Thinkpads Forum

hi,
bought a late T61p type 6457-8LG from 08/09. after replacing DIMM still one long and two short piep. ((

in the meantime I also ordered a 2504 dock to use with PCI-e graphics, but I'd like to keep it portable, so the question is:
which mainboard with intel-graphics replaces the 42W203x please? the x is unreadable, see photo:



heatpipe:


the fan looks clean.
no signal on external VGA.

ThinkPad T61p NH08Lxx 6457 8LG
Core2Duo T7700
2 GB RAM
15.4" (1680x1050)
Bluetooth, WLAN, 1394-Firewire, FPR
Mobile Intel PM965 Express
NVIDIA Quadro FX 570m, 256MB
DVD multi-recorder

This is not the motherboard's FRU. What you are looking for, is on a sticker under the RAM slots (different thinkpad but have a look as an example http://sishardware.com/imgs/a/a/q/u/q/i ... _3_lgw.jpg).

If you still can't find the FRU, you can search here or here for a complete breakdown of all FRUs (assuming, that no one swapped the original parts in the first place, that is).

ok, thanks, there are 2 other stickers under RAM but the field FRU label is empty.
no sign that there ever was one. found data via s/n and type:

The T61 mobo P/N is visible when you remove the battery!

@RealBlackStuff:
FRU 44C3931
under barcode P42W3420

Alright, sorry about the location confusion on my part, but the parts list you showed a screenshot of, shows the FRU as well (third from bottom).

given this data, which mainboard with intel-graphics would fit? I tried to https://duckduckgo.com but w/o luck so far.

Grab the list from http://t61.wikispaces.com/ and choose any from the 15.4 widescreen list with Intel graphics. So, 42w7651 and 42w7875. Your CPU would work in either and they would physically fit. But, bare motherboards tend to cost higher rather than half-broken whole laptops, so maybe you would be better off by finding one as such.

Unfortunately if you have a hard GPU failure with no-boot, you're not going to have much success trying to use an external GPU in your 2503 dock as it will require at least a partially working GPU in order to boot the laptop.

This is far from a "solution" and although it's pinned in this forum as a solution, I personally feel this is misleading.

ilakast wrote:bare motherboards tend to cost higher rather than half-broken whole laptops, so maybe you would be better off by finding one as such.

Keep in mind that buying motherboards in partial laptops like this often comes with a surprize like liquid damage or other problems. Generally it's very risky buying boards from auction sites, I prefer to source them from complete laptops, you may pay a little more but in my mind it's well worth saving the headache of dealing with partially working boards, liquid spill damage, boards with thermal issues, charging circuit problems, and a hose of other potential reasons the "bargain board" could be no bargain at all in the long run.

0liver wrote:in the meantime I also ordered a 2504 dock to use with PCI-e graphics, but I'd like to keep it portable, so the question is:

I just realized that you said "2504" dock, this is the "mini-dock" and doesn't have the PCI-e slot. You'd need the 2503 dock, a pci-e graphic card that fits and an internal gpu that works enough to allow the laptop to boot.

oh!!! thanks a lot. I try to cancel the order of the 2504 it wasnt yet shipped. (if that fails, i can still use it for one of my other T6*s)

on a very sunny summer day, don't laugh ;) removing just the fan assembly, I heated the GPU for at least 2 minutes with sunlight and magnification glas:

(the photo was taken while under sunshade)

let it cool down, then I put back keyboard, RAM, and palmrest. on power on still 1 long, 2 short.

made a test to melt tin with magnification glas (x2). it doesn't!

I retried w/o success a few times and then left power on for a short while.
off/on again and I see the thinkpad logo. )))

pressed blue and checked bios: v2.24 from 2008 (with 1.08 FW).
put in usb-stick to program bios for undervolting, but on boot didn't recognize the usb-stick with F12.

(as there is no disk nor dvd-drive inside, it tried network boot.)

restarted, set boot-mode to diagnostic knowing that this would allow to detect usb-device.
saved and rebooted. a short peep and display message: no fan.

aha! I had forgotten to plug the fan connector back.
did it and restarted. fan is running. again 1 long, 2 short.
let it run for a while. tried reboot again a few times w/o success.

is there a chance, running again w/o fan, and then first let it cool down completely before restarting with fan connected? (which is what's recommended when baking the mobo in an oven) What can go wrong? there seems to be an overheating protection. so it wouldn't kill the CPU, right?

it works great now and it's undervolted already. )))

put a very thin and small copper-plate on top of GPU and used a solder-iron with a bit of tin on top of the plate. heated for about 2 mins. (this time I didn't forget the fan-plug.)

the chip to be heated

the copper-plate bottom

the iron, tin, copper-plate-top on top of nvidia-chip (ignore remainders of old clue on this side)

copper-plate bottom-view from after the iron applied

the result after undervolting (and setting BIOS power config to enabled/max. battery/max battery/balanced/balanced to keep the CPU cooler too and to save power), GPU temp: 66°C [temp1: lmsensor nouveau-pci-0100] (room temp. 20°C):

after idle for a while and in screen-saving mode, GPU temp fell to 60°C:

The heat isn't actually fixing anything, in fact it's proving that you do indeed have fractured circuits within the gpu. When you heat the chip these microscopic circuits are pressed together and make contact, but as the chip heats and cools some more it will separate again.

Replacing the gpu is extremely problematic so a new board is the only viable option.

it was quite foreseeable: the long-short-short pieps is back. :( rarely used it in summer.