The good news is that the laptop screen I ordered for the battered Thinkpad has finally arrived. The bad news is that it doesn’t look like it will fit.
Cable connections and screw mounts seem to be in different places. Supposedly this replacement is from an identical model — an A21e — but this came from a source in the United States, and it’s possible that the design differs between the Japanese and the U.S. models. That would be a shame.
I’m going to keep working on it for a little bit, but take a break so I don’t fall into one of Pirsig‘s gumption traps. And it may be that it just needs a little coaxing to work. I’ll return to the fray when I have a calmer state of mind.
This isn’t very reassuring though. I would have liked to have kept this machine on hand just as a spare, but if this doesn’t fit, I’m more or less stuck between ditching it and picking up an external monitor — neither of which is a particularly enticing thought.
Motho ke motho ka botho 
I don’t have much experience with Thinkpads but I know that Dell LCD displays are completely modular and can be easily disassembled into the LCD proper, the bazel, hinge assemblies, and the display back-cover. All LCD’s are essentially the same – they have bunch of screw holes that can be used with different hinge sets and assemblies, and each generation uses the same type of port with which you plug it into the mobo.
If it doesn’t fit, I’d recommend taking both of them apart, and trying to transfer just the LCD into the old laptop. I did this many times with Dell laptops often transferring LCD’s between different models when it looked like it would never work.
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