ThinkPad 770x revival

So I've wanted a new laptop for a while now, but I haven't gotten one for two main reasons. First I haven't had the money to buy a decent one. Second, I can't really find a laptop worthy of replacing my current model. I did however recently setup a ThinkPad T42 for a friend and I'm thinking that the T series will be my next laptop. But that still leaves problem one. Money. I did find a good T series for $750, so that's my savings goal. In the meantime, I'm still holding on to my old ThinkPad 770X.

I'm pretty picky about my laptops. I want a specific set of features. I don't play games on my computers so a lot of the consumer oriented laptops are not anything I want.

What I don't like about most current laptops:
- cheaply made, too much plastic.
- everything integrated, not modular or upradeable.
- Stinking dragpad pointers. These things are worthless. And to prove it, look at everyone who has one. They almost ALL use an external mouse.
- horrible mushy, short throw, odd layout keyboards.
- crappy screens. Why on earth are laptops shipping with such low resolution screens? What good is 1280x768 or 1280x800? it's worthless for browsing and wordprocessing etc.


What I want/demand:
- USB 2.0
- PC-CARD slots
- Sturdy case
- good keyboard
- Trackpoint, the best laptop mouse controller period. **
- good, hires display. 1280x1024 minimum.
- Modular and upgradeable
- firewire
- CD/DVD burner combo
- dual monitor support
- ATI Radeon or nVidia graphics
- cool running AMD or Intel processor. I'll trade a little speed for heat any day. laptops these days run too hot. You can't even actually put them on your lap or they'll almost burn you. And heat is bad for components anyway. Heat equals short life. In this regard I think AMD's latest mobile CPU might have the advantage. I'd even try a Transmeta CPU.
- modular networking with standard, Linux supported chipsets. Ideally I'd like to see bottom panels with 2 or 3 mini-PCI slots. One for WiFi, with a good, built in antenna in the screen lid frame. One for Ethernet. 10/100 is fine for now, I mean who needs gigabit on their laptop anyway? What would you hook it to?
- Built in long range Bluetooth.
- IrDA with a transceiver on the top of the lid frame pointing toward the rear and one on the right or left side.
- removeable HD in a caddy.

I'm sure there's more I can't think of right now.

Now, back to reality. My current laptop is one I bought back when I was a CEO and had money to burn on toys. At that time I bought a new laptop every year and I always got the best. {Sigh} Those were the days. Anyway, the last laptop I bought before leaving the rat-race was an IBM ThinkPad 770x 9549-7AO. I love it. I've used it steadily since I bought it '99. That alone is a testament to how well built and, for the time, high-end the 770X was that I can still be using it 7 years later.
Granted, I'm not a typical user. I don't play huge 3D games and I don't go in for a lot of the CPU wasting addons and crap that people do to their systems. I work on software, browse, type, edit, word process, compile, etc.
For 95% of what I do, the system was enough as it came. The real problem has been the steady bloat of OS's and applications. Programmers get lazier, and RAD tools get crappier, and the baseline system gets bigger so programmers don't have to be as efficient. So slowly this bloat has crept up on me and finally my trusty old ThinkPad had become too slow to use through no fault of it's own.
Recently I decided to do something about it.
I did a lot of research and a lot of cross referencing and came up with a plan to upgrade the old girl.
Here's the original specs, FYI:

ThinkPad 770X 9549-7AO
Intel 440BX chipset
Pentium II 300 with 512k L2
128MB PC-66 SDRAM (64MB SODIMM on motherboard, 64MB SODIMM on trapdoor slot)
Trident Cyber 9397DVD graphics chipset, 64bit AGP graphics with hardware video acceleration and 3D acceleration.
8MB SGRAM video memory
13.7" active matrix hires LCD screen, 1280x1024 resolution
8.1GB IDE hard drive in modular HD bay (uses caddy)
real 3 button TrackPoint mouse pointer
long throw, keyboard with full size keys
UltraBay II for CD, DVD, Zip, Superdisk, HD or battery
DVD ROM Ultrabay II drive
Lithium Ion battery
56k V.90 MWave DSP modem
Crystal 4236 audio with 3D surround
IBM DEVA card (DVD Enhanced Video Accelerator) provides hardware MPEG acceleration for DVD playback. Also provides video capture with composite and S-Video input. Video output with composite and S-Video output, and Digital SPDIF surround sound output.

That's the basics, you can see more specs on IBM/Lenovo's website.

Now, for the upgrades, I decided on an advanced, technically difficult, but slightly conservative plan. Here's the items I upgraded and how:

--Component-----------------------------Replaced with
- MMC2 PII 300MHz processor module------MMC2 PIII 500MHZ module
- 256MB PC66 SODIMM RAM-----------------384MB PC100 SODIMM SDRAM (128MB x3)
- 8.1 GB 12.7mm 2.5" HD-----------------40GB 9mm 2.5" HD (actually several caddies
  --------------------------------------for different HD's and multiple OS's)

------------------------Additional Upgrades or addons------------------------
- D-Link DWL G650 802.11g PC-Card WiFI Atheros chipset supports 54/108 Mbps
- SMC 2532W-B PCMCIA high power 802.11b WiFi, prism2.5 chipset, 200mw output, removeable antenna with external antenna connector. (war drive special ;')
- Hawking 6db antenna
- D-Link DUB-C2 PC-CARD 2 port USB 2.0 adapter
- 3COM PC-CARD 10/100 Ethernet
- Data one USB 2.0 steel external 5.25" HD enclosure
- HP dvd530i DVD +/- R/W Dual layer DVD/CD RW
- Crossfire Smartdisk 160 GB external USB 2.0 / Firewire HD
- IBM PC Camera USB
- D-Link DBT-120 Bluetooth dongle
- iomega external USB Zip drive
- Canon BJC-50 portable colour printer with scanner attachment
- other stuff.

The system runs multiple OS's on multiple HD's. The main two are:

- SuSE Linux 10.0 Professional, Not only the best Linux, but the best all around desktop OS available.

- Windows 2000 SP4 *

*I run 2000 and not XP because I don't like XP. It provides no discernable advantage over 2000 and lots of disadvantages. Like crippled user levels, annoying wizards, resource wasting eye-candy, really annoying PnP habits, etc. Plus it's slower than 2000 and wastes more resources.

I'm planning to detail some of this upgrade here later in case anyone is interested. I really have to thank the ThinkPad forum users (they don't know me, I just lurk there and read their helpful posts) and of course the original ThinkPad upgrade genius, Sharedoc at Wim's BIOS site.
Thanks all.

Anyway, all this was a lot of work, but really inexpensive, at least compared to a new laptop. The PIII 500MHz MMC2 module and 256MB of the PC100 RAM only cost me $50!
$10 for the CPU and $20 each for the 128MB SODIMM's. I scavenged the other 128MB SODIMM and one of the 40GB HD's from a dead laptop.
I got the other HD for $50 about 2 years ago.

The results were amazing. It's like a whole new computer, and I suppose for all intents and purposes, it is. Boot times are much quicker. The system and UI are much snappier and more responsive. Applications are smoother and faster. Multimedia is more functional, playback is smoother.

In fact I'm so happy with the system now that I may not replace it for a couple more years. If anything I'll give a go at trying another, faster CPU. Probably a PIII 750 speedstep. Though right now, I'm fine with the 500.
The reason I didn't do this in the first place is that the 500MHz is the fastest non-speedstep II CPU you can get. Using a speedstep processor on a non-speedstep supporting motherboard is a problem and requires more hardware hacking than I wanted to try all in one shot. You have to modify the module itself. Thought I'd do the non-speedstep first and work out all the bugs and issues involved in that before I took the big leap.
But for now, the old girl is a pleasure to use. peppy, responsive, and comfortable. Great keyboard, beautiful, hires screen, and the awesome Trackpoint II pointer.
All she need's now is a new battery for those rare mobile moments.

Remember, if you are going to replace something anyway, try hacking it first. You might just save some money, have some fun, and learn something.

Later,
Tachyon

**NOTE to laptop manufacturers. License the Tackpoint technology.
Don't whine and tell me about studies and customer surveys etc. The Trackpoint is the best controller there is. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't acutually used one for more than 5 minutes.
My company's first time ThinkPad customers used to complain about the TrackPoint and ask for a mouse. I used to make them a deal. Use the TrackPoint for 2 weeks and if you still want a mouse after that, I'll give you one for free. I only ever gave out one mouse.