T30 boots perfect, no LCD display

[sizzleman]

I have read allmost the whole site about this issue. While there are some good answers, I am not sure if they apply or not. So, here it goes.

I bought this T30 2367-AU3 off of ebay hoping for something I can fix. The computer would boot, show an IBM logo for a second and cut out. The backlight would still be on and the brightness could be adjusted. It didn't detect the harddrive and go to the ole "no OS found." Fine, bad drive, no problem.

So, I take apart the TP to inspect the usual things. Well, I took it completely apart Checked all the fuses that I could find on the system board. Cleaned out dust and reseated all the connections on the lower half. Tried a reboot, and monitor was the same.

Took it a step further. I dismantled the LCD so that I could hold just the screen and have a free cable to move around to check for breaks. Still nothing. So I started testing the LCD cable by continuity seeing what pins when where, if at all. I had mixed results figuring there was a common ground you cannot see, or bad cable.

As I was running out of ideas, I assembled the whole thing. Fired it up and I had a time error, common, but then it gave me a 1802 error. Wasn't really sure why a Dell part was in there to begin with, but after some reading it made sence. I pulled out the card, rebooted and all the sudden I have windoze. Somehow, clearing the cmos let me use the harddrive again. Weird, but ok.

Somewhere among tearing this TP apart, that split second the IBM logo showed up was gone. But it would boot perfectly into windoze thru an external monitor. I tried pressing on certain spots on the LCD case and lightly on the LCD. I also tried moving the connectors on the ribblon cable and pressing on the GPU to no avail. Last thing I did was use the no-1802 bios hack thru the bootable cd iso. And, while it seemed to work to get the card accepted, the harddrive is not found again. Grr I say!

The guy I bought it from said the monitor just up and went one day. Not sure if he was using it or when he fired it up. He also said it was never dropped or anything like that. And this was connected to a port replicator, if that has any impact, I don't know.

I preordered an inverter thinking that would be it, but it wasn't. Now I have a LCD cable on the way and see how that goes. Perhaps someone would help me peice this puzzle together? Thanks for any help.

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to our forum.
Yours seems to be the standard story on T30s.
They work great on an external monitor, but the LCD refuses to cooperate.
The reason for this is, that the GPU has actually 2 parts, an analog part for the external monitor (which always seems to work), and a digital part for the internal LCD. This last bit is the one that goes belly-up sometimes.
Unless you are into tracing printed circuit boards, it's virtually impossible to repair this yourself.
Companies like Hammerhead can do this:
http://www.hammerheadtech.com/commerce/ ... 6259115635
Not cheap, but cheaper usually than buying a new mobo.