Hello, I recently found the screen of my IBM Thinkpad to be completely cracked. Almost 90% of the screen is ruined. I don't have the money to replace the screen, but I will be plugging in an external monitor to use in the mean time. For the purpose of convenience and adjusting this mess to fit my small desk, is it possible for me to just completely remove the upper half of my laptop and let the lower half function as a keyboard and pc? Or do both halves need to be connected to one another to work? Thanks a lot guys!

I wouldn't recommend doing that but for about $10-$20 you could get a usb mouse and keyboard and just use the laptop like a normal PC case. By removing the top half, it would either require cut a lot of circuits oropening the entire laptop to find a way to take it off. This could be an accident waiting to happen. How old is the laptop? It might still have a warranty on it... I don't know if a warranty covers things like this but you could try.

I have done what you are attempting. First you have to find the connections. The minimums are the LCD display and the backlight. You don't want to cut anything. There should be either flexible circuits or flat cable connections passing through the hinge connecting to the edge of the display. You should be able to disconnect the connectors. After that you can remove the display at the hinges. There may be high voltage on the backlight cable so you should isolate and insulate those connections. There is no quarantee this will work since disconnecting may cause other circuits to shut down. Just plugging in the external keyboard and mouse may be a better solution.