Thanks for the post Aryeh! I have two T42s sitting around waiting to be upgraded and now I feel comfortable moving to Windows 7. One T42 will replace a T23 my wife uses for light internet surfing and the other will replace my X30.
Mike Williams -----Original Message----- From: Aryeh Goretsky (home) <[email protected]> To: thinkpad <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, Apr 17, 2013 6:55 am Subject: [Thinkpad] [T42] upgrades to ThinkPad T42 Hello, I just wanted to report in to the list on the upgrades performed to a 2004-era ThinkPad T42 [MT: 2378-R4U; Specs: P M 730, 256MB, 30GB HDD, 14.1" XGA (1024x768), 32MB ATI 7500, Intel 2200BG]. Previously, the T42 had been upgraded to 2GB of RAM, the 30GB HDD replaced with a 160GB model, and the extended battery with one from DealExtreme. The keyboard was also replaced with a new one as the original was rather beat up (this was my brother's college PC). Upgrade #1: palm rest with fingerprint reader I like having a fingerprint reader for authentication, so when I replaced the keyboard, I also replaced the palm rest with one containing a fingerprint reader. It plugged right into the system board without problem Cost was about $15 on eBay Upgrade #2: Intel Pentium M 760 2.0 GHz Replacing the 1.60GHz stock CPU with a 2.0GHZ model should give a modest performance boost on processor intensive tasks. Cost was about $10 on eBay, versus $55 for a P M 765 (2.1GHz), $20 for a P M 770 (2.13GHz) or $40 for a P M 780 (2.27GHz). I did not feel that the gains in performance one of those might add would be marginal compared to the $10 CPU. Upgrade #3: Broadcom BCM43222 802.11n MiniPCI Adapter This is the same dual band (2.4GHz/5GHz) Wi-Fi card I installed in my T43p. Details of that are in the mailing list archive at: http://illuminati.stderr.org/pipermail/thinkpad/2012-October/037114.html Cost was about around $10. Upgrade #4: 60GB OWC Mercury Legacy Pro 2.5" PATA SSD This was, by far, the most expensive upgrade to the T42 at around $150, but it also gave the biggest boost in performance. There are few PATA SSD manufacturers, and this particular model is the fastest in its class. It also uses TRIM for garbage collection, which apparently is rare for PATA SSDs. Aside from the speed boost, installing a SSD will (I hope) also reduce power consumption and thermal load on the system, as well as being much more rugged. I had replaced the HDD three times when my brother was using the T42. This was also the most problematic upgrade. The initial SSD I received from OWC was not assembled correctly: The SSD's logic board was not properly aligned in its metal shroud/enclosure and its pins would not line up properly with the PATA connector inside the T42. I spent about an hour on this until trying to install the SSD in a 2nd HDD Adapter Ultrabay, at which point I realized there was an alignment issue. Since the SSD was new and expensive, I did not want to violate the warranty by fixing it myself, so I sent the drive back to OWC for repair. They fixed the problem and quickly sent the drive back to me. Unfortunately, it arrived DOA. They replaced it with a new unit, and that one worked fine. Throughout the whole process, OWC tech support was patient and got the second working replacement out to me quickly. Upgrade #5: Windows 7 Ultimate x86 Edition Installed on the T42 for the same reasons I installed it on the T43p, as mentioned in the mailing list archive at: http://illuminati.stderr.org/pipermail/thinkpad/2012-October/037114.html Observations: The one upgrade I have not done is to add Bluetooth. From looking at the HMM, it appears I would need to take apart the screen+lid in order to install the antenna, and that is something I really do not want to do at this point. The T42 runs Windows 7 well, booting up in about 25 seconds (or maybe a little less). Not bad for a nine-year-old system. The ATI 7500 GPU is completely unsupported under Windows 7, and although there are various hacks reported to get older drivers for Windows XP to work, I found them to be unreliable and leading to crashes. I settled on the following options for video: Driver: Standard VGA Graphics Adapter driver Theme: Windows Classic View Services: Desktop Session Window Manager Session Manager (disabled) Themes (disabled) This gives a Windows XP-like graphic user interface, but with all of Windows 7 behind it. The system is not really usable for watching HD video or game play, but it is rather good for casual web surfing and basic office productivity tasks. It's also far better built than a netbook, being more solid and reliable URLs: BCM43222: search eBay for "BCM43222" Intel P M 760: http://ark.intel.com/products/27595/Intel-Pentium-M-Processor-760-2M-Cache-2_00A-GHz-533-MHz-FSB OWC SSD MLP060: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/SSDMLP060/ T42 HMM: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-46464 Regards, Aryeh Goretsky _______________________________________________ Thinkpad mailing list [email protected] http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad _______________________________________________ Thinkpad mailing list [email protected] http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad
