ThinkPad 701c Brought Into The Future With A Framework Motherboard

Yes, The One With The Butterfly Keyboard

Bringing old technology back to life can be a rewarding hobby, resurrecting a piece of computer history which means something to you or just for the challenge.  New products like the Raspberry Pi and Framework motherboards make this process even easier as you can fit as much, or more processing power in a tiny space.  That makes it much more likely you will be able to rebuild the ancient tech exactly how you want to.

One such project can be found over at Hackaday, the revival of an old ThinkPad 701c.  That particular model had a full keyboard, even though the body of the laptop is nowhere near large enough to house one.  When you open the lid, the sides of the keyboard butterfly out into a full sized one, complete with a trackpad and the red rubber nubbin in the middle.  Karl Buchka replaced the innards with a Framework board, added three USB-A, two USB-C, a GigE NIC, headphone jack, Wifi, and Bluetooth.  The screen was also replaced, with an iPad 7 offering much higher resolution than the original.

See it in all it’s glory here.