Spares for refurbishing T41?

[electrizer]

Hello all!

Just a question. Does anybody know a website - apart from eBay - or a place locally (I'm in London, UK) where I can get good condition spare parts for T41? I wanted to get it up to scratch for my wife and I need the LCD cover or the entire lid, (brand, not shiny) new keyboard and, the most importantly, an unsoldered, not tampered with motherboard (doesn't have to be brand new). I would appreciate any help.

Best,
Przemek

[RealBlackStuff]

Try putting a want-to-buy (WTB) ad in our Marketforum.
Plenty of forum members in the UK!

[Harryc]

...and if the problem with the existing systemboard is a loose GPU, take a look into this UK based reballing service - http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73945

[poshgeordie]

Hi - was it you who emailed us at Reflow Repairs this morning? If not then it was someone else with the same first name - must be more common than I thought!

Regarding the bits you need, we may have some if not all of what you're after. I can get back to you on Monday when I'm back in the office if that helps.

Re the motherboard - we reball the GPU and Southbridge chips. This means that the chips are removed from the motherboard, the old solder balls replaced and the renovated chips reflowed (resoldered) back onto the motherboard. This will effectively restore the board back to near new condition again - in many

If it wasn't you who contacted me, have a look at the RH blue banner for chip reflowing which gives you more information about what we do, contact details etc.

[electrizer]

poshgeordie, it was me indeed who contacted you. However, is that solution of reballing the chip permanent? I read it somewhere on this forum that it only works for some time.

Best,
Przemek

[poshgeordie]

Reballing the SB (or GPU) compared with reflowing IS definitely permanent, but so can reflowing be.

The reason is that reflowing simply heats up the solderball set (Ball Grid Array or BGA) and resolders them back onto the motherboard. But the reason for them becoming unsoldered in the first place is that the lead-free solder used on most of them breaks down over time with hot - cold operating temperature cycles and causes oxidisation around the balls as well.

Also I have seen evidence using a special endoscope (miniature microscope) which clearly shows that the solder balls aren't always properly soldered to the motherboard during manufacture because the flow soldering process is too fast for these "huge" chips and they don't become hot enough to make proper solder joints.

When we reball, we use solder balls which don't suffer from this.

We also use a special camera system which lets us watch the solder balls melting in real time and thus we know that we know that the solder balls are properly soldered.

Hope that helps and please get back to me with any questions.

Kind regards

Nick