Thinkpads Forum

Hello again! I own both the X220 and the X230. I would like to swap the keyboards and give the X220 to someone. I saw one thread in here with the same question, but it's an old post and it didn't have much information in the replies. I'm mainly wondering what keybinds don't work and if it would have a chance of bricking the X220 or the keyboard. Has anyone done it this way? Thanks.

That's for installing the classic keyboard on the X230 and I know how to do that. I want to hear experiences from people doing it the other way around: X230 keyboard on the X220

I don't think there were many mods going the other way. It just wasn't a popular thing to do.

It should work, but the keys that "moved" between the keyboards will not work properly - they will work according to their placement on the original X220 keyboard matrix. I think the only keys that will be affected are the navigation block - Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn. Delete will probably register as PgUp and Insert as Home. PgUp and PgDn (next to the arrows) will work as Back/Forward. In the absence of an EC mod (which I don't think anyone bothered to do), I think they can be remapped using software utilities, but you need a solution for each operating system.

The Fn key combos will be different. These may not be programmable by an OS tool, unless it's one going very deeply into EC territory.

There may be some quirks related to backlit keyboards, but I'm not sure if they apply when going "the other way" (since X220 never supported keyboard backlighting).

I dont recommend putting *30 keyboard on older models. One of the Fn combos for brightness is removed and the functionality loss would trigger me as a customer .

Many would call it a 'downgrade' in more than one respect.