Xue Yao talking about ThinkPad modding on Friday Mar 09, 2023

[RealBlackStuff]

Xue Yao is giving a talk about ThinkPad modding @ 11:00 GMT this Friday Mar 09, 2023!

[dr_st]

Wish I was in Singapore. I love free food.

[flyingfishfinger]

Missed it, but cool! Nice to see he's alive / still working on this stuff at least somewhat.

R

[dmdsoftware]

At one time I would have said I would have liked to see a custom motherboard for a classic thinkpad that made use of a raspberry pi CM module. The 51nb group has proven that updated motherboards could be made for the intel platform to make use of all the legacy hardware on the classic thinkpads. Making a board with the SOC swappable over time would ensure the classic thinkkpads could be future proof without relying on continuous updates on intel boards from 51nb. But even the raspberry pi foundation is obsoleting their own with updated CM modules (CM4).

[axur-delmeria]

IMO the original Compute Module was too limiting, even the CM3.

The CM4 provides a decent amount of CPU horsepower and additional capabilities (e.g. hardware video decoding) that older Thinkpads like the X40/41 and X60/61 lack .

I did some research on whether a CM4-based replacement board for the X60 platform was viable, though I came to the conclusion that it was better to design a modular system-- small carrier board plus daughter boards so that it can be adapted to many different laptop models (even non-Thinkpad ones.

That said, I don't have the technical skill to actually undertake any of that, and the recent release of the RPi 5 upends that idea, as the prospect of a more powerful Compute Module in the near future makes designing for the CM4 a moot point.

[dmdsoftware]

IMO the original Compute Module was too limiting, even the CM3.

The CM4 provides a decent amount of CPU horsepower and additional capabilities (e.g. hardware video decoding) that older Thinkpads like the X40/41 and X60/61 lack .

I did some research on whether a CM4-based replacement board for the X60 platform was viable, though I came to the conclusion that it was better to design a modular system-- small carrier board plus daughter boards so that it can be adapted to many different laptop models (even non-Thinkpad ones.

That said, I don't have the technical skill to actually undertake any of that, and the recent release of the RPi 5 upends that idea, as the prospect of a more powerful Compute Module in the near future makes designing for the CM4 a moot point.

I own a few X62 and X210 boards and I love them. I owned X6x machines since they were released and I only retired them back in 2018. So at least a good 12 years out of them. The 51nb board was critical to keep the machines relevant. I ended up buying a X210 board back in 2018 but parked it. Only started using it now, in 2023 -- I was lost in a daze between 2018-2023 using the Thinkpad Helix 1+2 and MacBook Pros (for work). It didn't take me long to renounce all modern laptops and fallback to a proper 7 row keyboard, swapable ram and SSD.. I actually find the X2** machines a slightly better than my beloved X6* (on account the resolution is better, the X210 performs better and is quieter than my last X62. Plus I happen to have two good batteries for the X210.

But I realize, without a future-proof motherboard, the X210 will become obsolete, and the 51nb group isn't as active as they were back in 2016-2018.

I know the internet is full of people attempting a Pi in a thinkpad, but they all fail when the inventor realizes there is a lot of work involved with interfacing with the unique interface on these batteries, screens and keyboards. The 51nb group got this perfects with their replacements for multiple older Thinkpads.

[L29Ah]

Pi is a poor choice since its hardware is not going to beat X2100 any time soon wrt performance and driver support.

[axur-delmeria]

Pi is a poor choice since its hardware is not going to beat X2100 any time soon wrt performance and driver support.

No one's talking about beating an X2100 in performance. Having a CM4 inside offers some capability (hardware video decoding, possibly longer battery life) that the X61 never had.

OTOH I'm not even sure how four Cortex A72's @1.8GHz fare against a Core 2 Duo T8100 @ 2.1GHz, I've never had an RPi 4, and its current price would make me consider a 2nd-hand NUC or Dell Optiplex Micro/HP Prodesk Mini/Lenovo Tiny instead.

TBH, the price of an X2100 (or any 51nb board) would make most people think twice-- you're essentially paying top dollar for an unproven upgrade motherboard in an old chassis (not that the chassis design itself is bad), and lose many of the original board's features (docking port, Expresscard, etc.) in the process.