Thinkpad 365 mother boards - the same?

[my03]

I need to consult you guys if you don't mind.

Are all of the 365 mother boards using the same form-factor? Also, did they all employ replaceable CPUs (socket 3 i assume)?

While i managed to toast my 365E by (unfortunately) connecting an IDE device the wrong way(*) i wanted to see if i could maybe source a replacement system board for this unit and i found one that basically was of the following variety:

IBM 83H7117

It surely looks the same (foot-print wise) but on the image that i saw, it looked liked it had a soldered on CPU (?). Was there any 365 family of computers with soldered on CPUs?

(i was thinking if it would be possible to move my AMD-100 over to the new board when/if swapping it out)

[RealBlackStuff]

According to the tpvol3.hmm that mobo 83H7117 is only used in 365X and 365XD, which have a Pentium-100, Pentium-120 or Pentium-133 CPU, which look like they are part of a CPU-card.
The 365E uses removable 5x86-100/33 CPU.

[my03]

Cpu-card? (As in removable?)

Seller says that the cpu is soldered on in this case(?!)

I think the form factor is 1:1. Only thing is that it seems to have some memory pcb with an empty dimm socket on it, that is mounted horizontally on the x/xd motherboard (where the E have it mounted vertically over the HDD). I guess the memory pcb is not part of the auction. Are these memory pcbs hard to find?

[my03]

I can no see that the 365xd (just as you say RealBlackStuff) has the systemboard separated from the CPU board (where the latter seems to have a lot of shielding around it). Furthermore, i believe the x/xd has the 1688f audio chip already embedded on the systemboard (which is good).

But i wonder if it would be possible to strip down a 365E unit down to the casing, then insert the x/xd systemboard in it, reuse the keyboard-card, the DC-card and audio-card (? idk if this is needed given the embedded 1688?)?

I suspect that the FD/cd connector sits at the same place, as does the battery connector. The RAM is different it seems, but the x/xd has a slot for a DIMM already on the system board (whereas the E-model had it on a separate daughter-board).

Will such a deep face-swap work? (physically even)?

[RealBlackStuff]

Take pictures where needed, mark on a drawing where all the screws go, then give it a try.
As long as you are able to put everything back where it belongs (if needed), you should have a nice job for the weekend.

BTW: I'm curious about the X61 in your signature.
It says it has a 1440x900 screen, never seen that!
Should that not be 1400x1050?

[my03]

Indeed good advice, thx. I tend to take lots of photos when i'm digging into the unknown (and most often, it is actually needed in order to get things together again )

I will give it a shot the coming weekend.

The motherboard is really shot btw (i have only made extremely basic fuse-tests with my voltmeter for connectivity and so far nothing is really out of the ordinary). But now i also got delivery of an XD systemboard and a Pentium CPU board (the exact speed of it is still unknown as it has the metal-case on it still - i guess it will be a "kinder-egg" sort of thing).

With luck, i might have a bonus in all this misery. I also own an old Amrel laptop (486 DX/2-66) that is supposedly capable of being upgraded to pentium overdrive, etc (I found the ads for this model on wayback machine a while ago and when opening it up, sure enough there are switches, etc on the system board to take it to P4s, etc). With this in mind, i'm quite curious to check out what the 365E have onboard (the AMD cpu) and if it has any voltage regulators, etc on it (given what it has - it might be a candidate for donation to the Amrel).

I'll give feedback here. Perhaps it can be of interest to others (i deem that impossible) or even useful (which i deem even more impossible).

[my03]

oh btw, you are right. It is a typo that i'll fix. its a 1440x1050 display for sure

(thank god for Dremel btw. It took me two trials to sort it out properly:))

[dr_st]

oh btw, you are right. It is a typo that i'll fix. its a 1440x1050 display for sure

1400x1050 to be precise.

[my03]

Yupp. Edited profile properly and managed the typo here

[my03]

So today i tried the swap. It both work and does not work.

While the system board fits precisely on the existing mount points, there are a few different (but not to bad imho) differences between the 365E and 365X model:

- The keyboard card is quite different. Where the 365E has a wide connector with a flat-cable that is soldered on the rear-side of the systemboard and goes up to the keyboard card iself, the 365x seems to have a narrower but longer flat-cable that connects towards the front of the systemboard (if the cable goes underneath or above the pcmcia cage, idk)

- The speaker board is much smaller on the 365x compared to the E model (much is the same but it is half the width on the X compared to the E (and unless cutting away half which i assume could be done, the right-most plastic leg on the E-speaker collides with the cpu-board metal sheet from the X.

Other subtle but not really big differences:

- the E model has a separate dc-board whereas the X seems to have the same mounted directly on the system board.

Thesee were the differences that i could catch visually. I'm not sure if the E and X share the same FRU for keyboard (but i guess they do seeing that the connectors (triplet) are in the same place on the system-board.

Now i either have to find the X speaker and keyboard card to continue, or i'll be selling the X systemboard and CPU-card (P133).

I will post images as a follow up to this.

[Ryccardo]

the 365x seems to have a narrower but longer flat-cable that connects towards the front of the systemboard (if the cable goes underneath or above the pcmcia cage, idk)

There's another metal rectangle (with open sides) that covers pretty much the entire area between PCMCiA slots and the battery, the keyboard/trackpoint/LED cable crosses this area...

Actually I can't see it in the photos of the motherboard I took a couple weeks ago, so it must be part of the top heatsink!

the E model has a separate dc-board whereas the X seems to have the same mounted directly on the system board.

Yes! Motherboard with all the ports, CPU card, keyboard controller, status lights/IrDA card

[my03]

Hi Ryccardo, thanks heaps. I wasn't aware of certain details of the X model but you described it re. the keyboard card and flat-cable. Big kudos

Here are some images that i took from the heart-transplant

in the dual-systemboard images, the "E" model is on top and the "X" model is at the bottom, for reference. They have quite many differences of course, besides the actual form-factor.

I did come as far as having the system-board and the cpu-card in place but when i realised that the speaker was of the wrong variety (too wide) and that the keyboard-card was not fitting correctly (and so i reverted for the time being awaiting to find these two parts somewhere...)

E system board at top, X at bottom



Another shot at the E bottom side:























Here is the "X" systemboard in place with the P133 cpu card. Notice the connector to the right where the keyboard card flat cable is supposed to go (vastly different from the E-model where it connects towards the top):