Well, it's still broken, but I've made some progress. The underlying problem seems to be that the resistance between 5V and ground (as measured from at least one of the USB ports) is very low, about 100 Ohm. Some of the inductors show the same sort of symptom -- slight resistance to ground, but much...

So, uh, this probably isn't going to improve anyone's opinion of my observational skills, but I just realized there are two bios chips on the x2100 motherboard? One's by the mpcie slots and is a Macronix MX25L12835F, and the other's by the USB-C port -- that one's a Winbond 25Q80DVSIG. Finding this ...

So I pulled the EEPROM, and I think the results are mixed. * EEPROM doesn't work, is unreadable. (I can't rule out the possibility of damage from my poor desoldering technique, though.) * On the board footprint, pin 8 still shows about 7K resistance to ground. This might give us a decent avenue for ...

Well, this is an interesting outcome. Supplying voltage to the EEPROM VCC pin makes my Raspberry Pi turn off, probably for self-protection. A meter shows about 7K ohm resistance between VCC on the flash chip and ground. This is. . . lower than I would expect. (A reference BIOS chip in a different bo...

That strikes me as a really good idea, and I have had to flash the bios externally before, so I have most of it already set up. I'm not confident it'll help, but it's definitely worth trying, thanks. I'll probably give it a go tomorrow. (The device I plugged in was a development board powered from a...

Exactly the same symptom here. (I started a thread about mine.)

Sure would be nice if this had an easy answer like "replace ZD1."

Well, Rossmangroup appears to not be interested. It is "a device we don't work on."

Well, it's worth trying. I know Rossmann has a good reputation, but I don't really consume streaming video and view people associated with it with suspicion. Still, not as if I have much choice. I'm still pretty depressed about the whole thing. I used the laptop for a few months and it was completel...

Well, I seem to have destroyed my X2100. It won't turn on, and something in the power circuitry makes a rapid 'chirp' when plugged in. My guess is that there's a short somewhere, and the chirp is the power supply turning on, exceeding current limits, and turning off repeatedly. (So this is at least ...

Great, thanks, I think that overcomes my misgivings.

Hi all, I'm thinking about buying an x210 -- apparently cnmod.cn still has a couple available. As far as I can gather, they're totally trustworthy. Is this correct? Has there been anyone who's sent them money and then had problems? I emailed lcdfans@qq.com, and they said to send money with Western U...

You may want to try solder suspended in flux, if you haven't already -- like the type used for rework that comes in a syringe. I would try applying it to the target cap and suspending the sense wire inside the flux. Mechanically, a 90 degree joint is the weakest, so it must be pretty close to perfe...

So I managed to get in contact with nitrocaster and he informed me that the missing bit on my board was a 10k resistor, but that I should fine just bridging it. So I did, and now everything works nicely. I can access the BIOS just fine. As to the other annoyances I mentioned in my last post, those w...

Well, so here's my experience with the mod so far. This is on an X230, without the sense wire, running Fedora 27. Pros: * does what it says on the tin. display looks amazing. * brightness control works (including auto-dim on inactivity.) * battery life seems about the same as before. Cons: * BIOS do...

It would be difficult for me to get a picture. Believe me, it's gone. Sure, I might have accidentally removed it. But what was it, and what can I replace it with? There should be a capacitor or a resistor there, can't see what that is. If that's missing, you may have messed it up when connecting you...

Hi all, I've been installing my rev. 5 kit, and i've had a lot of trouble with the sense wire. Now that I examine the PCB more carefully, I'm not seeing a passive component on the two pads closest to the sense wire connector, directly under the "b" in "by nitrocaster". Is that okay? If not, what's s...