[Thinkpad] New Thread ~ 701 & 760 ThinkPad

This is more of a fyi in case anyone out there ever thought it
to be possible. After 6 attempts to refurbish the top lids &
bottom casings of a 701 & 760, it finally worked !

Surprisingly, it was a lot like doing body work on a car.

I took the worse 701 & 760 cases & lids I could find, sanded them down
to a
fine finish taking off all the deep scratches and gauges, put a primer
on it,
applied the rubber coating (plastic dip), finished it off with a
90F deg heat cure (2 hours) ~ (the first three attempts actually
melted the parts because I had it set way too high ~ lol) ~ let it sit
overnight
(last night) and they're both like brand new ! So much for having to go
out
and pay the bucks for buying new replacements. Even broken plastic
wasn't
an issue so long as nothing was missing.

I suppose this process can done with any think pad that had that
rubber coating on it but the only three that I know of are the 600's,
701's, and 760's.

Now that I've worked out the bugs on that, I'm going to post this at my
site as service.

It comes to mind though, I wonder why IBM even put a rubber coating
on the think pad's to begin with ? Maybe for better grip ~ hmmm,
so it doesn't slip off your lap ~ ???

Here's a thought as outrageous as it may sound ~ a water proof
laptop ~ is there even a such thing ?

Now on to my next project which is still in it's prototype stage, a self
supporting
Li-ION battery for the 701's with solar charge panel. I finally found
the right amounts and types of Li-ION's cells to use ~ but regulating
it's power was really
my biggest problem. I keep burning the single directional zener diodes
I use
to regulate the back feed from the solar panel after the cells are all
charged.
The 701 & 760 used both series and parallel methods in the configuration
the
cells are grouped, I wonder if changing that scheme might work ?.

The solar charger I'm using only puts out 2 volts (a cheaply and small),
so I'm guessing a complete charge cycle on a regular 701 Nihm battery
would be
somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-8 hours and of course weather
permitting.. Basically, this process really can be done to any laptop
by means of direct connection to the laptop itself, or the battery.

I've also been messing around with PeltierII type cooling schemes, but
man do
they draw a lot of power ! So much for that idea, besides, pretty risky
handling
these because they have a lot of bismuth-Bi & tellurium-Te pretty
nasty stuff.

Anyhow, just some thoughts to ponder for the average Think Pad do it
yourself'R.

Justin

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Received on Fri Sep 5 14:15:03 2003