T21 ~ Disco Pulse of Death

[fleamourian]

All lights go disco, flashing on & off rapidly in a never ending cycle when depressing power button. Have to pull battery. Have tried spare keyboard & am hoping to trawl the vast experience that is the ThinkPad Forums.

Is it the end for my T21? (Have been itching to upgrade.) Or can I eek some more mileage outa the usually stoical made in 2k machine?

[Harryc]

What does that mean "have to pull battery". Does the machine boot normally if you do that?

[fleamourian]

The laptop tries to boot repeatedly in a rapid cycle. Holding power button does not switch off, have to pull battery to starve power.

Seemed to power up fine on AC only. Have reseated battery multiple times & finally managed a good boot under battery power. Maybe these Chinese batteries are a false economy?

If the problem rears it's head again will try to boot AC only. Since the problem has gone away, not really sure of culprit...

[Harryc]

Sounds like you need a new battery.

[robert213]

I use Battery MaxiMiser that came with IBM Recovery CD to check date first used and battery health. Left-click on the lime-green icon on your system tray.

[fleamourian]

Only problem, my laptop has long been liberated from it's Redmond shackles!

Seriously, XP ran like poo.

[fleamourian]

Problem disappeared for a while but returned today. Powers up, cuts out, powers up, cuts out. Has periods where it works fine.

Is it time to bin it, do you think?

[rkawakami]

If another battery causes the same power-up problem or it happens when the system is only powered by the AC adapter, then I would suspect something in the T21's power controller circuitry. You can try cleaning the board with some isopropyl-dipped cotton swabs around any of the Maxim and Analog Devices controllers (esp. MAX1632 and ADP3421 ICs). You may be lucky and all the problem is some contamination on the board. If it's an issue of a leaky capacitor or errant resistor, then you probably should toss the board unless you have the skills, tools and patience to do SMT board repairs.

Wild suggestion: Try pulling the MiniPCI card and see if this helps with the consistency of a good power-up. I've seen bad cards cause all sorts of problems with the T2x systems.

[fleamourian]

Will it run OK with Mini PCI card pulled?

I ask because thinking T21 ready for the bin I pulled HDD, PCMCIA card & RAM ,as only parts of value. Reassembled to trouble shoot & now when trying to browse the web (Fire Fox/Chrome) The HDD & CPU thrash & max out. Nothing is responsive till browser is killed. I also notice Plymouth boot animation is sluggish.

Is this a symptom of the same problem? Or have I damaged parts with static? Most strange...

[rkawakami]

The MiniPCI card is either a modem only or combined modem/ethernet card. So yes, the system will (should) boot fine and operate normally except for being able to go online via dial-up or LAN. Slowness of the system can be related to, but not limited to, insufficient memory (less than 256MB nowdays if talking about Windows; don't know what *nix requires), a slower than normal processor (i.e. SpeedStep), hard drive issues, and software problems. If a browser is the only program that hangs up the system, then try another browser or re-install it.

You could also try running the PC Doctor suite of tests and see if that points you in a specific direction. Download it from here:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloa ... IGR-4YZM3F (requires 3 diskettes)

It's also available from my personal site as an .ISO file, suitable for burning onto a CD:

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/ibm_t2x/ibm_t22_pcdiag.iso

[fleamourian]

Slowness of the system can be related to, but not limited to, insufficient memory (less than 256MB nowdays if talking about Windows; don't know what *nix requires)

Spot on! I'm pretty sure only 1 x 256MB stick was being detected 'til I reseated both RAM modules. Never noticed until I tried to run Parted Magic live CD, 256MB was not enough to run LXDE environment let alone XFCE, I believe.

The two chips that merit special attention when cleaning with isopropyl, are they on top of the main board below keyboard? Just thinking about access.

[rkawakami]

Fortunately, both of the ICs I referenced earlier are on the top side of the motherboard. Several years ago I started a couple of threads about the hardware in the T2x systems. They include links to scans made of the motherboard, with a "map grid" laid over the image. The one for the top side of the T21 is here:

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/ibm_t2x/t21_ ... legend.jpg

The ADP3421 IC is at the lower left corner of D6. It is one of the main DC/DC controllers in the system. The MAX1632 is at E6/F6. It is the battery charging controller. I'm assuming that most of the components connected to those power controllers are also mounted on the top but it is certainly conceivable that the bottom side also has its share of parts.

ref: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=47660 (T21 motherboard documentation)

[fleamourian]

Received my bottle of 99.9% isopropyl through the post this morning. Have cleaned both chips mentioned, though they did not seem fouled TBH. Will see if power problems persist before pulling Mini PCI card as a last resort.

Laptop lost power mid flow last night, becoming confused & trying to reboot itself. Ho-hum, may have to put out to pasture. It's lasted 5 yrs odd, with one change of mobo. Need to spend £500 min on a used ThinkPad these days for something decent. Guess I better get saving.

[fleamourian]

@rkawakami

Cleaned both chips, running sweet for what is the second week now. I have seen failing hardware remedy itself before coming back with a vengeance, like three months later. But I would like to think fixed!

Only other thing was uninstalling Ubuntu laptop mode which in the past has caused some ThinkPads to become unstable.

So here's hoping for another 5 yrs of service...