After a long time of leaving my beloved Thinkpad X230 in a draw I was forced to bring it back out. Since the political changes in the USA, me and my partner thought it best to leave our personal devices at home and bring wiped ones. Also, I wanted to run the open-source BIOS replacment HEADS, so like two birds one stone. My x230 was the perfect fit! I dusted it off and hit that power button, after realising it was dead on battery and plugging it in, it just powered up! Fans spun up, and the screen… well. If you have read my previous X230 blog post you will know originally I had issues getting it to work reliablly. It did work for a while but eventially just died on me.
So, what was the issue with the screen? Nothing, like with most things EDP, it was the cable. When you are connecting a internal screen with eDP or MIPI-DSI you really want to try and keep the cable as short as possible with out an adapter in. I had two long-ish cables connected with a pcb to connect the 40pin PXI (CHECK CABLE CONNECTOR) to a flat ribbon cable. Also the “connector"display side is less a just a thick flexible pc. I had this messed up setup because I ordered the mod board without checking what cable it came with and what cable I needed.
Before I went away I ordered a new mod chip that came with a diffrent connector and the correct cable from Aliexpress. It wasn’t cheap, at around £50, but I was sure it was going to be more reliable! It said it would arive two days before I left for the US. I knew I would be cutting it really close. As it turned out, it arived around a week before the estimated delivery date! Horrar!
Instalation would have been strait forward apart from the fact that I needed to remove the stupid board I had already installed. Removing the mod chip isn’t too hard but the mod chip has multipule soilder points to the ground plane, meaning it is harder to head and remove. Mix that with the small pins that are connected it can be a bit off a pain. I don’t think there is a great way to remove it whilest keeping it intact. I ended up bending the board. I did manage to remove it and managed to keep a small jumper wire connected to a capacitor making the installation of the new mod board much easier! After a little bit of clean up, mainly consisting of removing some peeled up traces left behind from the mod chip, I was ready to install the new board!
Now I can install the new one and it fitted fairly well where the previous board was. Because of the old mod chips ground mount points, those parts were still lifted a bit. That was a easy fix though. I just soildered the anchors first which leveled out the board, allowing me to soilder the through hole pin things with ease. Lots of flux and a good amount of soilder and they sat in place perfectly. I cleaned the soilder points with a toothbrush and a alchole and could finally test the new cable.
Testing
I click the power, and nothing… ffs I forgot to plug in my charger! Ok, Now? Lights on the keyboard flash… the screen lights up a black screen… then I see it! The HEADS splash screen! It worked! It fucking worked! I bypass all the security warnings heads pops up and boot into a live USB to test it! Fedora boots and it looks amazing! I change the screen scaling down to 100% and and OMG it looks amazing!
Finaly assembley!
I tested it only partially assembled so time to get it back together. When I last used this laptop I done something slightly dumb, I used heat shrink on the wifi antenas to ensure they didn’t short out. I didn’t need wifi when I last used it so I thought it would be a good idea. Nope, in trying to get it off, I managed to pull the connector off. Worst of all, because I had a pre-modded bezel it also had two new antenas with the smaller connector. That left me with just one wifi antena for the old style connectors. I plugged it into one at random. As I expected, it didn’t work. I assumed at this point that it needed both. So I reflashed the device with a known good BIOS and packed ready for NYC.
When I got to NYC I was using USB teathering from my phone. Its a massive pain in the backside! So I was determned to fix it. A quick google later and found out that the wifi ic that I use had one antena port that was the main one and then an edditinal one for, I am guessing, better signal? All I had to do was swap the antenna… such a dumb mistake but now I swapped it I can use laptop on its own.
Battery
I had re-celled my original battery with new 18650 batteries. It is now a few years on and the battery is showing its’ age. I can’t really keep away from a plug socket for too long. I see around 3 hours battery life and worse of all it will start rapidly go down at random! I am probably due for a replacment. Now I could try re-celling again but I don’t think I want to worry about batteries exploding on me, so I am probably going to order a new on online. (Since starting this artical, I orded one in the US and it has arrived. It now lasts a decent while).
Is the new mod chip better?
Ummm, not really. The original one I had came with a edditinal pcb that gave me a slightly faster pci slot. It is a bit of a bummer that this one didn’t come with that capability but I don’t really care that much about the speed. I am much happier knowing that the laptop’s screen probably isn’t just going to dye on me. Also, when I open the laptop, the short cable looks sooo clean.
The new mod chip still seems to have come with a usb port exposed internally so I can probably still add a USB-C 2.0 port. While it isn’t fast it allows me to use by security keys without a stupid dongal.
Am I moving back to the x230?
So my main laptop is a Framework laptop which I do love! I love the customisable ports, the reparibility and the community. That being said, I love the keyboard on my x230! The nipple is something that I have missed for a long time. I tried to mod one onto the Framework but I didn’t have much luck. I feel sooo much better about the security of this device. It isn’t the fastest and dose struggle a bit with high res video but it isn’t too bad! (Also, since starting this artical, I have decided to sell my Framework laptop. Tbh, I have been out of work for about 6 mounths and it is going to be a few months till I get some more money in. Also, I do really love this laptop and want to stick with it!)
I love the size/shape of the device. I mean it is heavier and bulkier than my frame work but I love the shape and feel of the device. I know it is chunkier but it just feels smaller… and like more me sized. The keyboard works sooo well for me! I love typing again.
The other thing is this laptop looks like a cheap pice of shit… I doubt anyone is going to try and nick it off me unless I leave it someware! I don’t care about having some fancy clean laptop, I love something with a bit of charicter and something I have worked on! This laptop litrally has my bloud sweat and tears in it! I have taken it so many places and it just feels me!