Bought a T61

Haven't even seen it yet, but it's supposed to be a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with:

1.8GHz Core 2 Duo T7100 (Merom, I think, they call it)
3GB of RAM
80GB HDD (probably 5400rpm)
Intel Graphics X3100 (I assume)
1280x800 widescreen (I'm guessing 14.1" rather than 15.4", although both are possible)
DVD-RW/CD-RW recorder (Ultrabay Slim Super Multi-Burner Drive, I'm assuming)
two hours of battery life when gaming
a dock of some sort (has to be Ultrabase X6, I think)
mass of approx. 2.5kg not including the dock

The 14.1" widescreen would obviously be preferable in terms of portability, whereas the 15.4" widescreen version would be better in terms of potential battery life with a very significant margin, because it would seem that the 14.1" wide cannot be equipped with a nine-cell battery. BUT there might be hope, as a different page on the Lenovo site would suggest there is a 9-cell for the 14.1" wide. If this proves to be true, I really hope my T61 is a 14.1".

All in all, sounds like a promising 'puter and a great improvement over my customized X40. This one'll probably attract some botch jobs as well. The acronym SSD springs to mind, especially as I hear there's a hacked BIOS which increases SATA transfer rates on T61s. Also might consider a MB+CPU+GFX swap if a promising (and cheap) donor T61 crops up, as my future laptop in its current state (digest that) has the lowest spec components possible in those departments. Battery upgrade to a new 9-cell is inevitable, but there's not that much room for botching in replacing a battery. Or is there?

Certainly the most promising upgrades performance-wise would be the SSD (maybe a 40 or 60Gb OCZ Vertex 2) and the battery upgrade. The MB swap would be a huge project and would not really offer that much more bang for the extra buck. Would be a fun one, though. Stay tuned.

Further info: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T61

Replacing the IBM X40 Hitachi 1.8" HDD with a CF card

 

Why this botch job?

Thinkwiki: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Compact_Flash_boot_drive
Russell's blog: http://vort.org/2008/02/21/converting-an-ibm-x40-to-flash/

Simply put, the Hitachi 1.8" hard-drive used in the x40 is a botch job to begin with. I guess it is OK for its age and the period when it was made, but still. Using Windows XP was incredibly painful, so I started using Ubuntu last autumn. Then I thought: why can't I have it better still? I would toss the old 1.8" clunker of a hard-drive and do as suggested at thinkwiki.org: replace it with a CompactFlash "SSD". VERY COOL (and proved to be fast, see the benchmark results below).

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE IN THE FIRST PLACE:
Step 1: Get a CF card and an adapter card. Combine.
I bought a Taiwanese Silicon Power 16GB 400x (60MB/s) I found on eBay for about $75/€55 including international shipping. I found one of these adapters http://www.sintech.cn/en/cf%20ide/CF-IDE%20STCI4007.htm for $7.89 on eBay. It has a red activity led and two jumpers (master/slave and 2.5"/1.8"). Some VERY basic looking hardware here.
Step 2: Set the jumper to 1.8"

Step 3: Remove old HD and replace it with the fresh DIY-SSD
Step 4: Boot from USB, partition the CF and install an OS (do not bother with a swap)
Step 5: Start using your newly installed OS
Step 6: To improve performance, add the stuff below to your hdparm.conf (from Russell's)

/dev/sda {
write_cache = on
io32_support = 3
dma = on
lookahead = on
interrupt_unmask = on
}

Step 7: Make sure swap is not enabled and enjoy!

Benchmark results (DIY-SSD is faster):

Hitachi 4200/40GB copy 699.5MB 1:22, 1:16, 1:16
hdparm -tT /dev/sda 850MB in 2.00 = 424.94 MB/s  // 482.63 MB/s  // 477.59 MB/s
58MB in 3.07 = 18.87 MB/s  // 18.90 MB/s  // 18.89 MB/s

CF SSD defaults copy 701.0MB 1:08, 0:52, 0:54
hdparm -tT /dev/sda 982MB in 2.00 = 491.14 MB/s // 521.72 MB/s // 520.05 MB/s
513MB in 3.05 = 44.00 MB/s // 44.08 MB/s // 37.09 MB/s

CF SSD Russell's  copy 701.0MB 0:37, 0:38, 0:35
hdparm -tT /dev/sda 912MB in 2.00 = 455.95 MB/s // 514.12 MB/s // 503.06 MB/s
134MB in 3.04 = 44.05 MB/s // 44.01 MB/s // 44.37 MB/s

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WHAT I ACTUALLY DID SO YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO:

Step 1: Bought a CompactFlash memory card

Step 2: Bought a PA-CF18H CF-to-IDE adapter

Step 3: Used a USB card reader to partition the CF and built a minimal Debian install

Suffice to say the instructions at Russell's blog were somewhat dated.

Step 4: Removed the Hitachi drive
Removed the screw that holds in place the cover. Tried to pull out the cover. Couldn't get it out, so you bet I pulled harder. What came out was a combination of the plastic cover and the hard-drive that was attached to it with two further screws. I opened the screws and separated the plastic cover from the hard-drive. Easy, but requires quite a lot of force. Do not drop any the tiny screws on a thick carpet. I did.

Step 5: Prepared the CF card
Slid the CF card in its place on the adapter card. Left the jumpers as they were: MASTER/SLAVE and 2.5"/1.8". Although I didn't discover what the problem was until much later, these jumper settings proved to be a mistake, because when I...

Step 6: Tried to boot
It didn't work. To be more accurate, the X40 didn't find anything to boot from.


 
Step 7: Set the correct jumper settings and booted Ubuntu from a USB stick
I don't know if it was setting the jumper to 1.8" or booting Ubuntu from USB and re-partitioning and installing the OS, but I managed to install Ubuntu and boot. WIN!

Photos from Flickr:
Kai Hendry, turboalieno, Rickydavid, fireflythegreat