Newbie; What the heck do I have? Questions/help!

[defor]

Well, I'd been looking for a decently specc'd T40-42 for some time, but because I do 3d work, I needed a somewhat decent 3d chipset. I found out about the large number of issues that the r7500m chips had had and resolved to avoid them. In the end, over the last weekend I found exactly what I thought I had been looking for in a project T40:

14" XGA LCD
1.7GHz CPU
r9600m 64MB

now... I did buy this (as a great price) with the knowledge that it had very obviously been heavily used given the wear of the keyboard and the fact that a number of the screws were missing or mismatched and the case wasn't assembled correctly.

obviously as well, this isn't a T40, although the case said it was, instead it's a T42 15" that's had its screen assembly swapped, modem/bt replaced with a modem card, hard drive swapped, and was missing a number of screws and parts like the hd carrier. This is further reinforced by the results from plugging the system's board serial/model into lenovo's support site.

So, my question to some generous soul who understands the differences, and my lack of knowledge of the 15" T42 is thus:

I have decided to restore this to some semblance of its original T42 self, and need advice on doing so.

In the process, I have a number of questions:

1) are the 15" models in the same case as the 14" or will i need a full new case? judging by the fact that the bottom case has the wrong product code (2373-8ZU), I'd assume this is a possibility.
2) the system has a warranty until Jan 2008, will this assist me in getting some of the key parts, or are core case parts non CRU?
3) in reality, where should I start in this process? I've already replaced the missing screws and any damaged cosmetic parts from a spare freebie dead t40 i had sitting around to make it a rock solid semblance of a t40 upgraded to t42

for reference, this is what the board indicates:
Product: ThinkPad T42 2373-CWU
Original description: P M 745, 512MB RAM, 80GB 5400rpm HDD, 15 SXGA+(1400x1050) TFT LCD, 64MB ATI Radeon 9600, 24x24x24x/8x CD-RW/DVD, IBM 802.11a/b/g wireless(MPCI), Bluetooth/Modem(CDC), 1Gb Ethernet(LOM), UltraNav, Secure Chip, 6 cell Li-Ion battery, WinXP Pro

and what i have is:
P M 745, 1024MB RAM, 40GB 5400rpm HDD, 14 XGA(1024x768) TFT LCD, 64MB ATI Radeon 9600, 24x24x24x/8x CD-RW/DVD, IBM 802.11a/b/g wireless(MPCI), Modem(CDC), 1Gb Ethernet(LOM), UltraNav, Secure Chip, 6 cell Li-Ion battery, WinXP Pro

Thanks all, I hope this wasn't too much to ask as my first posting here

-dan

[whizkid]

Welcome! What a FrankenPad you have.

The 14" and 15" cases are of different size, both top and bottom. Get the HMM for your machine and you'll see the part numbers are different for case parts.

You can put a 14" SXGA+ screen in that machine. The 9600 is a nice chip.

It might be cheaper, however, to get the machine you want (the Marketplace here has really good deals) and sell the parts you have.

I'm sure others will have some good suggestions too.

[defor]

yeah.. after finding all the fru's you've got a point...
I called up lenovo and they're sending me some of the cosmetic bits under the warranty (apparently they didn't check that i used 14" fru's.. so in the long run i'll at least have a somewhat nicely functional system... I thought for a while and realized that:

1400x1050=1470000 pixels
1024x768- 786432 pixels

so in reality, if i plan to have native res realtime 3d of any sort, the 9600's going to have to be pumping out twice as many pixels, which, while it doesn't necessisarily mean half performance, it's going to be a drop certainly, so i'm probably better off as i am with the xga lcd.

Managed to get the proper clear plate parts, a full new screw set, keyboard, and a few other problematic parts covered under the warranty, so i'll end up re-equipping the bluetooth et al via marketplace, paypal or other, and realistically, probably sticking with the system.

at 1/4 the price of the stripped t61p i was looking at, and 1/2 of the price of a "proper" t42/p, it's somewhat hard to argue with the choice. in terms of reselling it down the road, I figure that unless I really want to invest in a full recasing, or getting a proper t40 board and selling this alone, i probably won't be able to really turn a big profit on that.. shrug

but yes, thanks for the advice, and i look forwards to seeing what else i can come up with!

Thanks!

-Dan

[underclocker]

Welcome to forum.

I would guess that either IBM service or a previous owner swapped out a bad motherboard for your current one. You actually got lucky and received a unit with an improved GPU.

IBM service is known to do this upon occasion, sometimes demoting the GPU, too! Usually, they remember to recode the BIOS model and serial number information, but sometimes they forget. If you do a search on the forum, you can find a way to do that yourself. (However, you are apparently receiving the benefits from a motherboard that is still under warranty, while your unit is actually expired. )

There is no "native" resolution for a GPU, so there aren't any performance "issues" to worry about with using just an XGA display. In fact, everything will be improved over the 7500 or 9000 GPU chipsets.

You've already correctly found out that changing this machine over to a 15" would be cost prohibitive. However, you could sell it and then buy a 15" model if you'd like. Or, to get to high resolution, you could just buy a SXGA+ 14" lid assembly and do the swap. On eBay, they go for as little as $120. You could then sell your lid assembly to reduce the cost further.

I'd say you're off to a pretty good start with that T42. Enjoy it.

[defor]

yeah.. interestingly enough.. it was a parts build from the shop i bought it from.

Just noticed today that the bottom case also had a serial.. turns out I have 2 valid t42 r9600 serials with warranties expiring in dec and jan respectively.

now that i've got a valid 14" serial i can get the last remaining cosmetics under warranty.

I've been contemplating renewing the warranty and changing the bios serial/model.. any thoughts on if a warranty on a t42 is even worth it anymore?