Thinkpads Forum

Not a good day here. While fitting a wireless antenna into a 570e I was given I managed to kill the system. Like an idiot I left the main battery in the laptop and the U.FL connector on the antenna shorted something on the motherboard. No idea where it hit, but the damage is done. The system still turns on, but the screen remains black. No response from keyboard commands and nothing on an external display. When attached to the docking bay, the optical drive spins up and the floppy seeks, but still nothing. I haven't yet pulled the motherboard from the case, but I doubt that will do any good. Any miracle suggestions?


Since I was given the 570e I've replaced the display hinges, gotten a dirt cheap 256MB low density so-dimm, bought an Intel 2915ABG wifi card and wireless antenna. Even with all the upgrades, I'm not really out any money since I sold off a bunch of extras that came with it and that paid for the upgrades. I'm debating whether or not I should bother tracking down a replacement motherboard at some point or just part the system out. There's a part # matching board on ebay for $19 shipped which isn't too bad but I'm still not sure. The 570e would make a nice little backup system to have kicking around, but I'm just not sure. If I do part it out I could probably pickup a decent X2x series after selling off everything from it, assuming I can sell everything for it. What would you guys do?

I'd start by pulling all hardware from the system (memory included) and see if that results in any beep codes. If there are none, then I'd consider the motherboard to be toast. Not that I'd eat it .

rkawakami wrote:I'd start by pulling all hardware from the system (memory included) and see if that results in any beep codes. If there are none, then I'd consider the motherboard to be toast. Not that I'd eat it .

Yeah, did all that with the exception of the 64MB hardwired onto the board and still nothing. The only thing left to pull is the PCMCIA cage and audio daughterboard. I even have the BIOS battery out. One new thing I discovered, if I press on a certain spot on the motherboard with my finger I can turn the system on. Caught me by surprise a bit. I'm going to fully tear thing down, but I'm pretty sure its done for unfortunately.

Ah, forgot we're talking about an ancient system with onboard memory . It is strange that the system powers up by simply touching a spot on the motherboard. Is your finger that conductive?

rkawakami wrote:Ah, forgot we're talking about an ancient system with onboard memory . It is strange that the system powers up by simply touching a spot on the motherboard. Is your finger that conductive?

I was quite "shocked" to say the least. I tried replicating it with an anti-static bag over my finger, but no dice. It's actually a bit unsettling that I'm able to get the thing to power on by touching the board. Maybe I've blown out a resistor or fuse, I'm going to probe around with my multimeter and see if anything is giving weird readings. Maybe I can get life back into this board.

Well, I went with the repair option. Got a replacement board from eBay for $19 shipped. The first board was quite screwed up, BIOS checksum errors and flaky video chip. The seller sent me another one right away and the system is back up and running. Got the MiniPCI broadcom card yesterday and setup the internal wireless and everything is working perfectly. Going to be a nice little system to have around.

Kaervak wrote:Got the MiniPCI broadcom card yesterday and setup the internal wireless and everything is working perfectly. Going to be a nice little system to have around.

Nice! The 570E is my favorite Thinkpad of all time. It's a sweet little system.

I have a 600x and cannot reinstall the PCMIA wifi card to work. How did you get yours to install??