[ltp] New life for old IBM Warhorses?

James Knott linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Sat, 18 Feb 2006 21:34:12 -0500


portsample wrote:

> This brings me to the point of my posting: what are the standards for
> motherboards and hardware in IBM laptops? There are several
> manufacturers of laptop motherboards that will take the portable version 
> of the 64-bit AMD Athlon: is there any possibility of swapping one of 
> these into a classic Thinkpad housing? Obviously there are power, video, 
> heat, and a host of peripheral geometry issues that in all likelihood
> are show stoppers to producing any kind of a useful end product
> without major tweakage and reengineering. Is anyone here aware of
> hardware modifications such as this that have been done to Thinkpads or other
> laptops? Does anyone know if this is even remotely possible?

While there are standard form factors for desktop systems, notebooks
tend to be custom designs.  The exception may be the low end ones,
assembled from standardized parts.