Another T6x Frankenpad project

[Rose]

.. as if there isnt enough of them already.

It just seems as if parts needed for making this ultimate machine suddenly fell into my lap.

What I've got is:

a T43p 15" UXGA manufactured 05/12 with a spotless IDTECH display.
a T60 15" 2007 with a SXGA+ of some sort.
and of course a T61p 14"

The thing I still dont get and hope for someone to have a straight answer is if i need a cable of imposer card from an UXGA equipped T60p to make the screen work.

Anyone?

[TuuS]

Hi Rose, and good luck with your frankNpad project. It sounds like you have everything you need, but someone will probably be by soon to tell you for sure what I suspect, which is the older uxga screen won't work. I believe you may be able to reflash it's firmware, but I don't think it will work out-of-box with a T60 or T61. The T60 sxga screen will work, and it's "inverter" card will work with a uxga screen, so long as it has the proper firmware for a T6x.

The "imposer" card is a part that extends the motherboard on a 15" so the harddrive and ultrabay drives can engage... it's like an extension to make a 14" board fit a 15" laptop and has nothing to do with the screen.

[RealBlackStuff]

If it is a late T43 screen, it might just work.
I put a T43p IDTech LCD in a 15" R60e, and it worked straight away.

[Rose]

OK. Thanks people!

Project is pending since I've just bought a maxed out T60p with Boe-hydis 1600x1200 for a reasonable penny, so I'll wait untill I receive that to see what parts go where and to what.

If noting else I'll swap the T60 mobo with the T60p-one, throw in an SSD and send it to my mom and make her happy and swap my sisters T43 15" XGA with the T43p. It will make a huge difference just that.

[Rose]

I'm sorry to say that my T60p/T61p FrankNpad failed on me last night with another Nvidia chip fail, only one month after the conversion.

This is the first of several T61p's I've come across that failed. A couple of them, widescreen models I've used very heavily, both running very hot, still run like kittens. This one however, of which I know the full history of, has only been used quite moderate and always around 60-65 deg C on the GPU.

A real shame... concidering the short amount of time it gave.

Now.. was there a thread somewhere about someone reballing these boards?

Regards
/Patrick

[RealBlackStuff]

Reballing the nVidia chip will do you no good whatsoever.
You will need a second-generation nVidia chip to get that mobo working again, but these are almost impossible to come by.
Lesson learned: do NOT use nVidia boards for a FrankenPad, unless they are produced in 08/08 (2008/August) or later.

[Rose]

Reballing the nVidia chip will do you no good whatsoever.
You will need a second-generation nVidia chip to get that mobo working again, but these are almost impossible to come by.
Lesson learned: do NOT use nVidia boards for a FrankenPad, unless they are produced in 08/08 (2008/August) or later.

The question is, is it possible to reuse a chip by removing it from another board?

[RealBlackStuff]

If you have a proper reballing unit and if the chip is the same type, sure.
But a heatgun won't do it!

[TuuS]

Actually if you're building a 4:3 frankNpad then you have no choice but using a pre-08/08 nvidia board, there were non made in august 2008. Many of us have used them and we are aware of the risk, but if you want powerful graphics, you just have to accept the risk and pay the piper if you do have a failure. The actual failure rate of these chips is very low, but it's compounded by the same failed chips being recycled back into the used computer and/or parts market. This is often done by several different methods and some due to incompetence, others by sheer greed. Some boards and systems traded online have been reflowed using a heatgun. They will often work for hours, days,6 weeks, maybe even months... but usually just long enough to scam someone. Other methods include baking the board in an over, wrapping it in blankets and forcing an overheat condition, or in some cases the board is actually reflowed by an infrared reballing machine, sometimes by a technician that just doesn't understand the nature of the defect and (falsely) believes it's the solder connections that failed, when it's actually internal chip damage.

Next up in the problematic boards are the 3rd party refurb boards. Since nVidia only makes these chips when required to do so by oem contracts, 3rd party refurbishers cannot buy them through proper channels, so they end up getting fake chips. These are used chips that are pulled from old boards and have had the numbers polished off and new numbers etched onto the die. This has been a common practice in china for years, and when reliable chips are used, it isn't a major problem, but in this case it's caused the markets to be flooded with these fake chips so none can be trusted. If you do a google search on "fake chips" and "china", you'll see that the U.S. military was scammed into buying thousands of these, and they were purchased from legitimate channels, but it seems that in each case someone along the line found a cheaper source and just assumed they were genuine and wanted to save some money, and it ended up costing the tax payers in the end.


When I source an nVidia board for a frankNpad project I start with a complete corporate laptop that has never failed and I run them 24/7 for a min of 7 days while temps are monitored, and this includes at least four hours of GPU stress test. Usually a reflowed or baked board won't last more then 15mins of this, but a good strong gpu won't flinch and will run a steady temp throughout the test while keeping the fan on high speed in manual mode. If the board passes all the tests then I consider it a suitable board to use. Overall the failure rate of these nVidia chips are very low, far less then 1%, but with many millions of them made, even 0.01% failure adds up to thousands of dead chips and angry users. Over in the Lenovo forums you can see there have been a few hundred members reporting failures, and I'm sure there are many failures not reported, and many that are reported are what I refer to as "2nd generation" failures, such as buying a cheap ebay system that dies in two months... that isn't nVidia's fault, it's the fault of whoever baked, heatgunned, or reflowed the board, but the point is if there were over 1% failure we'd probably see thousands of reports, not hundreds. One popular way to avoid this is to use a board with Intel graphics. These boards rarely have native penryn support, but are very reliable, however if I was going to invest the time and money to build an "ultimate frankNpad", I'd want to have some powerful graphics behind it, even if it did mean I may need to replace the board someday. It boils down to a matter of personal choice, and to anyone building one of these it's not going to be an earth shattering tragedy if they have to replace a board, it's just something you need to accept if you want the best.

There are genuine Lenovo refurb boards that you can buy, they cost close to $700 and not all of them get new GPU chips, so it would be cheaper to get two good well tested boards and tuck one away for emergencies if needed, but you can sometimes find these boards, I have two of these frankNpads in my collection, one has a board with a genuine new chip, but the board alone cost me more then many pay for an entire laptop, so that route isn't for everyone.

Another route you can take is to get an 08/08 board from a 14" widescreen and transplant the GPU onto the 4:3 board. This too won't be cheap, but I do have one of these boards that failed from a non-gpu problem and if I'm unable to repair the board, then I may have the chip transplanted, or may be willing to sell it.

There are many options available, some better then others, but there is no perfect solution, only choices that vary in cost and reliability.

[Rose]

TuuS: Are the GPU chips in the 15.4 wide models different from the 14" wide/4:3 ones?

[Rose]

Anyway.

I concur with TuuS that there is hardly enough benefit in making the conversion with an Intel board. If you can't benefit from better graphics performance, there is hardly enough reason not to stay with the T60p board and just let it be.

Anyway, if the fail rate really is around 1%, then it sure is worth the shot to use a donor board to reuse a chip even though it's not >08/08 made.

[brucehe]

Hello all,

I recently purchased a used T61 4:3 with Intel Graphics with the intent of putting this board into my T60p but after running the unit and witnessing the graphics performance I seem to have come to the same conclusion both Tuus and Rose have come to that it does not make sense to do the conversion with an Intel graphics based board. It seems the graphics on the T60p work just as good or better. I need to run multiple video screens and the T60p is able to do so while the Intel board struggles.

So, I am considering the next direction. The T61 had a bad screen which I replaced with a used SXGA+ LCD from Tuus, it runs well and is very clean.

A couple of options I am considering.

1. Build a Frankenpad out of my T60p using a good Nvidia board from someone on the forum and sell the T61
2. Purchase a T400 with ATI graphics to use when the T60p won't do the job, (i.e I need more RAM or graphics processing) and keep the T60p as is.

What do you all think?

Bruce