T20 Motherboard Replaced. Help Needed.

[alboneus]

Greetings,
Yesterday I replaced the dead motherboard on my trusty T20 with a refurb I bought on ebay. After physical inspection, I placed the necessary components on it & gave it power, I was able to get to the BIOS menu just fine, so I installed it. After hooking everything up, I tried booting it again only to encounter a lone beep followed by a non-stop string of continuous short beeps. I can get to the Windows 2k log in screen only by pressing F8. I can't log in because my keyboard is non-functioning at that point.
I'm a bit of a newb when it comes to laptop hardware, so I consulted the IBM Thinkpad HMM. It gave me no help at all aside from something about retaining/restoring serial numbers & the UUID from the EEPROM. Will this have to be done in order to get my T20 going?
Any further assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[egibbs]

You might well need to update the machine type and serial numbers in EEPROM, but if your keyboard isn't working you have more basic problems.

Take it apart again and double check everything. Look for bent pins, connectors that are off by 1 or more pins or rows of pins, etc. Anything that you have messed with is suspect.

If you can't find anything obviously wrong you may have bought a dud board or the wrong board for that machine.

Good Luck,

Ed Gibbs

[Stargate199]

Did the BIOS give you a 301 error? That error is keyboard related and could possibly need to be replaced. I do not know that changing the serial number on the motherboard would cause something like this. This sounds like there is something physical going on.

[alboneus]

Thank you both for your input!
I finally got some time to play around with it some more. The BIOS gives me no erros & the keyboard works beautifly in the BIOS menu too. It's when I get to the Windows 2k login menu (which I can only get to by hitting the F8 key, etc or selecting a temporary boot device) where the keyboard & center mouse button refuse to work.
Also, I noticed that it keeps trying to boot off the Intel Boot Agent. That's when it begins beeping.
The pointer will move with a USB mouse & I'm currently (at work) and trying to locate a USB keyboard to attempt to log in to Windows. Could it also possibly be a driver issue? I'm stumped.

[alboneus]

I fixed my boot problem with a BIOS update, but my keyboard/mouse button problem still persists. I'm able to use it just fine in the BIOS menu, but not once Windows loads. I tried to reinstall the keyboard drivers & took the keyboard out/re-insterted it, but no dice. Only USB peripherals work. Any more suggestions?

[egibbs]

Well I'm stumped.

I agree that if it work in BIOS and not in Windows it must be driver or OS related. But if you've already reinstalled the driver with no change...?

Maybe the driver in your install is the wrong one for the new MB? Is the FRU # of the replacement MB the same as the old one, or did you go to an upgraded board in the process?

Ed Gibbs

[alboneus]

Problem solved. I swapped out the keyboard with one from a T22 & it came up great. I'd never seen that one before. Weird.
But it works now & I'm oh so very happy. Thanks again egibbs & Stargate199 for your help