Hacker News Reader

Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

You had me at Thinkpad X230. Although the 220 keyboard is better IIRC.

I think someone managed to stick a 220 keyboard onto a 230

There are quite a few people who have done this (myself included). The process is pretty straightforward since they have nearly identical chassis. r/Thinkpad has a lot of details on how to do it. The toughest part is covering the right connections on the ribbon cable for the 220 keyboard since the pinouts are slightly different. It is a fun little project and the keyboards can be found pretty cheaply on eBay.

dont you need a bios(smc) modded firmware flash to make all the keys work?

Yes, you're right. I forgot about this step because I also corebooted my Thinkpad and replaced the NIC at the same time as keyboard. For the keyboard, I used these instructions: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Install_Classic_Keyboard_on_x...

(Corebooting was not needed to flash the bios, it just seemed fun at the time)

Yes, however the process is very easy today and can be done entirely software-side, thanks to 1vyrain [1]. So you don't need to flash the BIOS using an external programmer, just run what amounts to an exploited/modified update. I recently did this on my T430, and could not be happier about the keyboard.

[1]: https://github.com/n4ru/1vyrain

This is what I thought too ... I am giggling over this ... :

Them: "Woah, you just tip the screen computer down and it can project an immersive 3D holographic experience? That you can interact with directly? That's just so amazing!"

Us: "Woah, it's a X230? Even cooler if it had an X220 keyboard!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com