Thinkpads Forum

Can any ThinkPad T61/T61p owners shed light on a small mystery?

I noticed that there is an unused screw hole on the base of my ThinkPad T61. If you hold the machine with the base facing you, with the battery at the top, the unused screw opening is near the upper left corner of the base, about one half-inch below the left-hand corner of the battery.

When I noticed this, I got mildly annoyed at Lenovo for selling me an unfinished machine - until I saw that the same screw opening is empty on a ThinkPad T61p owned by someone else. That means that the only two T61 models I've seen recently have the same empty screw opening.

I can't find any reference to this opening in the HMM, but maybe I haven't looked closely enough. Is that screw opening empty on all standard T61 models? And if it isn't empty, what sort of screw belongs there?

Thanks for any insight into this non-urgent question.

There are 2. These are drain holes. If you spill a little liquid on the keyboard, it will deain into little areas and those holes route the liqiuid to the outside.

Edward Mendelson wrote:Can any ThinkPad T61/T61p owners shed light on a small mystery?

I'm 99% sure you mean the screw hole to lock down the ultrabay drive release mechanism. By default, there's no screw in there to allow quick removal of ultrabay devices.
You should have received a spare screw along with your machine that fits (I did with my T60).

That sounds exactly right, but I'm away from the office and can't check until tomorrow. This certainly fits the location, and I remember an extra screw in the box. Thank you!

(To respond to an earlier message - this isn't one of the keyboard drainage holes; those are on the other end of the base, and they don't have screw threads, as this one does.)

Sorry. I read it too fast. That is the security screw for the optical drive. You probably have a hex (allen) screw that can be put in if you are using it in a shared office and want to stop others from removing the optical drive. With the screw installed, you cannot remove the optical drive.

The drain holes have a little icon of a raindrop molded into the case next to them, IIRC.

More annoying is the usual vendor habit of using different length screws. Last time mine was serviced, they mixed up screws (I color marked the keyoard set and one had been moved off to a corner) and I have absolutely no idea where that "wrong" screw now goes, it is too short for the locations I tried to move it to.