A group (person) going by "51nb" out of Shenzhen, PRC, produces limited runs of motherboards that fit old ThinkPad chassis and accept modern processors. They also have access to NOS chassis and occasionally offer models such as the "X210," a completely unofficial X201 with a FHD IPS and current gen i7.
That is really interesting. I have an ancient T61p from I think 2008 running Fedora, which works fine for basic stuff. I would love to upgrade it because it's built like the proverbial brick shithouse and has a great keyboard and a 4:3 display (which would also need to be updated). But it's probably impossible without more or less completely rebuilding the laptop.
Seems about right. They're kind of elusive, since they probably have some connection to the Lenovo line in the PRC but are operating very unofficially. Links to offerings show up on Thinkpad forums and the Thinkpad sub-reddit, perhaps also on the Face Book.
There needn't be much of a connection to lenovo. It just uses a thinkpad chassis and the keyboard. It has its own EC which works with the thinkpad keyboard. It doesn't use the lenovo EC.
