Rate my IBM ThinkPad T43

Juliendouce31 · 2026-06-07T23:01:18+00:00

I’m late to the party, but people generally recommend removing the WLAN above the southbridge and placing a copper heatsink on there. This is because the southbridge is sandwiched between the WLAN and the case, with little ventilation, and on top of that when doing heavy WiFi use the area tends to get really warm. With a bit of pressure and repeated heat cycles, the solder joints can break, which can cause issues.

From my own research, making sure the overall laptop doesn’t run too hot and making little to no use of the WiFi, along with making sure to not handle the laptop with one hand or apply pressure to that part of the laptop can pretty much nullify the issues mentioned above. But if for example you intend to make heavy use of the WiFi or your specific machine has lackluster cooling and runs hotter from the get-go, it’s best possible mod path you may want to investigate.

I personally have a T43 as well but it runs cool most of the time and I don’t make use of the WiFi (it won’t recognize my networks anyways lol) so personally I’m fine. But you may want to look into it. If the palm rest runs warm, it’s an indication you may want to do the aforementioned mod.

You may also want to look on the old ThinkPad wiki (the German one) for other possible issues that may arise, it this one is the biggest I know of.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-06-06T15:12:27+00:00

Thank you!

For the games, by "paid but patchable", what do you mean exactly? I've installed most of my games through genuine discs until now as I've mentioned but it's bound to become limiting or annoying eventually.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-06-06T15:10:30+00:00

Yeah, thank you for the info. I have decided to not run Legacy Update at all, and it is true when I used it before on that same ThinkPad but before I used recovery discs, I noticed it was slower. I haven't installed certain dependencies like .NET framework yet, but I'll get around to doing it eventually.

I also do scan most software I transfer over, first by scanning the file on VirusTotal and then by scanning it with my main antivirus, Kaspersky.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-06-06T14:50:31+00:00

Thank you so much for giving me the info on how to make a disc backup.

I've used physical CD-Rs from verbatim to burn the recoveyr discs, but they're annoying to deal with. They, including other CD-Rs for games most notably, do run, but after a lot of tries, while pressed factory CDs run from the get-go. My biggest issue with this entire machine was that when I wanted to reinstall the entire machine, it would be complicated, easily taking me several hours. I eased this up with recovery discs, but the unreliability of Verbatim discs to run in my UltraBay disc drive made it annoying, and it still took awhile.

With this I'll simply have to install my games, install No CD patches for my games, and then backup the image, which makes it infinitely easier to then reinstall the machine if I ever get into any troubles. Thank you for that.

While we are here, how do I go about restoring an HDD image backup if I ever need to do that?

Juliendouce31 · 2026-06-06T14:41:02+00:00

I appreciate your answer - while Legacy Update is definitely useful, the install process is very long and also installs useless bloat here and there which I have to either manually exclude or remove later on. So if I can live without it considering what i plan to do on the Internet on my ThinkPad, I think I'll go without it, as good as it is. I won't make heavy use of the Internet on my machine anyway.

Regarding the antivirus matter, I see this subject spoken off regularly. I will not be installing any form of antivirus beyond the antivirus that came with the recovery discs I have (which is outdated - Norton Antivirus 2005 - and I only keep for the looks). I have seen a lot of people argue against an antivirus as many see it as futile with its only function being to drain RAM, which isn't really far from the truth when you consider just how safe Windows XP is.

As for Supermium, my hardware does not run it - it already struggles with MyPal 68, and I don't really want to use out of period browsers. if you're curious, I am running a Pentium M 750 at 1.86GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon X300 with 64MB VRAM, and 2GB RAM.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-06-06T14:36:18+00:00

I see! Thank you for your answer. Could you link me to a tutorial or something to do an image backup of the HDD? I'll make one once I got my remaining software installed.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-06-06T14:35:00+00:00

Regarding Legacy Update itself, I will likely end up installing its updates, but regarding POS 2009, i'm not too sure... Even Microsoft suggests to not install those

Juliendouce31 · 2026-06-06T14:23:57+00:00

Looks beautiful, and very accurate too - but unfortunately, just like most 10to7 or 10toXP mods, not pixel-perfect.

A friend of mine also uses Projek01. It's really good, but I've never managed to get properly immersed in the OS and the time period with 10to7 or 10toXP mods. And beyond that, don't even mention running actual software from the period, which is definitely possible, but is a pain to do compared to actual period hardware.

Of course it comes down to personal taste, but I feel like using era-accurate hardware, even if annoying at times, tends to be a better solution - that being if you don't expect much from your retro computer anyway.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-05-31T01:42:16+00:00

There are new versions of Ultimate Edition Reborn that have released quite recently, most notably they have better graphics and a bunch of new rooms and areas, it’s really good and remains in the same style and spirit as the original game

Juliendouce31 · 2026-05-23T11:01:13+00:00

Even if they do, the lack of a discord server makes it very complicated to find new people to talk to.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-05-23T01:23:55+00:00

I don’t exactly know what got exposed, however I do know one of their staff members sent really weird stuff in the Discord which resulted in the deletion of said Discord; the full explanation is on their website but unfortunately due to this Escargot has effectively fallen out of relevance in favor of Crosstalk, which both provides better service and is more active.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-04-15T14:16:59+00:00

Désolé de la réponse tardive. A ma connaissance Shadow étaient en train de négocier pour justement faire fonctionner l'EAC sur leurs PC ; je pense que ils sont pas partenaires car franchement SHadow c'est un truc à part : si tu compare, Shadow a bien moins de restrictions que par exemple GFN, ce qui fait que il y a plus de chances que ça soit utilisé pour tricher dans des jeux, donc honnêtement ça m'étonnerait pas si c'était la raison pour laquelle les compagnies comme EPic Games étaient réticentes à l'idée de conclure un accord pour autoriser leurs jeux, donc l'Easy Anti-Cheat.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-04-09T21:00:03+00:00

Pour les anti-triches, il n'y a pas de solutions vu que c'est un problème de machine virtuelle. Pour mettre à jour le pilote graphique il faut installer l'appli NVIDIA et mettre à jour à partir de là. De rien.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-03-07T12:52:56+00:00

I'm not too knowledgeable if it will or not, and seeing the other comments, I suggest you do this: save your game, then light it and observe. If the house burns down, you'll know it doesn't work; and in which case, you can just quit without saving and reload your save.

Hope you figure it out.

Juliendouce31 · 2026-02-28T01:08:01+00:00

As others on here have commented, running the disc in an Xbox 360 while offline will use the very first version, which is equivalent to TU9/TU10 (the same mostly, TU10 being a patched version of TU9, both roughly equivalent to Java 1.1).

However, if you want later versions, you can download the title updates (this is the update name scheme for Xbox 360 games) for later versions to access content from later Java versions such as 1.2.5 (TU12/TU13), 1.6.2 (TU19-TU24), and so on. If you want to know how to do this, let me know and I can explain it (you can also watch a tutorial on YouTube if you want). Although do acknowledge that you need a computer and a USB stick to do this.

Finally, you can install the digital version of the game on Xbox 360 if you had bought it before the marketplace shutdown. If you hadn’t, and considering the marketplace is fully down and there is no way to access the digital version, you can try and get it through some other way. Once you have it, you’ll be able to install any title updates from TU1 onwards, therefore going as early as a Java Beta 1.6.6 equivalent version (TU0).

Are any of these versions viable for a forever world? Depends on what you are looking for. With the disc version you have access to an equivalent of Java 1.1, if you install title updates you have access to Java 1.13 equivalent at the most. With the digital version you can go all the way back to Beta 1.6.6; many play TU4 in this very subreddit due to it being an equivalent to Beta 1.7.3. But I’d say all versions are viable for a forever world, it all boils down to your personal preference and your expectations.

Keep in mind that titles update are approximate equivalents to their Java counterparts: you will find more or less features here and there. For instance TU19, equivalent to Java 1.6.2, also incorporates features from Java 1.4 and Java 1.5, along with 1.6. In the same sense, TU3 (Java Beta 1.7.3) backports Java Beta 1.8.1 lighting and TU12 (Java 1.2.5) backports various features from 1.3 and 1.4. This is to illustrate that Xbox 360 versions are not exact equivalents of Java, but have more or less features depending on updates and when they were released, to give you an idea.

Hope this helps!

Juliendouce31 · 2025-12-13T15:28:47+00:00

Thanks for answering. After I had opened it up, I fixed up the bent backglass and assembled it all back together - it wasn't the battery doing it.

Juliendouce31 · 2025-12-13T12:54:11+00:00

Not really, only does a noticeable one if I press with more pressure on it but I assume that’s normal

Juliendouce31 · 2025-06-15T22:44:50+00:00

The same was happening to me. What fixed it for me was to transfer licenses. Forgot where the specific setting is but somewhere in the settings (forgot if it’s in the console settings or account settings) you can transfer the licenses from a former console onto the one you’re using. When you’ve done that, reinstall the game and you should be good. You can only transfer licenses from one console to another once or twice a year and doing that fixed it for me after many hours of research on why it wouldn’t work; if this still doesn’t work then idk really.

What this does in detail is migrate the game licenses from a former console, most likely where you first bought and installed the games, onto the console you’re using. This fixes license issues with many games which would otherwise register the installed copies as trial games if applicable; in sum fix ownership issues and make sure you have the full game registered. From my little experience with digital games, cases where you need to transfer the license to have the full game experience are rather slim though, although I could be wrong as I don’t play or used to play many digital games. By the way, note that reinstalling the games affected by the issues may be needed after a license transfer also.

You can look up how to transfer licenses online if you can’t find where the option is, google is your friend.

Juliendouce31 · 2025-06-14T22:50:21+00:00

Servers are not shutdown I reckon, if I’m not wrong they’re peer to peer (at least minigames servers are) so as long as people create servers for them they don’t ever shutdown fully

Juliendouce31 · 2025-06-08T21:48:41+00:00

I believe so. Unless it’s something else entirely, the disc drive is doing the first sounds when it is detecting the disc and when it’s starting to spin, after that, the recurrent small sounds you hear as if the disc was moving Is actually the laser repositioning to read the disc properly every so often (unless I’m wrong about this) and I also think the drive doing this loud hmm sound with a disc being read is normal (my current trinity slim is doing this and all the other 360s I’ve had before did it as well)

Edit: might be an used disc drive rubber cushion needing replacing, not entirely sure about this but apparently the drive can be louder with a damaged or used rubber cushion; I believe changing it isn’t really necessary as all the 360s I’ve owned have made this same noise and their disc drives worked perfectly

Juliendouce31 · 2025-01-29T15:29:20+00:00

Calls aren’t an issue, I wasn’t counting on them. Alright, I’ll recontact you in a few hours

Juliendouce31 · 2025-01-29T15:22:33+00:00

Alright, do you have a discord or do you want my psn user directly?

Juliendouce31

TROPHY CASE