Thinkpads Forum

I have a T61 motherboard and screen and am trying to test it. All the plastics, including the keyboard were destroyed from the computer being left in a hot car in direct sunlight. I am trying to test it the board, proc, ram and screen are good and have everything hooked up outside the case and cannot figure out for the life of me how to get it to turn on without a keyboard. Does anyone have any ideas? Could I use my T60 keyboard?

The keyboards of my 14" T60p and 15" T61p look very similar. So you may be able to use your T60 keyboard. Alternatively, you could use the power button of the advanced (mini) dock, if you have one.

no dock so i guess i will try my t60 keyboard and keep my fingers crossed

plug USB keyboard

Well the keyboard physically plugged in where it was supposed to but no power. Going to assume the board is dead since I know my T60 power supply works. Battery doesn't need to be plugged in does it?

EDIT: My thinkpad USB keyboard doesn't have a power button but I tried it anyway; no luck there either.

T60/T61 do share keyboards, so if your mobo was good it should have booted ...

thats what i was figuring. Considering how the outside looked I wasn't expecting a whole lot from the innards. Wish I knew if that processor was still good... and do I need that third antenna lead for the 4965 wireless card to work in my T60?

well the ram works. yay.

You can use the 4965 card with just the main/aux antennas, it should work fine at a/b/g speeds with that just fine.

If I may ask, what happened to the plastics?

Have you tried to remove everything (memory too; but leave the CPU in ) and see if it powers up? If one of the daughter cards has gone bad it may prevent the system from turning on. This is based upon A3x and T2x systems that I have diagnosed.

completely melted. i work at a pc recycling place and the person came in with it. Looked like it was in a fire. He said he left it on the front seat of his car in direct sunlight all day. Came out in the evening to get it and instead of a practically new T61 there was a partially melted T61. I trying to find what I did with the pictures.

I tried removing everything except proc. still no power, no post beep, no fan spin nothing...

found the pictures but they are blurry and I dont remember what the size limit on here is for pics. Could have been a poster child for the accidental damage warranty.

Inline images, around 50KB. Or you could simply post a link to where it's hosted.

From the description of the melted plastic, it must have been exposed to temperatures near or over 200F (melting point of ABS plastic). I wouldn't have thought that the interior of a car could get that hot without some extra help.

I didn't either but there is no smell of fire, smoke or any other accelerant so unless they took a heat gun to it...

img]http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/7384 ... nm5.th.jpg[/img]

img]http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/8924 ... ye6.th.jpg[/img]

Note from Admin: The size limit is 0k if you don't put a warning in the subject line.

Would have been a perfect entry for 'Legends of thinkpad' had the motherboard worked