• Thinkpad General - post ur meme machines
    215 replies, posted
Is it cheap enough to upgrade the screen, ram, and hdd?
It's hard to say with the machine no longer in production. Just make sure you grab one with an FHD display and you should be good.
Used and worked on these things before. They're cheap and nasty but a somewhat better than most super budget laptops. HDD and RAM is completely normal and easy. I don't think screens are widely available though.
Does anyone have a good listing for a used/refurbished x230t? The style of it really speaks to me and it looks like an easy upgrade
Finding one in good condition is rare. I ended up buying one off of ebay and it was in a C condition so I returned it. I think they are overrated to be honest and the replacement parts are even more rare/expensive.
it's kind of too much work for what it's worth in my opinion, but the tablet models don't have a FHD mod and probably won't be receiving one any time ever. if you're upgrading from a x220, this is a good listing for an x230: https://www.ebay.com/itm/312292885567 it was the only one I found which has an IPS screen and not totally overpriced. there's no HDD or HDD caddy and there's no battery included in that listing but those can be salvaged from an existing x220 I believe. The battery needs to be an x230 battery or you'll need to patch the EC in order to use x220 batteries: GitHub I went from an x220T to a non-tablet x230 because my screen is failing and I think it might be due to the shitty hinge on the tablet model which I don't believe changed between the x220T and the x230T.
I appreciate the advice, though I already went ahead and bought one because I'm impatient af lol. It should be here in a few days and I'm pumped af. Only spent about $200 on one + an SSD.
My T430 has seen better days and I'm definitely considering getting a T460 or X260. Anything to be aware of with these models? I know they're soldered but I'm attracted to them because they're extremely cheap and use first-gen Skylake CPUs, which have aged very well.
Just got my new x230t in! Eight gigs of RAM and a 256 gig SSD for 200. Looks to be in great shape as well. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/149/17397fe4-1770-4fd5-8277-162493526371/IMG_20181206_161203.jpg
Great. How's the battery life?
So far so good. Typing on it on my six hour flight and its still going fairly strong with just youtube and light browsing.
The X230t has my favorite form factor, especially the battery. I don't care how outdated or unwieldy it is, I've wanted one even before seeing it back when an architect friend showed up with this baby https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/222339/5f488267-39d6-4b3f-91a4-8fa86b5b3e12/image.png It was gimmicky as hell between the multimedia features like an early HDMI output, branded Altec Lansing speakers, and the IR remote that slid into an expresscard slot (which to this day I'm still envious of) but man, that's what tablet PCs should've stayed as. None of that 360° hinge or detachable nonsense.
I've been searching for a Thinkpad for awhile on eBay and found a T440p with the following specs for $259.00 i5 4300M(2.6ghz) 8GB RAM 128gb SSD Windows 10 (I plan to throw a linux distro on it instead) 14" display with a 1600x900 (Unsure if it's an IPS or TN) Includes the AC adapter as well, any good?
I'm not sure about how good a deal it is, but I bet that's a TN panel and imo the T440p is a bit heavy - But maybe that doesn't matter for your use case. Also note the lack of a keyboard backlight on that particular model, I would personally miss the heck outta that.
Ayy, this sounds like a thread that might be able to help me out. I bought a used T430 off of eBay earlier this year, it was listed as ex business and it worked fine for a couple of months before developing a weird power issue where it wouldn't boot after working perfectly fine. I got sent additional power supplies which didn't help, removing the battery allowed the laptop to boot to the windows 10 load screen at which point it turned off. It was returned to the seller and """repaired""", and after working fine for another month or so the same issue came back. I'd have put it to a repair shop but with an initial diagnosis cost of almost £100, I can't afford that. Googling the issue never really came up with any useful information unfortunately, do any of you Lenovo era dudes have any idea what might be wrong with this bastard thing? I'd rather not have a £180 paperweight (which it has been for the last 4 or 5 months since it broke, I tried raising a case with eBay but they closed it with no action, and I'm too late to claim on PayPal either)
sorry if you already checked them but i get most of my help from thinkpads.com or /r/thinkpad on reddit. all i can find is that maybe the ram needs to be replaced which is the only working solution ---- i finally had time to hackintosh my x230 and so far all's working except battery monitor and the trackpoint is very jittery unless i disable the trackpad in the bios, but that disables the middle mouse button. my hope is that swapping in the x220 keyboard will fix it but i still have to flash the bios and get the wifi working
That's interesting, I wouldn't have thought the RAM would have stopped it from powering on. I hadn't checked anywhere else, I don't use Reddit but it might be worth a look. It pissed me off since the seller told me it had been fixed and it was a decent laptop to use, the screen was nice, the keyboard felt good and the battery lasted for ages, even though it wasn't the expanded one.
Bad RAM usually lets computers power on but they don't POST, so you'll never get a display. If that's what your situation sounds like, I'd look into it.
Nah, that's not quite right. Originally before I sent it back for "repairs", it would display normally until the windows 10 splash screen, when it tried to get past that, it would shut off. Other than that, the power button works and the fans spin up but the hard drive doesn't for some reason, the power button lights as normal but there's no display and the hard drive makes no spin up noise or vibrations. I really like the laptop, it's very modular and pretty capable, with decent expandability, I'd really like to be able to use it again but I can't afford to have it diagnosed properly
it could also be the hard drive if it suffered from any falls or impacts. my x220 used to boot half way and then turn off can you see the lenovo/thinkpad screen when you boot up? can you enter the bios or change the boot drive? if you have any other machines you can easily pull parts from, i'd try just swapping parts around.
If I boot it up now, all that happens is the power button lights up, the main fans spin up and that's it. No display and no noise from the hard drive to indicate it's booting (when it did boot, it made a slight noise but nothing abnormal compared to other laptops). The screen backlight doesn't come on either. If I disconnect the HDD and connect it to another computer with an adaptor (which I did before sending the laptop back for the """repairs"""), it spins up and works fine, I backed up everything with no issues.
If you’re up to the task of replacing it yourself then you can get another motherboard on ebay.
The T430 seems pretty modular and easy to work with, and it's not like it works anyway so I don't have much to lose by trying.
Still rocking my S440 . It has a shitty screen but I do photo work on a monitor anyway. Only shame is that I can't upgrade the RAM, stuck at 8 GB
Fellow thinkpad nerds, could you help a brother out? I need the entire plastic chassis for the 365XD, mine's pretty much fucked from age and I'm not sure if I could prehaps 3D-print a new assembly for it or what.
2 Vintage IBM Thinkpads 380XD and 365XD for parts or repair  199.. shipping brings it up to about $40 in total but you get two laptops, idk how interchangeable the parts are between the two in the listing but it might be worthwhile, especially considering the time it'd take to model the casing and the costs of printing something off that size.
Shipping on those is the killer unfortunately, even though I have all the parts to make the 365 in that listing work at least. I'm just as happy using it like a C64 for the moment, so I don't fuck it up more
i've got a thinkpad x240... am i kool? =(
X240's represent. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/58024/486a44bf-99be-4a21-9db2-7f6388231202/IMG_20190207_163149.jpg Some people don't like the touchpad buttons but I think it's fine. Solid laptop, I love it to bits.
Is that a Unicomp Model M in the background I see?
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