Thinkpads Forum

Okay, so I picked up a couple Thinkpad laptops on Craigslist (One dead screen, other just dead). I figured I would combine them to make a solid running Thinkpad.

The dead one turned out to just need a new battery and didn't have a power supply(score!)

The second one is really confusing me.

So I turn it on, and it works. You just can't see much, but if you shine a flash light on it, you can see everything in Windows there Keyboard and mouse work just fine.
I've seen this before, simple replace the inverter or CCFL, call it a day, right? Wrong.

I swap inverters, didn't work.

I swap the screens completely:
Both screens work just fine no problems at all on the first Thinkpad T60.
Both screens work, but don't light up(visible shining a bright light on it) on the second T60



I'm utterly confused here at this point. I don't know what else to look at. The previous owners were not much for information, and I am clueless on what to repair next.
Any ideas oh masters of the Thinkpad world?

Either a blown fuse on the motherboard, or a damaged motherboard connector. Either way, power is not getting to the inverter, but signal is.

Blown fuse? I didn't even know they had fuses... How would I go about changing that?

They are tiny fuses surface soldered to the motherboard. Most of them are label with an F plus a number. You can test them with a simple multi-meter for continuity. Almost impossible to replace, but only slightly less difficult to solder a new fuse on top of the blown one. I've tried a couple of times, but they are too tiny for me to work with. But if you have steady hands, excellent eye sight and a good super fine tip soldering iron, you might be able to manage it.

Any pictures of what we'd be looking for? I might know a guy who can do this for me, but I'd have to explain what the problem is to him and test them to figure out which one is bad first.

I don't have any pics, but seems I have seen some on the forum. I doubt you will find them with the forum search, but you might using Google or your favorite search engine. Enter your search terms followed by site:forum.thinkpads.com and see what comes up. Or just search the www for T60 fuse pictures, and you'll probably find some.

Edit: Did it myself here is a picture.

If you talk to member "realblackstuff", he might be willing to solder some fuses on it for you. He does good work, or it might be an option to just replace the board, I can get the T60 boards pretty cheap.