Thinkpads Forum

Hi, can anybody help, I'm stuck in Indonesia with my Thinkpad, and cannot use it outside of my hotel room; not much use.

The screen in on 80% of the time, when plugged into the mains, but occasionally, just goes off for no reason.

When it is running on battery, the screen is constantly off. Everything else is working OK, and I can see the display just very, very faintly.

I wonder if the problem is with the ribbon that will connect the laptop to the screen, but I am not technically minded, so this is far as my suspicion goes.

I hope I can repair it myself, as if I take it to a shop here, I may never see the laptop again, or it might come back loaded internally with a Commodore 64.

The model is S30. There is no forum for S Series IBMs, which I think were only made for Japanese market.

Please reply.

Ooh, the S series ... I saw a couple of these in the lab I worked at for 15 months. They were sooooo cute.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:S30

Try adusting the power management settings. Also try reading the Hardware Maintenance Manual (check the FAQ for download link) and try reseating all cables. Try going through the troubleshooting list as well.

maybe you should just try Fn+Home key function to adjust the brightness

If I had to guess, I would say your backlight is going out. The backlight is a fluorescent bulb. When the voltage goes below a certain point, the light goes out. You should be able to get the backlight replaced. There are places you can send a laptop to, to get it's backlight replaced (try Google). Note that I have not personally experienced this problem, but that is what I think. Also, I am not personally familiar with your model of ThinkPad.

Thanks guys, give me a couple of days to go through all this & I'll be back