I bought a "Used with some problems" Thinkpad R52 off Ebay.
I've upgraded it to a Pentium 4 760, added 2GB of RAM, an extended battery, Ultrabay battery, Thinkpad Dock 2, and Bluetooth.
For the $250 I paid for it, it's a formidable laptop.
a)
However, since I had to replace the lid of the laptop, the pink connector that attaches (power?) to the Screen to the inverter got jammed in the hinge and almost fried the laptop.
When I opened it up and looked at the screen, half of the screen was black. Not faint, black. The whole backlight died too, so I bought an inverter. This didn't fix the backlight but it fixed the black pixels and stuck screen. Now I have a very faint Thinkpad. So I bought a second screen. Am I being an idiot and the problem does not lie in the panel, or is it reasonable to replace the screen?
b)
Ever since I upgraded the CPU, connecting it to the dock will crash it. I plug it in, turn it on, and it reaches the loading screen for Windows then shuts down. It's not heat, it doesn't get unreasonably hot.

Welcome to the forum.
Your R52 would need a Pentium M 760, Intel sSpec SL7SM.
I assume you made a typo?

a) Does an external monitor work OK from the VGA port?
You may have blown a fuse on the motherboard.
Here's a diagram from a very close/similar motherboard with fuse locations: http://theboardroom.info/T4x_Fuses.pdf
Use a multimeter to check them, specifically F3, F7 and F8.

b) There is maybe dirt in the docke connector, either in the laptop, or in the dock, or both.
Try cleaning both with compressed air.

Yeah, Pentium M. My mistake.

It works fine off the VGA port.
Alright, tommorow I'll get compressed air.

One more thing to check: maybe the laptop does not fully/correctly slot in when putting it an the dock.
If the laptop gets flexed/warped while on the dock, the Southbridge chip could be loose, which would explain the non-boot issue.

Fixed the dock issue. It was heat -- When I replaced the CPU I used toothpaste for thermal grease (works fine about 90% of the time) and I guess it wasnt a good kind. Note: Always use white Crest mint toothpaste for thermal grease. It's about equal with AS5.
Still stuck on the panel problem. I'm going to test the fuse when I know how to.

InB4 all the flame...
Just curious, how did you come up with the conclusion that white Crest mint toothpaste is about equal to Arctic Silver 5?

Not bad.

You're absolutely right.

Not bad.

A lot worse than bad...

It's only 7 C versus AS5.
That's still a B.

I don't think you quite understand how this stuff works...

Talk about toothpaste after a month of it sitting on a working CPU...

The first gaming PC I used had toothpaste. It still works.
It's Pentium III Coppermine.

I've seen machines that ran for years with no thermal compound at all.

It still doesn't make the practice advisable...

Good point.
I'm going to wait for my panel to arrive, and hope it works.
If it doesn't, I'll return it.
Thanks for all the help!

Well, one picture doesn't tell us anything. What's the testing platform? Testing procedure? Application method? 40 degrees Celsius at idle from an Atom in a 20 degrees room is veeeeeery different from 40 degrees under max load from a quad-core i7 in a 35 degrees room.

Even though we assume a reasonable testing platform and procedure:
Fresh toothpaste performs worse than all but one thermal compound. After merely 12 hours, temperature with toothpaste increased 3 degrees, which indicates toothpaste lose its heat-conducting properties very quickly, or worse still, its heat-dissipating capability comes solely from the evaporation of water. If allowed to dry up completely, I predict its performance will be worse than no thermal compound.

For anybody else curious about who created that graph and the test methodology used, here's the latest review that I can find of the various thermal compounds tested by Hardware Secrets:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpag ... -2012/1490

Mayonnaise? Mustard?? Diaper rash ointment??? These must be some of the same guys from the BBC's Top Gear show .

From now on I'm using mayonnaise
Poor Rosewill thermal pastel, doing worse than 12 hr old butter.

Rosewill is the crappy home-brand from Newegg, not a good recommendation for them.

They have the FT02, FT03, and RK-9000.

Got new screen and it didnt work. F7 and F8 seems to be fine. F3 might be popped, how would I replace this?

Piggy-back and new one over the blown one. Still not easy, but that's about the only way it'll work. That said, I've never succeeded with the job myself.

I've never had much success with soldering.
Someone nearby me on Craigslist has a working R52 Motherboard 39T5684. The current one I have is ATI graphics and 14", would this be compatible?

Maybe you should bridge it with a (metal) dental toothpick.... ...I'm certain you can get one from Crest for free after all the advertising you've done for their products on this forum...



Yes.

So just bridge one lead to the other with something like a conductive marker?
If it helps the screen is bright for a fraction of a second before booting.

That was a joke...

Unless you can piggyback a new fuse on top of the old one, get a replacement board...

What do they want for it, BTW?

$25.

Not a bad price at all presuming it works 100%...any means of testing it?

how did it work out?

pretty sure its the board. my sony vaio k had a bad board(stopped detecting hdd's), so i got one off of ebay, screen acted up, so i replaced the inverter. screen turned white and only displayed on the external monitor properly. I put the old board in and the screen was all nice n purdy again.


btw - toothpaste ^_^


gotta remember that next time i'm doing a budget build...

Board wasn't compatible with mine, so I didn't buy it.
Compatible boards are about $100 apiece, so I'm selling my laptop as-is with the dock, extended batteries, external battery charger, and monitor/kb/mouse.
I'll be lucky if I can fetch $100.

If your machine has 14.1" XGA, I would have a fully working compatible motherboard with integrated Intel graphics for it.
PM me if interested in a price well under $100 shipped!

ATI, sorry.
That would mean replacing heatsink and possibly the bottom plastic. I'm about done with this thing.