What would you say if you look at this picture? “Uh, just a boring R60e.” But if you press the power button, hit F1 and enter BIOS? Hahaa, definitely there is something different with this machine: T9300 CPU, 4GB RAM... 120GB Intel 520 SSD. A sheep with woof's nature. And here is the story.
Last winter I bought motherboard from R61 8943-DSG (15” 4:3, GM965, Intel GPU) with frame, bottom shell, keyboard bezel, palmrest with touchpad and few other things for about 60USD including delivery. It was described as “tested to BIOS only” and offered as “not working, for parts only”, but 60USD is not a big deal. My idea was to restore and use it with IPS LCD, but then I went on frankpading with my T60 and left the project. A few moths after that I decided to see if the motherboard is OK and eventually to restore it to a state of complete machine. Back then I didn't have R61 lid, so I just attached the LCD cable of a T60 lid to see if it's working. At the beginning the motherboard was acting strange - there were some beeps and no image - I remember that these beeps was not described in HMM and I am sure that I wrote in some file what exactly happened, but can't find the file now. Anyway, after few shots it started and loaded the OS from my FrankPad's SSD. I didn't run CPU tests, but checked if everything is working except fire-wire connection and svideo port. With the time, I bought other parts as 2x2GB DDR2, 120GB Intel 520 SSD (it was on sale for less than 50 euro cents/GB), DVD-RW, Intel 5100 wifi card and I needed was a lid assembly, keyboard and screws.
And while I was wondering where to find hinges, ribbon cable, inverter, lid plastic parts and even if I find them what to do with all the missing screws, I found a complete R60e machines for a few bucks. According to HMM the parts for R60 and R61 4:3 are exactly the same and interchangeable and I bought one of these R60es. I have to tell you that it's a strange machine. It's motherboard lacks so many chips and elements and sockets, that I suspect Lenovo has made a small fortune from these savings 
. It even has only one speaker!!!, missing switch and lever for ultrabay devices, just a CD-ROM, not even DVD-ROM – why the hell would someone produce a CD-ROM in year 2006?!. And no svideo and firewire ports (not that I will ever use my R61's ),no Bluetooth, only PCMCIA slot and no touch-pad (I'm using only trackpad , as many others do, it's OK for me . The LCD is just awful – backlight emits some bluish light and although I havent used many laptops, that's the worst viewing angle LCD I have ever seen. I think these were some company's laptops, because there were a lot of them.
But they have some parts wich are deffinettely better than the R61's - I noticed that the heatsink (FRU 41W5270) is way better than the R61's heatsink – it's all made by cooper, has more fins on the fan and it has two heat-pipes - at this picture you can see it on the right running on my reconstructed R61, and the left one is from the second R60e wich I bought later and has different fan with less fins, although the same FRU. The third one R60e came with this fan: FRU 41W5269The R61s' heatsink looked like a joke: FRU 42x4813 and I've always wondered for a replacement. I was even going to remove the firewire port and cut the frame and plastic shell in order to install heatsink from Z60/Z61, because they are also sucking air from the bottom and blowing it thru the back and side vents as the R60/R61s 4:3. Notice that these fans are rotating in opposite direction comparing T60/T61 fan for example and there are more vents on the bottom. But when I got the first R60e, decided just to use it's heatsink. The only thing that I regret for is that the fan is permanently attached to the heatsink – the Z60's fan is attached by screws and it's very easy to remove and clean it.
The biggest present was the keyboard – UK NMB keyboard in “as new” condition! It's strange how a system like this has a better cooler than the newer model and superb keyboard and I absolutely don't regret for this purchase. In fact, I bought two more R60es just because of the keyboards. And after I sold some parts, I realised that I have so many spare parts and bought anothe R61 motherboard, wich is waiting for some good times among the other parts - untill last year I had only 3 thinkpads - R50p, Z60m and T60. And last year I bought 5 complete machines and 2 more as barebones and various parts .
So, basically, these 15” 4:3 R61s are the exactly the same as the R60 15" 4:3 and if you find some motherboard like me and want to use it, just get some R60 for a donor: hinges, LCD cable, inverter, frame, lid, and so on has the same FRUs. or are interchangable as the heatsink.
That's how I got a complete machine including original screws, RAM cover, new keyboard, screw caps, better cooling system and... IBM stickers ! The hinges are weak - just for few month of testing and they got some play. Already installed bluetooth module (there is no "with" or "without" bluetooth ribbon cable and inverter on these ThinkPads) and all I need is R61 clear plate with bluetooth - do you think that a widescreen R61 plate would fit?
Later, I loaded Middleton's modified BIOS for SATA2 speeds, but since there is no support for Penryn CPUs in both the original Lenovo BIOS and modified one, I decided to try if I can implement the CPU microcodes myself. Infact I did something but, to be honest, I wasn't brave enought to test it and also I suspect that there would be a termal sensing error, which I doubt that will be able to bypass or it's gonna take too much time. So when I got a T9300 CPU I loaded a widesceen R61's BIOS (look at this and this thread), but I used phlash instead of winphlash (I did it under DOS). And just for information - the microphone doesn't work since the BIOS update, and few other things occured but I am not sure that they are related to that BIOS update or it's some driver issue, or just have to reinstall OS.
And recently I swapped some LCDs among all ThinkPads - first I bought XGA ribbon cable and swapped my R50p's UXGA IDTech LCD with a XGA LCD from these R60e's (I've never used that R50p and wanted to check if that LCD is able to work with my FrankPad). Then I swapped the dimmed LG-Philips SXGA+ LCD from my FrankPad with the UXGA IDTech - guess what? It worked with no issues, no EDIT chip soldering, no reprogramming, no begging to the mighty gods . Then I replaced the backlight of the dimmed LG with one of these XGA LCD's backlight (also LG-Philips) wich looked very bright - you can see "before" and "after" pictures of comparision with the UXGA screen - there is no improvement. But I don't regret for this exercise as I am going to try some LED backlight kits and I made some important conclusions. That's it for now. Next I plan to solder a second miniPCIe slot to be able use a spare BroadcomHD decoder and after the LED backlight mod I may consider this ThinkPad project as finished!
Before:
http://i.imgur.com/qRQzYSo.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ClBZHou.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Qrz2Rjy.jpg
And after:
http://i.imgur.com/VGfGTAU.jpg
- I was dissapointed from the result and it was pointless of doing additional pictures for comparision.
By the way, does anyone knows what is the brightness of Samsung LTN150XF-L03 FRU 13N7122 ?
Statistics: Posted by kkk — Mon Apr 13, 2015 2:49 am