My turn to build T601 frankenpad, better late than never :)

[God Of Gaming]

Hello, I've read some interesting and useful posts here over the years, but only just now registered as I want to ask for assistance with building the infamous T601 frankenpad. I want to avoid doing stuff wrong.

I've had a 15" T60 with ati x1400 and 1400x1050 ips for many years now, seen quite a lot of use and still going strong. Recently broke the LCD sadly so it's almost unusable. Not too long ago I also found a good cheap deal for a T60p, with 1600x1200 ips. Should be able to piece together one in great condition combining the better parts of the two, but I want to go a step further. Couple years back I obtained a 14" T61 board, with nvidia nvs 140m, and it's from that final batch with the bumpgate issue apparently solved, so should be fairly reliable. It has been sitting in its box waiting its turn for at least a couple of years now.

I also just obtained a core 2 extreme X9000, been hunting for one at a good price for ages, and finally lucked out. I remember reading somewhere here that at same clocks as the regular models, this one can be undervolted further due to better silicone, resulting in better efficiency and lower temps. Which is my goal. I want cool and quiet, and to extend battery life.

So, please advise me on steps to take next and what other bits and pieces to buy in order to build the perfect frankenpad? I remember I needed to find like a T500 fan assembly and like a T400 perforated keyboard and stuff like that? And to begin with, what cheap cpu should I get for the T61 board to get it up and running before I can flash the custom bios for the X9000?

[Plunkyy]

Just making sure since you say you have a 14" 'safe' T61 motherboard, it's the 14" 4:3 one right? I only ask because I think the only 'safe' 14" 4:3 motherboards were sold by TuuS here on the forums (I could be wrong about this).

I would imagine X9000 might work out of the box on penryn T61 boards but to be safe just pick up whatever the cheapest 800mhz fsb merom cpu is (T7100, T7500, etc). It's only used to be able to boot to flash middletons bios so it really doesn't matter.

For the cooler, I think T500/W500 is best. I ended up sticking in a 15.4" T61p cooler I scavenged from a unit and it worked perfectly fine (T9300 iGPU board though, so less power draw).

I think the older T60/T61 solid-back NMB keyboards are widely regarded as the best. The T400/T500 keyboards are ok but the swiss-cheese backplate makes them a bit more prone to keyboard flexing, and the NMB switches are different (still feel nice though).

For the rollcage modifications, Sebi's Random Tech has an awesome video series on building a frankenpad, and shows the necessary modifications. It's nice if you own a dremel but you don't need one. I just ended up using one blade of a pair of scissors as a metal file and slowly chipped away at the roll cage. Obviously less clean cuts but you're only gonna see it when you open the laptop up so who cares.

One last thing worth mentioning is that it is possible to install 1066mhz FSB penryn cpus in the T61 with a little bit of modding. I've seen older posts on the forums of someone putting in a T9900, but opting not to get it to run at its standard 3.06ghz and leaving it at ~2.4-ish (I think?) ghz and undervolting the [censored] out of it. Totally unsure of how much lower you can undervolt the T9900 vs a similarly underclocked X9000 but worth mentioning. I'd just stick with the X9000 since you already have it.

Best of luck on your build!

[TPFanatic]

i'm no authority. i'm just a thinkpad enjoyer like you. But nowadays I would actually recommend not to proceed with T601 FrankenPad, in particular, T61 board in T60, for the reasons I'll describe, by responding firstly in counter to the reasons to build a T601:

Pros of T601:
• SATA 2 speed
• 8GB RAM
• socket P CPU with or without mods
• 1600x1200

Responding to SATA 2 speed

T61's SATA 2 max throughput is 300mb/ps, promising 100% faster than T60's SATA 1 max throughput of 150mb/ps. In practical terms, this has no effect on daily use of a PC let alone a classic PC.

Both machines already use SATA and support SATA SSDs. Perceived snappiness of the PC in regards to disk i/o comes from random access times, not maximum throughput. So I would dismiss SATA 2 speeds as pragmatically irrelevant.

Responding to 8GB RAM

T61's 8GB RAM limit offers 5GB more than the 3GB limit in T60. However, both either is quite low for today's standards, and either limit is functionally irrelevant as modern OS relies on swap space, usually from the primary storage. Accordingly, having a large, fast, and reliable SSD with a lot of free space is more important to functionality than 8GB vs 3GB.

Should you want even more storage, you can supplement the primary storage with an Expresscard SSD, or even put an SSD in the WLAN slot, as I have done. See: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=136816#p880921 In my case, I put a 256GB SSD and told Windows to use it all as swap space.

Socket P CPU with or without mods

The practical difference in performance between a T60's Socket M Core 2 Duo and a T61's Socket P Core 2 Duo is largely irrelevant. Arguendo, cpubenchmark.net's comparison of T7200 (average T60 CPU) and T9500 (better T61 CPU) shows the T9500 is faster, yes, but they're also both just Core 2 Duos. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... /927vs1010 My opinion is that all Core 2s are slow, and exchanging a slow Core 2 for a less slow Core 2 is pointless. But you do you.

1600x1200

If you can get a T60p that already has 1600x1200, at this point I think the machine will be more valuable and enjoyable kept as is, or marginally upgraded as permitted by T60p's chipset, rather than surgically convert it into a T61 at the cost of the authentic T60 experience.

Conclusion

So for the lack of meaningful performance improvements, and the T60/T60p already being capable of meaningful bolt-ons, I would not recommend doing a T601 for performance reasons. Doing it for fun is OK of course, it's just a laptop or two.

[God Of Gaming]

Just making sure since you say you have a 14" 'safe' T61 motherboard, it's the 14" 4:3 one right? I only ask because I think the only 'safe' 14" 4:3 motherboards were sold by TuuS here on the forums (I could be wrong about this).

I took a look at it right now as I had not opened the box in years. It's FRU PN: 44C3924, says 2012-04-20 on the box. I did not buy it from the forum, I do not remember where I bought it from, after so long, but it's supposed to be new old stock and looks legit.

The T400/T500 keyboards are ok but the swiss-cheese backplate makes them a bit more prone to keyboard flexing, and the NMB switches are different (still feel nice though).

I remember reading they improve cpu/gpu cooling a little bit

@TPFanatic I use the T60 with dualboot of windows XP and Linux, and not as my main machine, so the specs are plenty adequate for that. The 2GB ram currently installed is a bit tight in linux when web browsing and/or using discord, so the two main reasons for the frankenpad build are increasing the ram to make web browsing a bit more comfortable and allow opening a few more tabs, and improve efficiency, temps and battery life, as my T60 can get rather hot, and 9cell battery barely lasts 3 hours of light load. Also ati X1400 game performance in winXP is rather anemic, win98-era games are fine but by the late XP era I have to set games to potato settings. I think the nvs140m should noticably improve things there.

I don't even have SSD in it, instead a 2TB 5400rpm HDD, and I'm not complaining about the snappiness of it (though if I had windblows 11 on it Im sure I would be saying different). I actually intend to swap the cd/dvd combo drive for one more 2TB HDD, as you can never have enough storage

[Plunkyy]

Yeah the FRU seems to check out. I know you can check the GPU die itself and there's a manufacturing date on it, I forget what format it's in but there's posts on the forums describing it. As for the T400/T500 keyboards, I've never heard that but maybe it's true. I definitely prefer the solid-back T60/T61 NMB's though, but the T400/T500 NMB is decent too.

Please god buy an SSD at least for a boot/OS drive. Note that the T60/T61 uses some special FRU of the ultrabay HDD adapter that is quite hard to find nowadays, I don't think the newer ones (T400/T500 ones) work but again, I could be wrong, I'm sure there's more info throughout the forums.

TPFanatic is right that the gains aren't that substantial especially in 2025 where it's one slow CPU vs another slow CPU. I still use 4gb of ram in my frankie because I rarely even max that out, and I'm not paying $40-50 usd for 8gb of ddr2 sodimm. I think the only way a T601f might make some financial sense is to install a QX9300 with the quad core mod. Then you have a massive performance jump over the T60 and (likely) have an actual snappy system for light web browsing and general office tasks. It's still a [censored] ton of money for old hardware, but it's the best possible 15" 4:3 laptop excluding any 51nb mod boards (which will probably set you back $1000-1500 USD if you can even get your hands on one).

[Medessec]

Dude, excellent! That's awesome to see a fellow Thinkpad enjoyer not just still interested in the T60/61 board swaps and Frankenpad mod, but stocked up to get 'er done!

As TPFanatic mentioned, nowadays from a purely utility-side of things, it's much less worth it than it used to be. For modernity- a T61 is definitely a much more capable platform than maxed out T60, but both gens of Thinkpad are so old at this point that using them on the web and modern media is rough, and usually requires quite a bit of configuration and fine tuning such as using a light Linux distro, or a lightweight browser if you insist on Windows... and if you use Windows, you'll definitely want Win 10 Enterprise LTSC as that's a bit slimmer, got a lot of the nonsense taken out of it.

X9000 is great for undervolting yeah, but I tend to leave mine to do it's thing- mostly because I can't be arsed, but also because it's nice to have the CPU headroom to nail stuff down quickly, especially in Windows 10. I believe you will need the Middleton's BIOS to run it, the Penryn boards (44C3924 is one of them) might be able to boot with it but Middletons is just an awesome idea to unlock a lot of features that make or break the experience- mainly SATA II speed for SSDs.

Btw, 44C3924 is the NOS board that TuuS has been selling on and off for the past several years, if yours came boxed with an instructions pamphlet and very legit packaging, it's likely from him or from the source he got them from. A lot of users on here have had success with his boards, and actually 2012-04-20 is the same date that's on the two boards I bought as well so they must've come from the same batch. Mine's been running since summer of last year and I use it semi-daily for light web browsing and typing.

It's a great laptop to have regardless, this particular Frankenpad mod/type has been around for 15+ years and it's fascinating and cool how well the mod not only brings out the best of the hardware (fantastic T60 display and better T61 hardware) but how original and seamless it all looks when you're done.

[Glaurung-quena]

i'm no authority. i'm just a thinkpad enjoyer like you. But nowadays I would actually recommend not to proceed with T601 FrankenPad, in particular, T61 board in T60, for the reasons I'll describe, by responding firstly in counter to the reasons to build a T601:

[snip]

Conclusion

So for the lack of meaningful performance improvements, and the T60/T60p already being capable of meaningful bolt-ons, I would not recommend doing a T601 for performance reasons. Doing it for fun is OK of course, it's just a laptop or two.

What an interesting example of tech enthusiast myopia.

Individually, spec by spec, you're right, none of the benefits of making a frankenpad are all that compelling. At the end of the day, you've upgraded from 2006 specs to 2008 specs, and any way you cut it, you're dealing with an incredibly old computer from the oughts that none of us would still be using for anything other than occasional nostalgic retrocomputing, if not for the glorious 4:3 screen and the lovely keyboard.

But: your thesis is also completely wrong. A computer is not a bunch of individual specs but a *system* in which all of those specs together produce an experience. And as someone who had a T60 as my daily driver until 2019, and had a frankenpad as my travel laptop until last year: the experience of a T601 is much better than a T60. Add together all of the individual little spec bumps that aren't all that impressive by themselves, and together they result in a dramatic improvement.

And then there's the RAM issue. Yes, I know, 8gb is paltry by modern standards. But we aren't talking about modern standards, we're talking about 2006 vs 2008. The difference between the T60's 3gb and the 601's 8 (or 6 if you're on a budget) is the difference between a 32 bit system and a 64 bit system. In a world where more and more programs have gone 64 bit only, it's the difference between a 64 bit system that struggles to load much of anything, and a 64 bit system that you can actually use.

[Glaurung-quena]

Hello, I've read some interesting and useful posts here over the years, but only just now registered as I want to ask for assistance with building the infamous T601 frankenpad. I want to avoid doing stuff wrong.

I've had a 15" T60 with ati x1400 and 1400x1050 ips for many years now, seen quite a lot of use and still going strong. Recently broke the LCD sadly so it's almost unusable. Not too long ago I also found a good cheap deal for a T60p, with 1600x1200 ips. Should be able to piece together one in great condition combining the better parts of the two, but I want to go a step further. Couple years back I obtained a 14" T61 board, with nvidia nvs 140m, and it's from that final batch with the bumpgate issue apparently solved, so should be fairly reliable. It has been sitting in its box waiting its turn for at least a couple of years now.

I also just obtained a core 2 extreme X9000, been hunting for one at a good price for ages, and finally lucked out. I remember reading somewhere here that at same clocks as the regular models, this one can be undervolted further due to better silicone, resulting in better efficiency and lower temps. Which is my goal. I want cool and quiet, and to extend battery life.

So, please advise me on steps to take next and what other bits and pieces to buy in order to build the perfect frankenpad? I remember I needed to find like a T500 fan assembly and like a T400 perforated keyboard and stuff like that? And to begin with, what cheap cpu should I get for the T61 board to get it up and running before I can flash the custom bios for the X9000?

The T400 keyboard is not necessary. The perforated keyboard has a plastic backing sheet, so it doesn't provide any extra heat ventilation, and the flex it has is a downgrade in typing feel. If you're going to type on it a bunch, you'll be happier with the T60 keyboard you already have.

With the 44 watt CPU, you'll want the best heatsink you can get, so yes, grab a T500 fan.

The only other thing is you'll need to take a dremel or saw to one of the screw posts on the structure frame. Be kind to your future self and sand off any rough/sharp bits if you use a saw. Metal sawdust and computers do not mix well - take all the electronics off the structure frame, do the frame mod in a different place than where you have the pieces of your laptop spread out, and wash/dry the structure frame once you've modded it to remove all traces of metal sawdust before starting reassembly.

[TPFanatic]

What an interesting example of tech enthusiast myopia. [...]
But: your thesis is also completely wrong. A computer is not a bunch of individual specs but a *system* in which all of those specs together produce an experience. And as someone who had a T60 as my daily driver until 2019, and had a frankenpad as my travel laptop until last year: the experience of a T601 is much better than a T60. Add together all of the individual little spec bumps that aren't all that impressive by themselves, and together they result in a dramatic improvement. [...]

Responding to the Dramatic Holistic improvement:

I'm fully aware that with all parts put together, the PC is a system. In fact Intel has named these systems Intel 945 and 965. Then you've made a bald assertion of a wrong thesis somewhere, but you have not identified what this thesis is or how it is wrong. We seem to be disputing whether that there is an insubstantial performance difference between 945 and 965. You base this on your personal experience of dailying a T60 until 2019 and then a T601 recently and you simply assert that the T601 is better.

To your personal experience, I can at least raise my personal experience: I as a matter of fact also built a T601 around 2021, and I also own a T60 to this day; both machines feel to me the same speed of slow, and both felt a lot slower than my T500, so I've just defaulted to enjoying the T60 as is since it works. You stopped using your T60 in 2019? I'm still using T60 in 2025. The T60 is fine.

Responding to a nebulous slew of x64 software support vs x32 software support:

This is a vague and impractical assertion that the T601 is better because it supports x64 more than T60 supports x64. Firstly "support" is for contemporary offerings wherein that "support" translates into revenue and profit for the support provider. Anything else is short-lived altruism or cannot be relied upon and shall surely fail as a business, person, or community. See: Linux which is worth nothing.

I'll raise the Intel 4965AGN WLAN card introduced in T61, so the standard WLAN card of a T601 -- this card has a functional incompatibility with Windows 10+ and Microsoft has left it unpatched for 10 years. Lenovo has EOLed T61 and T60 both for years longer, at least 15 years now since the last T61 warranty expired -- and surgically putting a T61 board in a T60 certainly voids any other warranties.

So "support" is either irrelevant or it doesn't exist anyway.

On the macroeconomic scale, the x64-bit transition was ushered in for chip manufactures to start preparing for a scaled up future of bigger numbers. No T61 or T601 is ever going to do a better job at doing a ThinkCenter's job than a T60, as the bottleneck is still in the fact that T60 and T61 are more similar than different. Being a little better does not equate to being infinitely better. Quantifiably, a T61/T601 is still slow.

Responding to RAM:

The thing about RAM is that the OS commingles Physical RAM and Virtual RAM. There is no meaningful improvement between having 3GB of Physical RAM or 8GB of Physical RAM, or 6 GB of Physical RAM, because the Virtual RAM is what the OS actually cares about. OP's experience will get a lot better if they replace their Spinner with an SSD. They should do this irregardless of doing a T61 board swap.

[Glaurung-quena]

snipping heavily...

Responding to the Dramatic Holistic improvement:

To your personal experience, I can at least raise my personal experience: I as a matter of fact also built a T601 around 2021, and I also own a T60 to this day; both machines feel to me the same speed of slow, and both felt a lot slower than my T500, so I've just defaulted to enjoying the T60 as is since it works. You stopped using your T60 in 2019? I'm still using T60 in 2025. The T60 is fine.

Responding to a nebulous slew of x64 software support vs x32 software support:

This is a vague and impractical assertion that the T601 is better because it supports x64 more than T60 supports x64. Firstly "support" is for contemporary offerings wherein that "support" translates into revenue and profit for the support provider. Anything else is short-lived altruism or cannot be relied upon and shall surely fail as a business, person, or community. See: Linux which is worth nothing.

On the macroeconomic scale, the x64-bit transition was ushered in for chip manufactures to start preparing for a scaled up future of bigger numbers. No T61 or T601 is ever going to do a better job at doing a ThinkCenter's job than a T60, as the bottleneck is still in the fact that T60 and T61 are more similar than different. Being a little better does not equate to being infinitely better. Quantifiably, a T61/T601 is still slow.

Responding to RAM:

The thing about RAM is that the OS commingles Physical RAM and Virtual RAM. There is no meaningful improvement between having 3GB of Physical RAM or 8GB of Physical RAM, or 6 GB of Physical RAM, because the Virtual RAM is what the OS actually cares about. OP's experience will get a lot better if they replace their Spinner with an SSD. They should do this irregardless of doing a T61 board swap.

FYI: I used a T60 with the lid closed as my main PC for several years in the teens before I scraped together the funds for a more modern desktop in 2019. In 2020, I upgraded the T60 to a 601 and used that as my travel computer for a few years. Last year I finally had the money to go shopping for something more modern (a 16:10 X1 carbon 9th gen), and my 601 was retired to an upstairs room where it collects dust except for every couple of months when I need to check something on the old disk I have in it. I appreciate the lighter weight and smaller size of the x1 when I pick up my bag, but have doubts about the wisdom of my decision to stop using the 601 for travel every time I have to scroll down on the X1's short little gunslit screen.

As to what we're arguing about: I'm not disputing that both of T60 and T601 are slow by modern standards. What I'm saying is that between the faster CPU and faster disk speeds, the T601, while still slow, is notably less painful than a plain T60.

I really don't know what on earth you're talking about vis a vis "no meaningful improvement between 3gb" and 6/8 gb of RAM. Maybe in Unix land, virtual memory plus 3gb is enough, but in Windows land, it's not. For running 64 bit windows software (which I finally had to start doing around 2020, after sticking with 32 bits for a very long time), 3gb is barely adequate just to run the OS. The way I use Firefox, with the background apps I have running, I frequently get "out of memory" error messages on 4gb. Six or 8gb throws those errors a *lot* less often. And the only way to get that much RAM with a 4:3 IPS screen, is with a frankenpad.

[TPFanatic]

I'm a Windows enjoyer too. Unless the disk is totally saturated and out of free space, Windows doesn't care about the amount of Physical RAM, it will always use swap if possible.

I was browsing reddit the other day on T43 with 1GB RAM and an entire 48GB Expresscard SSD devoted to swap space. It seems to work fine.

I've been messing around with T60 with 3GB RAM and an entire 256GB NVME SSD devoted to swap space. At maximum I've seen it use 10GB of the swap.

Except for my P71, which serves as my desktop and runs W10 for compatibility purposes, everything else I own runs Win 7 ideally, or XP if I need something that'll at least appear genuine, as the IBM R&R Preloads self-activate. Late last year I was trying to study Computer Science and I used modified X230 with 12GB RAM, I noticed the entire 12GB was used up, and Windows was using my SSD as swap, and I would never have noticed if I wasn't paying attention. That's when I realized that RAM and RAM limits are BS.

[God Of Gaming]

To reply to a couple points raised earlier:

* About the C2E X9000 running at 44W - I actually wanted to go down from the default 35W T-series cpu to a 25W P-series cpu to improve efficiency and temps, but then I remember reading somewhere that the X9000 which has unlocked multiplier and vcore and can be controlled in software, can also be brought down to 25W TDP while having higher clocks than the top P model (what was it, P8700 or something like that?) or alternatively do the same clocks as that at further lower voltage (and tdp). Due to better quality silicone in the X9000. Thats why I went for this.

* I am not gonna run modern windblows like 10 on this. I will keep it at windows XP Pro SP3 x86 like I have so far, the hardware works well with it. I mostly use the T60 with XP, I have a Linux dualboot but rarelly boot into that. So yeah, the 8gb ram on the T601 will be wasted most of the time while using XP which will probably only see under-4g of it, but will be nice to have in the few situations when I need to reboot into Linux for something that cant be done in XP. I also have a T42p running win98se + win2000 dualboot, so a T601F on winXP will compliment that nicely. I do run win10 iot ltsc 21h2 on GPD Win 2, and I do not like it at all (win10 that is, the GPD WIn 2 is awesome)

* I am not gonna add a SSD - 2TB SSDs are expensive, and winXP is not designed to handle them well. Doesn't even have automated TRIM support. I know it can be run manually on some SSDs with their own software, but I don't want to deal with that. I am not complaining about the responsiveness of XP on a 2tb 5400rpm HDD either, it's plenty snappy enough for what I use it for (mostly retro gaming). Just wanna add another as I'd like to have more storage, 2TB isn't enough to install all my retro games And since I also have an itx desktop with windblows 11 on a samsung 990 pro nvme ssd, gotta say, it might actually be less snappy than XP is on HDD

All that said, I found a cheap C2D T7500, guess I will try to flash the bios using that. Gonna order it tomorrow. Oh, and the mobo photo I attached in my previous post, seems like for whatever reason imgur deleted it, leaving just a small thumbnail behind. I have no idea why.

[Gonzaleitor]

That's a nice project. I have two T61. One in pristine condition and another with it's screen CCFLs dying. I'm waiting for a good screen T60 to appear to join the group. The only "downside" is that it's an Intel GPU one, more reliable but less horsepower for games.