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LED Status Indicators

A project log for X60s (2020) ThinkPad

X60s is a near-perfect laptop chassis for mobility. I will be retrofitting a modern laptop motherboard to modernize this machine

seanSean 01/27/2020 at 22:140 Comments

Whilst the project is based on the X60, there is no reason to not try to take full advantage of the status leds and thinklight to their potential / have some fun, rather than try to reconfigure the existing leds in the top panel. Previously these were handled by the display backlight board which there were status leds for bluetooth, wifi etc. As a new display will be fitted without a CCFL backlight a different configuration can be designed on a small custom board. 

Dependent on how things go I will likely add a microcontroller to ensure full control of all indicators to potentially add more, or make it rgb or even replace it with a small LCD or OLED display.

For those looking to upgrade one of the original CCFL based LCD panels shoud go to: 

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-backlight.shtml

xiphmont has documented multiple methods and products and is the best place to get information on the led  backlight conversion.

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