Propellerhead Gear: Suits Me To A "T"

The IBM (now Lenovo) ThinkPad "T" and I go back a loooong way. Actually, back to the beginning......Y2K. Remember that? Anyway, it was my first real full-time IT job and the responsibility of making sure that my department's technology, at the University of Illinois-Chicago was Y2K compliant. It was a poke in the eye, but hey, I got to make the call on, and order up my very first laptops. I replaced the aging ThinkPad 380ED with brand new T20 for our mobile workers. Let me tell ya; I was the IT guru/hero immediately! I learned to love that machine and almost every "T" thereafter. By that point in my mobile computing life, the ThinkPad roots already ran deep. I had bought a legendary 701c a few years earlier, which was followed by the phenominal 600. When the "T" (for titanium) came out in 2000, I understood that in order to get under the $4000 price-point, IBM had to do away with some of the little refinements that had always been there, like covering the ports, and many of the rubberized surfaces, etc. Remember the old days when every ThinkPad came with a form that the owner filled out and mailed in so they would send you an engraved little plaque with your name on it? Be that as it may, the new "T" was an amazing performer and extremely well put together. And in IBM tradition, it was filled with innovations ranging from the titanium infused casing (hence the T), to the "Thinklight" to give you just a little bit of illumination when typing in the dark. At right around 5 pounds complete with optical drive, this computer defined the "Thin and Light" category of mobile computing. I was able to use the T20 at work for my 2 years at UIC, but later would personally own every model of that series, T21, T22 and finally the excellent T23. The later machines introduced me to the world of "high resolution" at 1400 x 1040 (SXGA+) in a 14.1" screen and I've been addicted every since.

Then came the T30 of 2002. I owned it, I used it, but unlike my other "T" ThinkPads; I did NOT love it. Let's just say that the smoking hot P4 was just not a good fit for the "T" Series philosophy.......as witness by the "big butt" on this machine as compared to the T23 which came before and the T40 that came after! This model is probably responsible for me diverging and getting involved with the "X" machines.... but that's a different post.

I think IBM recognized it's mistake and replaced the T30 the following year with the T40. With it, the design went 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Kinda like the supermodel in the little black dress. Don't get me wrong; it looked great, and I loved carrying it, but they made it so thin that the chassis flex, combined with the hotter GPU begat the infamous ATI, BGA failure issue. I never had it happen to me, since I was ultra-careful not to stress the bottom of my T40, T41, T42p, or T43, but it was a common failure and gave IBM a substantial "black-eye", although pretty much every manufacturer in the industry suffered similar failures. At this point, I'll have to admit that I personally jumped ship and went with the X300 for my next personal laptop (which I've already written about).

Although, I had already personally moved on, the T60 and T61 of 2006 and 2007 were important machines in several ways. Sadly, 2005 brought the sale of the ThinkPad brand by IBM to Lenovo. Although, many of us loved our ThinkPads, IBM was basically loosing money on every computer it sold, so the hand-writing had been on the wall for some time.

Business aside; what about the machines? Those of you who are sharp-eyed, might have already noticed that I put the images in reverse order. Why? We bought them that way! Before I had gone over to the X300, my wife had been using ThinkPads out of the lower-end of the corporate line; the "A" Series, the "R" Series and the "Z" Series. So instead of the T60, she was using the Z61m which was essentially a widescreen version of the same machine. So a couple of years ago, I picked up a T61 for her, installed a big (in those days) 240Gb SSD and she was set.

I really like this series of machines (T60/61). While not as thin and light as the T4x, neither did they suffer from the same chassis flex and heat issues of the T4x. Lenovo went to a rigid internal "roll-cage" design which made these some of the most rugged laptops ever designed. The only real "black mark" were the high-end models' use of the nVidia GPU which often failed leaving a completely dead machine. Of course, this was an industry-wide issue and that video chip manufacturer would end up paying settlements in the billions over it! Up until recently, we had 3 (2 with the nVidia GPU), outfitted with SSDs and 4Gb of RAM. They've been excellent machines for us. Last year, we finally got into the T60 game when my brother sent me some of his old machines for use in my wife's classroom. Yup; they are older and somewhat slower, but they are just as rugged and serviceable on a day-to-day basis.

2014 dawned a new age in our house, when the T500 came to replace my wife's T61. If I hadn't told her about the switch, she probably wouldn't have noticed the difference! The machines are almost identical in looks and performance..... at least for what she does with it. The screen resolution is the same, although I think the newer panel is a little bit better than the old one, but the new keyboard isn't quite the equal of the old one, so it's a "wash". I do like that the newer chipset uses the current standard DDR3 RAM which makes upgrades cheaper. So now, both she (T500) and I (X301) both use the same spec of memory, which I prefer. I have a single 4Gb module in her machine which will allow me to easily get to up to 6 or 8Gb in the future.

For the better part of 15 years, between myself and my family, we've used/owned all 12 models of the "T" series from the original T20 to the T500. I'm certain that we'll get around to the newer T510/520/530 as well, when the time comes!

Today's Sweet Spot in Daily Laptops

Yesterday, as I was discussing updates it occurred to me that I haven't updated that which this Blog is pretty much all about! ...... What's the best technology deals out there right now for the average "Joe". A few posts back, I had briefly discussed the Dell Latitude E6400 and how it was a really good deal for my clients, but even then I didn't get into the nitty-gritty of the specs and what-all that means. 

In my opinion, right at this moment, there's not a better deal than the Intel Core 2 Duo processor'd machines. We're at a point where many (if not most) mainstream software can take advantage of more than one processor core. And the ones that can't, can run on one, while the machine can continue to do other tasks. Now this is anecdotal evidence of course, but on a fairly regular basis, I work on people's machines (as well as our stable of them too). As far as doing things on them, I can break them down into 3 groups. Single core, P4/P4-M, and Pentium M machines. "Core" Duo/Quad machines, and newer i3/i5/i7. Although, I don't deal with the latter much; I do, on occasion end up working on them as well. What I've found to be the case is that there's a huge difference between the 1st and 2nd group, but little between the 2nd and 3rd. Now before you get yourself into a twist, let me note that, we are talking about, a decent amount of RAM (3 to 4Gb), running an operating system that won't bog it down, meaning XPP for P4/P-M, and Windows 7 for Core Duo/2nd Gen Core machines, AND doing typical tasks, like downloads, Internet, etc. NOT, Photoshop and transcoding video! 

The big factor is this; an adequate amount of RAM that isn't going to kill your budget. Not only do P4-M/P-M machines run slow, single-core processors, they use the older spec DDR (or DDR1) RAM in them. Sure, you can get 1Gb sticks, and get those machines up to 2Gbs total, but the cost of 1Gb DDR is pretty much the same as 2Gb DDR2! So, the irony is that the cheaper machine to buy is more expensive to upgrade. Besides which, the chipsets typically limit them to 2Gb total anyway, even if you could afford to buy bigger modules. So, here's how it works out in $$. You can go buy a T42 for say, $50, then you want to max out the RAM so it'll run decent with XP/SP3. That'll cost you about $70, making your total $120. Whereas on any given day, you can buy a T60 for about $75, or better yet, the T61 that I just bought for $90. You and put 2Gb of RAM into it for anywhere from $25-30 making your total somewhere around $100, or if you want to spend as much as you would have on that maxed out T42, you'd have a T60/T61 with 4Gb of RAM in it. Plus it'll have a Core Duo, or might even have a Core 2 Duo in it which is WAY faster than your P-M. ....And I haven't even gotten into the cost to size differential between the PATA that the T42 uses versus, the SATA that the T60/T61 uses!

The thing that made it jump out at me was that last week, I had a client who asked for a decent laptop to use for the next 2-3 years. They had a $200-250 budget, so I started looking around in the C2D type of corporate machines which are about 3 years old. Within minutes of each other, I was able to find both a Dell Latitude E6400, and a ThinkPad T61 for less than $100 shipped. Both were fully equipped, with hard drives, at least 3Gb of RAM. The ThinkPad had a bigger 15.4" screen and the dell had the bigger hard drive. I got them the Dell because it was smaller and lighter. If it hadn't been someone who was expecting to travel constantly with their machine, I'd have probably done the more rugged ThinkPad with the magnesium skeleton, instead of the Dell with the Magnesium outer casing. These are both "business class" machines that sold for between $1500 and $2000 originally. They'll certainly be tougher than the typical notebook that they'd been able to buy at Walmart for $400-500!

These are the computers I recommend because they offer the most "bang-for-the-buck" and they are what I have my family using. Both my wife and son use the bigger 15.4" ThinkPad T61. Granted they are the higher end ones with discrete graphics chips, high resolution screens and have upgraded SSD boot drives, but the guts of those machines aren't any different. 

I have my daughter on the X61 from the same generation. Similar technology, but in a smaller package that's easier for her to handle. These things are also great deals, in that they are often found in the sub-$100 range as well. Yes, I have her RAM maxed out and an SSD in there as a boot drive as well, but those are pretty cheap upgrades if you know where and how to buy.

In the meantime, I'm already scouting out what we are going to do when it's time to upgrade. There'll come the day when DDR2 won't be worth it to buy compared to DDR3, so it pays to be prepared! But for right now: this is the Sweet Spot!

B.Y.O.D. and Me

Let me catch you up with the rather prosaic end of my technological life, and that's as the "support tech" of my wife's burgeoning classroom computer lab. 

If any of you have been in a college classroom lately, this is about what it looks like. And that's aside from the classes that students are taking online or coursework that they are doing in an electronic format. 

So yeah..... if you aren't either taking advantage of what's available, or better yet getting the students used to (and ready) to do work in this idiom, then you probably need to wake up, 'cus this is mostly how people work these days. 

Which is why "B.Y.O.D.", or bring your own device is the prevailing trend in schools today. What happened to school providing computers? Well; two things..... shrinking budgets, and web-delivery of content. Say what? Yeah, with the trend toward content being delivered via browsers through the Internet (the Cloud), content has become more and more platform agnostic. Meaning that the hardware and operating systems are largely irrelevant! These forces have combined to make institutions create an infrastructure for the student to get to the information, and allow the students themselves to get on there with whatever device that they happen to have.... kind of like the government building roads and letting you drive on there with whatever car you want to buy.

This is all fine and good at the high school (or even middle school) where I'm at. Parents can generally see the need for them to have a computer to take to school, but what about the little ones? Here in the Bermuda Triangle of education, just above the poverty line, rising expectations, and public pressure, we have a little problem. The schools in our demographic don't qualify for the mass of grants and government aid, or corporate PR programs that are out there. Parents are having a hard enough time to buy big brother or sis a tablet/laptop, much less one for 8-year-old. With the typical budget crunch, classrooms are looking more and more like my wife's which, as of yesterday has 23 kids assigned to it. In case you didn't know; that's A LOT for 3rd graders who need WAY more individual attention than my 14, 15, and 16 year olds! Meaning that she has a far greater use for a computer that she can put a student on to do independent practice while she's working with others, than I, who's students are far more likely to have them! This is the conundrum facing us in these last few days of summer as we get closer and closer to school starting.

Although, I've talked a little about it before, but I don't think I've completely discussed my brother's role in this little adventure. So here goes: as it got closer and closer to school starting and me facing the prospect of having "BunnyNet" (our name for her computer workgroup) looking more like last years poor little collection and any real improvements. Meanwhile my brother and I started having a back and forth about some old cameras. Any of you who read me regularly have probably figured out that he and I have the same hobbies. So briefly, since I don't want to go on at length about earlier posts, I asked him if he had any old ThinkPads that he needed to clean out (since he's cleaning out anyway). As the last post discussed, these machines arrived just in a nick-of-time to save the day. Pretty cool, although, he's probably less like a super-hero than Lucius Fox who invents all of Batman's cutting edge gear! Here is how it changed our situation.

Yup. This is it. It isn't the most exciting thing in the world, but it sure does make my life a lot nicer. You say; REALLY!?! .....Windows 7! Here's the deal: 

Twelve? That's the magic number! My wife has 23 students and 24 is pretty much the most that she could have period. So half of that is 12! She figures that she can divide her class in half after a concept has been taught, and work with 12 in "small group" while the other half can practice using laptops and any number of math programs, or the kids can pair up to use them as well. 

However, my number was 6! As the summer was winding down, I had about 6 machines, most of which were the old A31, mobile Pentium 4 ThinkPads that are pretty much limited to Windows XP. Nothing on XP, but it's really old and you can't run it now without Service Pack 3 if you expect to get updates, PLUS support ends next Spring! Some of you might being saying; why can't you run Linux on them? Great! I'll just have a bunch of low SE kids most of whom don't get on a computer regularly with a teacher who has never used Linux do THAT..... Yeah, that's what I thought.... which is why that group of machines from my brother became so important.

Although most people would turn up their nose at a 7 year old computer running a single core processor, these things are a life-saver to me! They'll run Windows 7! They use DDR2 ram (read much cheaper). They use SATA hard drives (read much cheaper). They're 6-7 years old (read much newer than 10 or 11)! Just to give you a run-down, before the reinforcements showed up, I had 3 A31s (one was partially working), 1 T30, 1 T42p, 1 Z61m, and 1 T60. The "Z61" series has essentially the same guts as the "T60" series. Now, BunnyNet has that plus 2 T43p (hardwarewise, basically between the T42 and T60), another T60 and another Z61. This gives her 10 laptops, plus the 2 school provided desktops allowing her to hit the magic "12", but more important to me, I'll have 6 of the 10 running on Windows 7 (once I get that T42p reloaded)! There are still a few machine here in "the shop" awaiting various parts, and those will allow me to replace the aged A31/T30 machines before XP support ends next Spring! The world is now as it should be..... at least, until the next techie emergency hits.

Just In A Nick-of-Time: ThinkPad Reinforcements!

There is of course no pejorative attach to our native American brothers (I'm married to a "card-carrying" member of the Cherokee tribe), but this is how I've felt for about the last week or so...... surrounded by hostiles! If you aren't aware already, this next week, pretty much all the teachers in Texas go back to work. As if that wasn't bad enough, I'm the person responsible for getting my wife's little computer lab (BunnyNet) ready to go! What started out as a few out-of-date ThinkPads that had been given back to me by family members, has turned into a full-blown computer lab!

How many? At the moment, seven: the goal (my wife's) is to eventually have 12.... one for every 2 students. This kind of takes me back to my IT desktop support days. My first job at University of Illinois @ Chicago's Housing Department had about 70 computers of probably 12 different types from 7 different manufacturers. Then my next position with the Texas Tech University Libraries had about 700 computer of close to the same number of models and manufacturers as well! This was tech support chaos. In both cases, by the end of my tenure, I had gotten it down to 2 manufacturers (Dell for desktops and IBM ThinkPad for Laptops). The number of models of each in operation was about 8 or so, but that couldn't be helped since I didn't have the budget to replace them all at once. 

 

Anyway, the situation with my wife's classroom is similar. Although all the laptops are ThinkPads (with the lone exception of the Mac), they range in vintage from the 10+ year old P4 powered A31 series to the newest Core 2 Duo powered T60/Z61 series. In between, there are some Pentium "M" powered T4x machines as well. This not only gives me two operating systems to look after (XPP/SP3, Windows 7/SP1), but also 2 different voltage A/C adapters, 2 different types of RAM, and 2 different types of hard drives. The worse part of it is that the balance fell on the bad half of the equation: P4-M, Windows XP, 16 volt adapter, PATA hard drive, and DDR RAM!

Things were getting dicey when one of the A31s had a screen fail (along with it's video subsystem), and another steadfastly refused to take a BIOS hack to allow me to use a newer WiFi card (faster than 802.11b). Oh yeah; it also does this high-pitched whining noise when there was a battery in the machine! 

Then, while discussing random things with my brother via email, I got the bright idea to ask him if he had some unused old machines laying around. After a few back-and-forth emails, 5 (!!!) ThinkPads..... all of which were newer than all but one of my originals were on there way. 

 

Like a phantom, while I was mowing the back yard, a box arrived via UPS (who oddly put it in the garage instead of the front porch). Although, I unpacked them last night, I didn't look at them till this morning, knowing full-well that once I got started, I'd be doing what I'm doing right now...... adding RAM, finding A/C adapters, and loading the OS! Despite the fact that 3 of them are in need of batteries and 20 volt adapters (which I don't have spares), I sure feel like the proverbial settlers in the wagon train watching the arrival of the cavalry! 

Yes, there's work to be done on them, aside from the batteries and power adapters. One came with 1Gb of RAM spread into 2 modules, making them useless 512Mb sticks, but I had 2, 1Gb spares in my RAM box.That same T43p spit up it's hard drive when I tried to install the OS. It turns out that it was a drive that triggered the infamous "2010 error" anyway, meaning that the drive wasn't on the a approved "whitelist" in the BIOS. Even that turned out well since I found (in the hard drive box) a Fujitsu MHV2060AH HDD that had been taken out of a client machine when they upgraded to a large drive. Oh yeah, did I mention that, this particular drive is ON the "whitelist"!?! I'd better run out and buy a lottery ticket while I'm on a roll! So, now that machine has been loaded with Windows 7 and well on it's way to finishing it's updates and misc other software. Then, all I'll need to do is to clone it to the other T43p and they will replace the two bad A31s. 

This will get me up to 9 working machines of which one is the Mac running OS X Tiger, but the other 8 are ThinkPads. 4 of them will be Core Duo or better machines running Windows 7, and with any luck, I should be able to get the P-M, T42p to run W7 as well. So, when I find the necessary parts to get the other 3 up and running, I will have met the royal goal of 12 machines, but better yet, only 3 of them will be the old P4-Ms that still run Windows XP. That should give me close to 6 months to find replacements for them by next March when M$ ends XP support. That makes me one happy frog!

 

E-Waste and the Frugal Propellerhead

I guess you could call me an E-Waste recycler, and really, I suppose I've been doing this for a long time going back to the mid-90s when I was buying up IBM PS/2 machines to learn server management. Of course, there was no noble intent back in those days (not sure whether there is in these days either), since I was just buying what I thought was interesting AND could afford. I will have to say that I've always been abhorrent of "waste" in general. And that goes for leaving the bottom few ounces of drink in a cup all the way to having to have the newest clothes (or game system) every few months. Not only is it not sustainable resource-wise; it's downright stupid. This is especially true in the technology field where actual performance changes happen so fast, but we humans only ever use a very small percentage of it. So, we buy new and literally throw out old (or 18 months old, according to Gordon Moore).... which leads to this:

....and that's the nice view! What it ends up looking like when it arrives in China, India, other random place is this:

No, this is not my garage, although the bottom picture does bear a bit of a resemblance. The unfortunate thing is that this is the better scenario, as compared to the folks who just throw this stuff out with their garbage and it ends up in a landfill where the chemicals from these devices are able to leach into the water-table. Probably the worse of the products are the old CRTs which have a LOT of dangerous products in them, but actually have the potential to kill you long after they've been unplugged:

 

This is what the problem looks like on a global scale:

So, back to me (because you know it's all about ME). I'm sure most of you are familiar with my rantings regarding the "Walmartization" of society, right? Where, we buy the cheapest possible, then just throw it out when it breaks? This of course, is probably all due to my Mom drilling into me to buy quality products that last. I'm certain the reality has as much to do with the Chinese cultural's need to be competitive show-offs, but that's beside the point. At any rate; the die is cast, so I'm just "hard-wired" this way now. What brings on this little soapbox oration today?

?????! This 11 year old computer came to live with us a few weeks ago. One of my long-time clients, bought a "new" ThinkPad from me, because she's going back to get her Master's degree, and the R52 that I did for her about 4 years ago is getting long in the tooth. So, she got an X300, the R52 was updated and reloaded for her daughter, and she brought me the daughter's T30 for retirement. I didn't remember that the machine was that "new" till it arrived, thinking that it was a PIII-class A2x machine. The T30s were the smaller, light-weight executive laptops of their day and were a match for the A31 workstations (hardware-wise). Actually, I had used one of these many moons ago before the T4x, and X300...... but I digress. Anyway, it ran "dog-slow" on the 512Mb of RAM and needed a reload in the worse way with all kinds of junk-software installed on it. This morning as I'm here babysitting the 109 updates after having gotten the OS up to SP3, AND installed 1.5GB of RAM and a wireless card, I realized that the vast majority of it's brethren have gone to live in the great briefcase in the sky. 

It really doesn't have to be, or should be this way. Right now, my dining room table looks about like this. There are 4 A31s, 1 T42p, 1 T60, 1 Z61m, ThinkPads and 1 HP LaserJet 4000n out there. Oh, there's also a first generation PowerBook G4, 12" as well. What the *#&# am I doing!?! Here's the thing. My wife moved to a new school district last year and although, we aren't talking about starving kids without textbooks, they aren't as well-endowed (technology-wise) as her former district (and 3rd graders are loooow on the techology-totem-pole), so there's one small computer lab in the building and two desktops in each classroom. As you can imagine, this wasn't a very workable solution for my, MBA trained, former Ernst & Young consultant wife, so she kept asking me what I was going to do with this or that "old" laptop. And when the answer would be that I didn't have any plans since it had been replaced by old-so-and-so, she'd get a gleam in her eye. About a year ago, things came together when various relatives whom I had set up with laptops, grew out of their 1st machines and brought them to me when they got replacements. This amounted to 2 T4x, and 3 A3x computers. Around that time, I had upgraded my wife from a Z61m to a T61, so there was a number of computers cluttering up my office. 

One day (I'm sure after, much cogitating), she wanted to know if maybe kids could get onto some learning games with those old laptops. My distracted answer was "of course", and there you have it: BunnyNet. By the last half of the spring semester, we had a little group of 3 A31s, the T42p, and her old Z61m working in her classroom. Over the course of this summer, I received some random donations, ranging from a T60, to the truly random PowerBook G4, and now the T30. They all needed work of one kind or another; some hard drives, others, wireless cards and almost all of them, RAM. This in combination with the prevailing educational trend of B.Y.O.D. (bring your own device), we'll be able to get them all on he school's network. 

Is this going to end E-Waste..... no. What's the point then? If we can prolong the use cycle, we can slow it down. Especially if there's a need out there for it. Why can't we divert some of those containers and retask some of this old technology? Yes, I get that there are practical considerations to make it work, but does anyone think that it's something a good "non-profit" can't tackle? Right now, I'm busy with my one classroom-worth, trying to turn E-Waste into something useful for a little while.



 

.....It Poured ThinkPads.....and It Was Good

Guess who was sick again yesterday? Other than the usual tap-dance of getting everything set up for a substitute teacher, it was great timing for me! The night before, the deluge of ThinkPads came. I've been looking to finish up my wife's little ThinkPad powered classroom network awaiting the arrival of two more of the beloved A31s that my fiend Andy was sending me. It happened that when I was asking about them, I caught him in a "clean out" mood (it sometimes strikes us ThinkPad hoarders at random times). So, he took the opportunity to dump his unloved ThinkPads and unwanted projects into a huge box appropriately marked "Toys" (from a recent move), then ship it to me. Actually I was expecting it today (or yesterday at best), but Tuesay, it came as I was getting a school bus ready to take our cheerleaders to a basketball game. So the big box came along for the ride. 

This is what I felt like when I opened it that night after I got home. There were 3 ThinkPads (2 A31s and 1 T61) and one R60 motherboard, along with 3 A/C adapters all crammed into that one box. So yeah, that picture is what I felt like trying to get everything out of there!

The A31s are of the NASA/International Space Station fame that I've talked about before, but currently, I'm in the process of changing over to the "x6x" line as the basis of my current general use computers around the house. Of this design series, I've already had a number of the "Zs" (Z60t- son, Z61m- wife & myself) as workstations, but lately, we've begun moving over to the T61 line, along with my daughter's X61.

These are "workhouse" computers, that have just come through the corporate 3 year cycle, so are plentiful and cheap to buy. You might remember me describing my wife's T61 with a 15.4" WSXGA screen, 240Gb SSD. Now, out of the magic "toy" box, came a virtually identical one (although w/o battery, and hard drive). In all probability it will become my son's new machine, retiring the last non-"Core" processor'd machine in our fleet. 

Of greater interest to me though, was the last thing out of the box....an R60 motherboard. A few months back, I was down at the monthly computer Flea Market and came across a much abused T60, after much haggling, I paid the guy $25 and went home with 2, 4Gb sticks of ECC spec'd, DDR2 RAM, and a wretched looking T60 that got power, but not much of anything else. It had a severely cracked screen where someone had stepped on it, and of course, a bowed lid, but to add insult to injury, somebody had painted it blue with enamel house paint. I don't mean "in an attempt to mod" spray paint: I mean in a attempt to destroy, slathered on with a brush, canned paint! Of course, me, being me, the fact that just the A/C adapter was probably worth what I paid just wasn't good enough. I decided that I need to revive this thing. So it sat under my desk for several months other than the occasional forays out for attempted cleanings.

The stubborn streak in me decided that I wanted to get it back up and running again despite the fact that it would probably be cheaper to just buy one! Anyway, I guess that's the geek Propellerhead side of my coming out! As luck would have it, my buddy Andy who had the A31s also had a motherboard from an R60, which (under the casing) is virtually identical to the T60. If you haven't seen the never ThinkPads with the "roll-cage" system, above is an image of the T60 version. All the grey stuff is the aforementioned "roll-cage", to which the motherboard (planar in ThinkPad speak) is attached along with the casing. So yesterday, I happily got to play ThinkPad "Lego" while the sick child slept and watched TV! As I make more progress on this thing, I'm sure I'll add more post this project.