Introduction 2: Back after a few years

[Sudevan]

Dear Forum Members,

I joined this forum years ago and posted for a bit when I began collecting Thinkpads. There was a long period when I did not actively work very much on these lovely machines, partly because of a busy work schedule and added responsibilities. I retired a few years ago, and while I'm still active in my old laboratory, I have plenty of time to spend on hobbies, and I really got back into adding to my TP collection. As my signature line now shows, I did go all out, and now have around 37 machines. I'm just putting the finishing touches on a couple of shelves to accomodate all of these. It's a splendid collection, at least for me. Almost all of the machines have some distro of Linux (Mint 16 and Mint 17 mostly, Crunchbang for the 600s and T23s, and Zorin 5.6 Lite), and in a large number of cases, there is also some sort of Windows as a dual-boot (Win XP, and Win 7 most commonly). Linux is marvellous as an OS for these machines -- a perfect combination.

I did read a lot in this forum and found a lot of help, and I want to thank everyone for the incredible variety and depth of their knowledge, and the great willingness to share their expertise freely. I even ended up buying a lovely US-made T41 from realblackstuff (thank you, Dominic). I also benefited a great deal from George's (ajkula66) advice on T43s and the T601 Frankenpad (I acquired a very nice one). The pleasures of the A31p are now mine too, George - I loved that elegy you wrote for it. I must say that many of the broad preferences expressed by posters here have become my own, through trial and experience. I've really come to appreciate 4:3 screens, Flexviews, SXGA+ and UXGA versions. I've also been working a bit on some of these machines, CMOS batteries, replacement of hard drives, trying different things with the Ultrabay, and replacing palmrests and bezels. I am close to trying a screen replacement more or less on my own, perhaps with a watchful friend who works on hardware. Among the newer machines, I've become rather partial to the X300 (There's an excellent account of its development by a chap named Steve Hamm). The T43 is my favourite. It is so versatile. I have one or two T43s that will handle fairly complex and demanding scientific software, and put up splendid displays of graphs and data.

I'll try to be more active on the forum and respond to others as well. It's nice to be back.

Sudevan

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome back!
Feel free to ask any questions you may have.
May you enjoy your renewed stay on this forum!

[Sudevan]

Thanks, RBS! I am quite certain that I will find the Forum thought-provoking and convivial. I have been reading masses of posts this summer; I've enjoyed everyone's take on all sorts of things. And I already have a question! Is the TP50 board that the Chinese group had announced last year easily available in the US?

Sudevan

[ajkula66]

First of all, thank you for the kind words in the initial post of this thread. Truly, highly appreciated.

And I already have a question! Is the TP50 board that the Chinese group had announced last year easily available in the US?

The T50 board isn't available outside of mainland China AT ALL. One lucky forum member snatched his example over there and kindly allowed me to test his machine... otherwise, the count on this continent is zero for all we know.

[Sudevan]

Thanks, George -- I had suspected as much. I wonder if they are too small a group to market the motherboard overseas. I did see some nice pictures on this Forum from someone in England who had obtained them last year.

Sudevan

[Norway Pad]

Welcome to the forum! I was close to actually get my hands on one of the mentioned boards from the guy in charge of this project. He said he was looking for ways to ship it, but nothing more ever happened. So I eventually chose to stop bugging him about it and I just wrote my T50 project off as something that will never happen. They made a limited batch of these boards, and combined with some bugs that I think some of the boards had, I suspect they simply weren't keen on spreading them out to a too wide group of customers.

[Sudevan]

Thanks, Bjorn. So the T50 project has faded away, like old soldiers. That's a pity, it would have been fun to experiment with -- which leads me to wonder if some of our more technically skilled members on this Forum might be able to create something similar. I wonder what sort of fabrication facilities would be needed to create a small number of such boards, and how much funding would be involved. Would this require permissions from Lenovo? Are trademark aspects involved? Forgive me if these are ignorant questions, but I won't learn anything unless I ask them to those of us who are more experienced! (I do hope I haven't opened Pandora's box here)

Sudevan