New X60s project!

[LegendaryKA8]

A couple of days ago, I had the good fortune to have a coworker give me an X60s that had been sitting in storage for several years(along with a T61, but that's another story entirely). I had one of these in the past and forgotten how much I liked the form factor. I like to keep some PC projects going from time to time so I figure this would be a good one to tinker with!

This machine is in excellent shape; apparently it had been ordered for the owner of the previous company he worked for who was absolutely fastidious with his machines. The only blemish aside from corner wear is the palmrest; there's a broken divider between the PC card slot and the SD card reader. It appears to be working correctly; I fired it up and threw a copy of Win7 x86 on there and it seemed to be working like it should other than the clock not going past 1GHz(this is a 1.6GHz L2400). I'm thinking the culprit is a bad battery; it holds zero charge and Power Manager doesn't detect it. I'm assuming the machine would throttle back under such a condition?

Either way, while I do have an old X200 kicking around I feel like building this machine up a bit for a home/office rig that I can do some light browsing, music, and some document work on. While I know the X200 is a better rig overall I never quite liked the form factor and I'm suspecting the mainboard is going bad, leading to a 'more expensive than it's worth' situation when looking to fix it(in addition to cracked bottom case, palmrest, keyboard and battery...). Additionally, I found some good deals on an X61s motherboard(L7700), a new battery, and X61s palmrest to replace the slightly damaged one on this rig(I did this to my old one a looong time ago so I do kinda know the score on this one). I already have a 4GB RAM kit hanging around(while I'd like 8GB, $100+ for it is beyond the scope of this project) and an old 160GB Intel X25M SSD hanging around that will be a great fit I do have a few questions, though:

1. Are there any gotchas/caveats to the Middleton BIOS mod?
2. Since the BIOS mod disables the whitelist, what's the best go-to wireless card? I'm kinda thinking the half-height Intel 6200; it should help with palmrest temps at the very least?
3. I know this is an older machine that many are considering retiring, but are there any stumbling blocks folks are running into with using these as semi-daily drivers?
4. Are there any other tweaks/mods I should be considering with this project?

Any advice/anecdotes/etc would be more than welcome.

[FryPpy]

0. Disconnect bad battery - just in case. Check powerbrick. If it is 90w i think it should do full power (1.6GHz) even without battery. Check BIOS -> Config -> Power: Intel SpeedStep technology + Mode for AC. Set Mode for AC to "Maximum performance" and check.
1. Normal process involves upgrading to latest (2.22) version with original (Lenovo's) BIOS before flashing Middleton's one. Without charged battery original BIOS refuses to flash.
3. No. I use it (X61 with T8300) almost every day to check email and write this message to this forum;) I think L7700 will be adequate for this tasks too.
4. There are some mods for X61 in general - PIN (BSEL) mod (for overclocking), voltmod for cooling CPU down, installing AFFS XGA or SXGA+ LCD.

2 Hints.
I have done this before - transplanted X61 mainboard to X60 body (not s models) and have lost piece of plastic that cover IR window on X60:(.
Some X61s have secondary fan but it may be absent in ebay lot. I think that your X60s haven't secondary fan to transplant to X61s in this case so "fan error" will be shown every boot. So be careful when searching for X61s mainboard.

[axur-delmeria]

I'll chime in as well.

I've yet to encounter an X61s that had the second fan. IIRC the second fan is usually installed on X61 models with the fastest processors (T7500 and T9300), but of course I could be wrong. I obtained an X61 T7500 for cheap recently, and the second fan made a buzzing sound at high speed, so I opened it up and put a drop of oil. All quiet after that.

1. Some have reported higher-than normal temps after flashing Middleton BIOS, but it's hard to conclude that the modified BIOS was the cause.

2. Forum members have used Intel 6200, 6300, Atheros 9380 and probably others I haven't read about. The newer cards generally consume less power and put out less heat as a result.

3. The X60/61 family is still a good daily driver, especially since you'll put it an SSD and 4GB RAM.

Windows uses up an entire CPU core while checking for updates, so disabling any form of Windows update checking is suggested. Personally I've long switched to Linux, but still dual boot due to my line of work .

Be wary of installing Win 10 though-- read up all the relevant forum posts before making a decision.

4. Since you're using a low-voltage processor, undervolting is not essential.

[Tasurinchi]

Middleton BIOS was for X61/s machines, not for X60s. If you want to remove the whitelist I think you need a Zender BIOS. In terms of wlan cards, the Atheros models are regarded as better as the Intels, they come in both full size and half size mPCI-E as far as I remember.

Also keep in mind that the chipset of the X60s supports max 3GB RAM (against the max 8GB your X200 can support),

My 2 cents...

[axur-delmeria]

^ He's planning to put in an X61s board, that's why Middleton BIOS was mentioned. But yeah, for the X60/60s Zender BIOS is what's needed.

[FryPpy]

I'll chime in as well.

I've yet to encounter an X61s that had the second fan. IIRC the second fan is usually installed on X61 models with the fastest processors (T7500 and T9300), but of course I could be wrong. I obtained an X61 T7500 for cheap recently, and the second fan made a buzzing sound at high speed, so I opened it up and put a drop of oil. All quiet after that.

I have 7669-45U

L7500(1.6GHz), 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200rpm HD, 12.1in 1024x768 LCD, Intel X3100, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Verizon WWAN, Bluetooth, Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, Secure chip, X6 UltraBase+CDRW/DVDRW, Fingerprint reader, 8c Li-Ion, WinVista Ultimate

And there are many reports that second fan correlates with WWAN option more than CPU. On the other hand - some X61s have ultrabright LCDs with thin lid => without antenna for WWAN => without second fan.

May be i am hijacking the thread - but post one question about my project.
Initially i've got X61 with T7500 (and second fan). After that i've got X61 Penryn mainboard with T8300 (without second fan, but with plastic housing and socket). I've transplanted T8300 mainboard to X61 body and added second fan from T7500's mainboard.
After some time i've got X60 barebone (with T2400 and without a screen) and decided to upgrade it to T7500. Mainboard transplanted but... i've placed second fan into T8300. And once more gotcha - speackers for models with second fan and without are different. X60 (with T2400) haven't second fan and have speacker that prevent putting mainboard inplace with second fan housing. So i have broken second fan's housing and installed mainboard.
I know that config for mainboard (MTM, SN, second fan presence and security things are stored in one NVRAM chip). I know that there are some posts when this chip (or it contents) was transplanted from second fanless mainboard to mainboard with dead second fan and this disables fan error. So i wanted to try. Initial idea was to transfer contents from my X61s - but it have second fan to my surprise;)
After that i begin studying diffs between different my X61's and X61 tablet (it haven't second fan). I haven't found bit inversion (if this configuration is a single bit value) in diffs that can disable second fan check. And after that i have flashed X61 tablet's contents...... and second fan error have gone. Even more - after resetting BIOS to default state (F9) - T7500 X61 working without any visible differences, but diff between X61 and X61tablet have many differences.

Still trying to find this configuration bit in X61 configuration data. May be someone already find this?

[Tasurinchi]

He's planning to put in an X61s board, that's why Middleton BIOS was mentioned

Oww... I need to read more carefully.

Thinking out loud, if you're looking for a nice project you could install Libreboot in your X60s, the process is quite easy and there is a thread here in the forum. I got it installed in my own X60s and one of my X60T. It's a purely software mod on the X60s, IIRC for the X61 generation you need special hardware for the installation.

Edit: Found the thread here: click me!

[axur-delmeria]

FryPpy,

Your findings are very interesting, but you have to make a new thread as it's quite off-topic. I recently got an X61 T7500 (7676-A14) with the second fan, and lubricated it yesterday as it had a buzzing sound. Any breakthroughs regarding removal of the fan without triggering the Fan Error message is appreciated.

[jaspen-meyer]

I'd been using an x61s (L7500) with Middleton and an intel 6205 card. But I couldn't get the right palm rest cool enough to use comfortably. So, after a bit of reading, I decided to try the x60s (L2400) and have been using it as my daily driver for perhaps a year.

Most of the modifications I did were aimed at keeping the machine, especially the right palm rest, cool:
- using x60 frame and x60 fan for better air flow (I near-always keep the fan turned off though)
- add a piece of hide leather, and 4 layers of paper, atop the right palm rest
- using atheros 9380 wifi
- using Libreboot bios
- ssd with linux
- a must have tweak, for my eyes, is replacing the ccfl backlight with LEDs. got the LEDs and invertor from xiphmont.

Javascript heavy-sites are slow. To counter this use 'palemoon' and 'noscript'. If you use youtube, try 'smtube'. As was mentioned above, there is a Windows 7 process named 'svchost.exe' which often holds one of the machine's cores hostage which leaves you with just one core. (For what it's worth, my cpu is between 3.2 - 5% as I type this message -- while browsing and reading on this site it's between 0-3%).

edit: replaced Middleton with Libreboot

[RealBlackStuff]

Javascript heavy-sites are slow. To counter this use 'palemoon' and 'noscript'. If you use youtube, try 'smtube'.

This 'noscript', is that the add-on NoScript Security Suite?

[LegendaryKA8]

Lots of good information! Thanks for chiming in, everyone.

Very good catch about the second fan. IIRC the ones with the fan are the ones with WWAN on the board. The easiest way to tell through photos is the addition of a SIM card slot next to the RAM. I picked up a fan, but had forgotten about the speaker being different. So, I picked one up for the princely sum of $5. As far as disabling the check for the fan on these boards, I'm pretty sure that would require a BIOS hack of some sort.

Admittedly running Linux distros or Libreboot probably isn't in the cards for this machine. I've got a couple of machines using Ubuntu that I play around with, but I'm generally in the Wintel camp for my daily drivers. Mainly due to work, but it is what it is?

The throttling issue seems to have been purely related to the completely dead battery that came with the machine. The machine went to the stock 1.6GHz when the battery is unplugged, and is also working like it should on the new battery I received today. I also went digging through my pile of broken machines and found an Intel 6250(basically the 6200 plus Wimax which isn't available here) which should be a good fit. I'm also considering that Broadcom video accelerator car as a later addon, but it sounds like it's finicky with codecs/versions of players?

All in all I really like the size, weight, and form factor of this rig. While I would like a little more power(hence the X61s mobo swap) I think this machine will work out wonderfully for my light use. My better half might be looking at me funny for using a decade-old ultraportable as a feasible rig, but I'm really enjoying this blast to the past!

Edit: RBS, you are correct on NoScript it seems. I've been using it for years and I won't run a machine without it. Great addon, though you will be playing 'hunt the URL' quite a bit to enable features/video on new sites.

[jaspen-meyer]

This 'noscript', is that the add-on NoScript Security Suite?

Yes, NoScript Security Suite https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... /noscript/
smtube http://www.smtube.org/
palemoon http://www.palemoon.org/

[LegendaryKA8]

And, jumping in with an update!

I did the X61s motherboard swap last night. It looks like while this board has the SIM card slot next to the RAM there was no provision for the second fan like I thought. However, the speaker connector stands up straight on the X61s board versus laying flat on the X60s board; the X60s palmrest won't really fit because of that. The X61s palmrest appears to have better heat shielding than the original and is a little further away from the expansion cards. The Middleton BIOS upgrade went without a hitch and allowed me to use that Intel 6250 card I had laying around. There's much less palmrest heat due to that.

After installing the SSD, I went ahead and put Win7 x64 on this machine. With the specs I have(L7700, 4GB RAM, 160GB SSD) it's been a rather responsive, snappy machine; surprising considering its age. The X60s was definitely usable but with the C2D and SSD the general use experience feels thoroughly modern. For something that is suited to basic work it's turning out to be a great machine. While I have more powerful machines available this one is a great blend of form factor, portability, and performance. Especially for something I cobbled up for around $50 on Ebay.

[dmdsoftware]

And, jumping in with an update!

I did the X61s motherboard swap last night. It looks like while this board has the SIM card slot next to the RAM there was no provision for the second fan like I thought. However, the speaker connector stands up straight on the X61s board versus laying flat on the X60s board; the X60s palmrest won't really fit because of that. The X61s palmrest appears to have better heat shielding than the original and is a little further away from the expansion cards. The Middleton BIOS upgrade went without a hitch and allowed me to use that Intel 6250 card I had laying around. There's much less palmrest heat due to that.

After installing the SSD, I went ahead and put Win7 x64 on this machine. With the specs I have(L7700, 4GB RAM, 160GB SSD) it's been a rather responsive, snappy machine; surprising considering its age. The X60s was definitely usable but with the C2D and SSD the general use experience feels thoroughly modern. For something that is suited to basic work it's turning out to be a great machine. While I have more powerful machines available this one is a great blend of form factor, portability, and performance. Especially for something I cobbled up for around $50 on Ebay.

great find