Thinkpads Forum

Hi all,

I recently had an incident with a cat and a glass of water, the result is that my Thinkpad Z61t can no longer charge the battery.

I opened up the laptop and there was a clear trace of the water around the connection with the battery. Furthermore the TPC8111 looks totally fried with one leg missing.
I am thinking that I could replace the mosfet, except I can't locate one in Denmark.

But is it worth the trouble, is it likely that other components is fried too?

The laptop works when plugged in, when the battery was still charged the status was plug no matter what.
The speedstep thing reduced the speed from 1.66GHz to 980MHz untill I disabled it in the bios, now it runs full speed.
It reports that there is a batteryfault when the battery is hooked up. It can no longer give any data about the battery.

Does anyone know where to find the mosfet?

Regards,
Peter

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

I tried two of my favorite suppliers of electronic parts: Mouser.com and Digikey.com. Both are out of stock at the moment and it also appears that at least Mouser would require a 2200 piece minimum order (!). These two usually offer single-quantity sales. Besides these companies, you might also try Farnell, Arrow and NuHorizons, although they deal mostly with wholesale transactions (not retail). However, they might be able to steer you to some local distributor / supplier. And then again, one of the members here, well, in Denmark anyway, might be able to supply you one from a donor motherboard.

Is it worth replacing that one part? I'd say that if it only amounts to a few US$, I'd give it a try. You could also be looking at a blown fuse somewhere so I'd take the time to look around the area where the TPC8111 is located and ohm out all of the fuses that you can find.

RS Component does not have it either, so I guess it will have to be either a similar mosfet or one unsoldered from another
board - or perhaps even both.

The donor board does not have to be from a Z61T. There are other thinkpad boards which uses the same mosfet.
I have seen it in a T41.

T2x thinkpads used a TPC8103, which in my opinion would be a good substitute - but it will possibly also be difficult to find.

I do not have any scrap board with a TPC8111 on it, but I can offer to take a TPC8103 off from a board and send it to you.

According to what I have been able to quickly find about Z61T, it does support a UltraBay battery, which means that there will be
2 battery connectors inside. And therefor also 2 TPC8111 chips - one for each battery connector.
So, if you are willing to give up on the UltraBay battery support, you may actually be able to just relocate the other TPC8111 within the same board.
Not to be recommended though - just an idea that crossed my mind.

SMA wrote:RS Component does not have it either, so I guess it will have to be either a similar mosfet or one unsoldered from another
board - or perhaps even both.

I do not have any scrap board with a TPC8111 on it, but I can offer to take a TPC8103 off from a board and send it to you.

According to what I have been able to quickly find about Z61T, it does support a UltraBay battery, which means that there will be
2 battery connectors inside. And therefor also 2 TPC8111 chips - one for each battery connector.
So, if you are willing to give up on the UltraBay battery support, you may actually be able to just relocate the other TPC8111 within the same board.
Not to be recommended though - just an idea that crossed my mind.

Hi

Thanks for the offer regarding shipping one to Denmark, it is kind of you but too much trouble in my opinion.
As it is for now I am using the laptop without battery, I will keep my eyes open and if I find a TPC8111 or TPC8103 I will try fixing the motherboard, if I don't it's okay.
I have tried Farnell too, they do not have the mosfet in their listings, it seems to be hard to find.

Thanks to both of you for the input, I will give sound if I get the laptop fixed.

Regards,
Peter

As far as I know, TPC8111 may be replaced with STS10PF30L (STMircroelectronics)

Just found that a Toshiba Tecra M2 has 5 TPC8111 mosfets on its motherboard.

Not much of a surprise, since TPC* chips are made by Toshiba.