Good to see you in this neighbourhood again, Nick... :thumbs-UP: Hope all is well by you. Rest assured that TPF hasn't forgotten you. Hi George, and great to be back here again. Also to you Dominic and thinking of the trans Atlantic work we did together. Greetings to you both and everyone else.

It's been literally years since I was last here, and I was very surprised to received a new post notification today! It's also been years since I last repaired a thinkpad, never mind the infrared reflowing etc, so a quick hello to anyone who still remembers me - memorable times! I still have a worki...

Woah a minute....! Is the USB port physically damaged. If so it needs replacing and RBS's method is correct. BUT, if there's no visible damage, it's likely to be an unsoldered Southbridge chip. it's one of the more common faults to see one USB working and not the other. Reballing the chip is the sol...

First of all what "Fan Error" were/are you getting? The fact you've got another fan could be irrelevant, as the temperature the fan switches on at is controlled by the motherboard circuitry, not the fan itself. If the fan appears to run at full speed when first turning on, then it's likely to be wor...

Hi to everyone as I've not been here for months - and to Ken too. I just happened to check out the forum answering some messages, and came across this. This seems very typical of an unsoldered GPU, but I'm no longer reballing so unfortunately can't help you. Also there's so many cowboys around and I...

Now your combination of nick and location finally makes full sense. Now I take Umbrage that I'm now just a combination!!! :lol: Just kidding! It sounds classic unsoldered Southbridge, very common on these boards. Do you live in UK or Europe and if so I'll be able to reball the SB chip for you at a ...

Thanks for that RBS - I'll downgrade to a half-Doh!

Enjoy the election build up - rather you than me!!

Hi Zak I hope you're OK with me replying to your PM via the thread since what you ask will benefit other members. TuuS's post is accurate and is how I view the whole Nvidia mess. I'd like to add this link to a series of articles on why these chips fail. Regarding Chinese fake versions, we used to re...

thanks! I thought this was the case but wanted to 100% confirm this.

Now I think about it, it was a bit of a stupid question since if the CD Drive works then Ultrabay HDD's should as well!

Doh!!

If a T43 has the SATA convertion, will any PATA HDD's fitted in an Ultrabay still work considering the SATA /IDE chip will have been removed?

Thanks in advance.

First person I thought of was you Dominic!

It's relatively straight forward for the right person.

Still looking for someone....

Yes, it sounds like typical unsoldered Southbridge, which is sorted out by infrared reballing and I've done literally hundreds of these on T4x's.

Give me a shout via PM or via my website link - not too expensive either!

No, just wire won't work. The aerial is a device which is tuned to work at WiFi frequencies and uses special ultra thin coaxial cables and connectors to conntect to a wifi card. Go on eBay and type in "wifi aerial" and you'll see lots of cable and aerial assemblies from lots of laptops, any of which...

I'm based in UK with a nice little sideline in repairing broken mini USB ports on Cricut Gypsys , a hobbyist handheld machine which is used to design paper patterns. The mini-usb connector easily snaps off the circuit board with damage to the tracks and surface mount components, but for anyone who's...

Sorry for the problems with the links to various docs - my ISP has deleted all the contents on FTP space they'd given me, without telling me, so I'm restoring them via server.

In the meantime here's the new T4x Fuses location:

http://www.reflowrepairs.co.uk/ftp1/T4x%20Fuses.pdf

If you're first name is Ian, I've just replied to you. if it's not then get back to me anyway and I see what we can do.

I've also suggested that you think about having us carry out the SATA mod at the same time as in RBS's post.

Good luck and I hope we can help you.

I normally lurk on the T4x forums and first time here. Can anyone tell me if, like the T43, the X32 Graphics chip is bonded to the motherboard with clear epoxy glue along the sides of the chip? I'm not talking about red, black or orange dots at the chip corners, but rather clear epoxy which looks op...

These old Thinkpads are very "repairable" and yours, like my own just keep on going despite the abuse heaped upon them - talking personally about mine!

Good to hear from you too and hope you enjoy whatever one you go for.

FTC has a good point, but there is a problem using just one copper plate. Some (and maybe all) original Aluminium GPU heatsinks have a raised section to contact the actual square GPU part of the chip, with the rest of the heatsink contacting the slightly higher VRAM chips (if you see what I mean!). ...

Since you're wanting to do a DIY reflow job, you'll need to remove any red, black or orange dots around the chip (there may be none). Remove them by gently heating (a temperature of a lot less than solder melting point is needed) the chip until you can flick them off. The reason for doing this is th...

+blank+

I hardly ever frequent this forum but came across a lot of posts relating to the Nvidia GPU issues on T6x when doing a search for some other information. Nvidia GPU's fitted to T6x's had design faults, and more details are here . Typical symptoms are that the laptop starts running much hotter than u...

Oh deary me!! I started off writing a whole lot but realised it was more general information about reballing and reflowing issues that had nothing to do with this topic, so I've I've posted it in Off Topic here . Onto this one, these lot don't have a clue and make a whole lot of misleading and erron...

The link Neil supplied is to boards I've reballed and are sold through The Board Room. Years ago I started in this business reflowing, that is to heat the chips up until the solder balls (hopefully) melt, the idea being that any broken solder joints are remade. Whilst this is good in theory, in prac...

Iv'e just re-read your reply Ron - didn't see the little word "above" and thought you meant the phrase "little different Easter egg"!!!

I'm just too literal!

Thanks for the lovely story Daniel - I've become quite down in recent weeks with one thing and another, and this has really lifted my spirits.

Oh for the simple life eh?

Nah, don't get that. I guess UK Firefox is too polite or something!!

I'd forgotten about this topic until now and it's bought back memories of my time in Type Approval back in the early '80's and then more specialist testing of PC's and laptop systems in the '90's. As you say Johan, there's very little to worry about radiation from Thinkpads and the like since they w...

Which country are you from? I ask this because we're based in UK and repair Thinkpads. I'd be happy to have a look at it for you if that helps.

If interested could you PM me with your email address and I'll get back to you.

It's all very strange and don't have any more suggestions, but nonetheless it's been very interesting.

With thanks to RealBlackStuff - here's the System Update link.

Why don't they publish it in the drivers list??!!