Thinkpad T60 failing to boot

[phil917k]

I have an old T60 which has been fun to keep going all these years. It is unfortunately now failing to boot. The symptoms are:
- I plug in the power lead
- the battery light starts flashing orange and the power lead light next to it shows green
- I press the power button to boot
- both lights go out and nothing else happens.

Can anyone speculate what might be the problem? Obviously, I didn't use the machine for anything serious - just a bit of tinkering and proving that it was possible to keep old hardware going.

[dr_st]

Can be many different issues with the power circuitry. Just to be sure - did you try without the battery? Did you try a different power adapter? Or did you try booting just with the battery? Without a power adapter plugged in?

[Glaurung-quena]

It could have died. Or it could be upset about something fixable.

Remove all the drives, remove the battery, remove the RAM, insert some RAM that you've tested on a different system and are certain is working OK. See if you get the Lenovo splash screen or not. If you have the ability to do so, try it with a different power supply made by a different company (if you've been using a 3rd party adapter, try with a Lenovo adapter, and vice-versa).

If none of that enables it to power on and POST, odds are the motherboard is DOA.

I have seen the symptom you describe a number of times with dead RAM, but I have also seen it with a hard drive that's not quite fully plugged in, and on a system that just flat out refuses to work with Lenovo branded power supplies but works just fine with a 3rd party Cooler Master universal AC adapter. But most often, I see it on systems that are DOA.

If the motherboard is dead, you can look on Ebay for a cheap T60 with a working motherboard - prices have gone up, but "for parts" T60's (that work fine but have something wrong with the screen/keyboard, or maybe are just lacking a battery/charger/hard disk) still show up every so often for around $60-70-ish with shipping. Actually come to think of it, IIRC several bottom cases (no screen, no keyboard or palmrest, just the motherboard installed in the bottom case) showed up just the other day.

Sadly the supply of affordable bare T60 motherboards appears to have dried up completely on Ebay except for the widescreen version.

[phil917k]

Thanks for your replies. I tried re-seating the RAM and with different RAM chips and also with the battery removed - still nothing. Any further course of action would involve spending money which doesn't really make sense so I'll call it a day and with some regret consign the machine to the electronics recycling.

[axur-delmeria]

Remove all drives and RAM, then try powering it up. If you don't get the 1-3-3-1 beep error code, it's probably DOA.

[Glaurung-quena]

Remove all drives and RAM, then try powering it up. If you don't get the 1-3-3-1 beep error code, it's probably DOA.

Considering the vast number of DOA systems I have seen that still generate that beep code if you take away their RAM, I don't think that's a useful diagnostic.

[Glaurung-quena]

Thanks for your replies. I tried re-seating the RAM and with different RAM chips and also with the battery removed - still nothing. Any further course of action would involve spending money which doesn't really make sense so I'll call it a day and with some regret consign the machine to the electronics recycling.

Sell it for parts. Working screens, especially, have become somewhat rare and go for $50 or more (no need to take the lid apart, just sell the complete lid assembly). Keyboards also sell quite quickly for $25 or so. Sending it to recycling brings us one step closer to the day when no one will be able to repair their old machines because there are no longer any spare parts available.

[axur-delmeria]

Remove all drives and RAM, then try powering it up. If you don't get the 1-3-3-1 beep error code, it's probably DOA.

Considering the vast number of DOA systems I have seen that still generate that beep code if you take away their RAM, I don't think that's a useful diagnostic.

Getting that error beep code means that the BIOS started the POST (power on self test) and stopped due to a RAM error.

But if you don't get that beep code when there's no RAM installed, that means that the problem happens so early the BIOS didn't even reach the RAM test. That points to power, processor, or chipset problems.