info disappeared into the darkness
Just lost
I would have preferred that someone took over Monty his business so we had a continuation
Now nothing is left of all his knowledge

Since there aren't many options these days I ordered 2 SXGA+ screens weeks ago
Hopefully I like this modification
Later on I started to look for some more info on CCFL since where can we find them if the lamp dies ?
These X61 I use aren't getting any younger
That brought me to LED
I asked on several forum and Thinkpad groups but same thing as with Monty
No reply from anyone
So the only option was to order one what I did earlier this week
I really have no clue what we should expect:
How will color / F be ?
Will it flicker ?
Brightness adjustment ?
I have here a project X61 ready for the transformation
This screen is dead (might work since I still need to check it out)
So if needed I'll use one of the replaced TN with a SXGA+
I'll post my findings here

Just came to let you know that when I last spoke to Monty in May he was fine but very busy 3d printing face masks for his local hospital

You can follow him on Twitter as he's still quite active

But yes I can confirm he's no longer making the kits. They were 'for a limited time only' and those who picked one up are lucky SOBs :p

[Kingair]

You can follow him on Twitter as he's still quite active

But yes I can confirm he's no longer making the kits. They were 'for a limited time only' and those who picked one up are lucky SOBs :p

That's great news to read he's ok
Yes those where the lucky ones
I'll have to see what the Chinese kit will do
It's shipped and hopefully it arrives in the next couple of weeks

[atagunov]

A forum member sent me a .zip which should contain Monty's board design. In the coming years I hope to find time to replicate it. That will give me only the board, but the board is all I want. I don't want the LED strip. The advantage of Monty's design over the "led-inverters" you can purchase online I understand is that Monty's device runs at a very high frequency (24kHz?) while Chinese "led-inverters" follow the flickering frequency provided by thinkpad. That is probably 200Hz+ which can be programmatically driven up to 2000Hz+. Or not. Not sure about programmatic control One more advantage of Monty's latest board design (version 3 was it?) is that it also includes controls on the board to adjust min/max brightness. This is something I very much look forward to having. Monty's board may have a wider brightness adjustment range too. Monty's materials on led inverters were not available on his website the last time I checked. I used wayback machine to view what was still available. I believe we should get that .zip online somewhere. Ideally with Monty's permission. I also hope to get it done in years to come Can forward the email for now.

When I look at this page on xccfl.com at the bottom I see complete inverters. No soldering needed. Monty's design that I hope to build will require soldering onto an existing inverter.

People are organizing group-buys for LED-strips + led-inverter on https://thinkpad-forum.de/ possibly every few years. The inverters they order share the common drawbacks on Chinese inverters - the flickering frequency follows what Thinkpad drives. E.g. they are as good at flickering as Lenovo's own screens Shouldn't flicker any worse. The name of the guy who is organizing group-buys is joker4791. Think they've done a group buy this year. Not sure when the next one will be. I think the selection of kits you can order there may be better than what is generally available online. I would be happy to be proven wrong. But kits on offer included nearly all sizes of Thinkpads. I guess the quality concerns saying Monty's were better still may apply here. Not sure. These kits including shipping are not that cheap I think.. around half a hundred euros maybe?.. Not sure