Replacement T42p motherboards -- preferred FRUs?

[Chris Thorne]

I've got a 15-inch Flexview T42p here that I bought late last year and I just absolutely love it. I find I prefer it to the T60 we also have in the household.

However, I was distracted at the time of purchase, and didn't run all of the careful tests that one should do on a secondhand machine. I realized just this week that the USB ports and Bluetooth are inop. It may well have arrived in that condition. And was out of warranty by then in any case.

No signs of the infamous GPU error. And the machine works fine for USB with a PCMCIA adapter. Rock solid in every other respect. So I'm okay for the moment, but over the longer term I will probably want to replace this mobo. I'm patient enough to wait for a bargain to show up, but want to think carefully about what to get.

Current mobo FRU is a 27K9987. Looking around, and checking the archives here, I see several FRUs for equivalent boards, notably 39T5475 and 42T0273.

My best guess is that, given the high rate of field failures of boards with GPU issues or USB issues, that IBM/Lenovo were slipstreaming in production changes along the way to try to improve reliability.

Would I be correct in assuming that larger numbers are better? That a 39T5475 represents later production than a 27K9987, and that a 42T0273 is later still?

If anyone can set me straight on the question, I'd be much indebted to them.

[aaa]

I don't think anybody's noticed a pattern with these. Red "glue" started appearing on the GPUs at some point, but those fail too.

[Brad]

Unfortunately I don't believe there are any patterns in FRU's. I would be surprised if this particular board is even being produced any longer. Any that I have seen have a 2005 date stamp including recent replacements. Unless there is an extended warranty most if not all of these ThinkPads are certainly post warranty. I can help if you are interested. Send a PM.

Brad

[Chris Thorne]

I would be surprised if this particular board is even being produced any longer. Any that I have seen have a 2005 date stamp including recent replacements.
Brad

I'm sure that production of these boards is long since over and done.

But if I have the choice between (and can map to an FRU), let us say an early-2004 versus a late-2005 production motherboard, my assumption would be that the later unit would be somewhat more durable. Not least because of assembly gremlins having been found and squelched.

I try to avoid buying the first year of production of an automobile model for very similar reasons.

[richk]

I am not sure that later is always better. Many things were going on during the time T4x machines were produced. They tried to address the gpu problem by the glue dots. Also, they were forced to move away from lead-based solder. I'm not sure the later connections were better. They are certainly harder to fix.