Theoretical question: 15.4" Zseries USB board in another laptop

[TPFanatic]

I've been looking at pictures of 15.4" Z series and 15.4" T61 motherboards and they look pretty similar.

The Z-Series has a unique feature: a tri-USB board in the back right corner, connected via cable to the motherboard. T61 appears to use the same size connector, so I wonder what would happen if the Z's USB board was plugged into a T61. Would T61's BIOS recognize the board and USB, and with some cutting gain an additional, usable USB port?

Another question: T500 and W500 have a smaller connector for the correspondent modem. This is a long shot but can a Z series usb board cable be modded to use a T500 connector, and work?

I ask these because I've been thinking about a Z series Frankenpad using a T500 or T61 board. The titanium lid is attractive.

Many thanks!

[axur-delmeria]

I haven't heard of anyone who tried to build a Frankenpad Z (somehow it sounds cool ), so the next best thing is to do a Google search for the schematics of both the Z61 and the T61. I believe the answer can be found there.

[Saucey]

I had gotten a 14" Z60 with a T400 mobo and I can confirm it won't work unless hard modding is involved.

Haven't really seen much of the 15" type, the hard drive position was my limiting factor on the frankenpad.

[RealBlackStuff]

They both use a 20-pin connector, which might just look the same.
However, T61 uses only 10 wires on the left and 2 on the right side.
Z60m/Z61 uses all 20 wires and in a different order.
So the answer is NO for the tri-USB.