T43 Is Still Usable In 2025 (Pictures)

[TPFanatic]

I picked up this cute T43 on eBay, it's a basic XGA and GMA915 model but in near mint condition. Had only sticker residue from a lost Windows sticker which I ran my fingers over until it disappeared.



Installed an 80GB HDD, an Expresscard SSD, Windows 7, used the modified BIOS to make any annoying things go away, devoted the entire SSD to swap space with no page file on the HDD, copied my music collection to a partition on the HDD and now I just have this thing play my music for ambiance. Also put a Cardbus USB 2.0 in the Cardbus slot, since the series only has 2 ports to begin with and I don't have a dock yet (I want that Ultrabay 2000, PCI slot, and more Cardbus). Picked up a neat USB hub from Goodwill as well to help with things in the interim. The Expresscard SSD has a Mini USB port passthrough in it as well for whatever good it is.



So the T43 is still usable in 2025.

[Plunkyy]

Lovely 15" unit! Really hard to beat the keyboards on these things... I lucked out and got mint 15" NMB ones on my T42p and T43p, hopefully you had similar luck

[kfzhu1229]

While my T43p has retired from daily use since late 2018, I have always tried to keep it in working state, first undergone a motherboard replacement, of which then I subsequently needed to hot wire a wire so that the bottom RAM slot remain functional after a pin snapped off, and then swapped the LCD with a Sharp unit after the original IPS got too beaten up, and then the final overhaul involving me getting the original 92P1011 battery (swapped in from a T42) up and running while the cells have that tiny bit of life remaining, before the cells fully give up and lock the BMS (thank god I did that, as with hindsight now, BQ8012DBT is actually extremely difficult to work with once it locks...): viewtopic.php?f=2&t=136493
It has a Pentium M 780, 2GB of RAM, FireGL and UXGA screen, as well as a Hitachi 120GB travelstar with IBM firmware to remove Error 2010. Battery now lasts about 1.5-2 hours under the high power draw of this combination of components.

[Placeholder]

Oh stunning little machine. I've started experimenting with the expresscard slot with my franky T43p too, got a D-Link wifi card in there. It works well, but I really like your setup with the SSD. It just looks like it was made for it lol. If I manage to get my hands on some PTM thermal pads I might put the wifi card back into the machine and go for the SSD and USB combo like you.

And yes I daily my T43p on winXP, does all I need it to do.

Can I ask what's the brand of expresscard ssd you've got?

[TPFanatic]

It’s a Filemate SolidGO 48GB Expresscard Ultra Drive, powered by Wintec