Thinkpads Forum

Hello

Have a T61... with a fan problem.
It started last week when i noticed the laptop getting hot on the heatsink corner...
Restart - got the fan error.

So, I ordered a new fan

Installed it, and the new fan doesn't spin

Tried the fan from my friend's T61 (that i know for a fact have a working fan)

doesn't spin on my laptop

So I am guessing the fan "fuse (?)" is blown on my laptop's motherboard.... or something...

My question is, where can I fix the fan fuse? If not, where is a good spot that I can use to tap 3-5V to power the fan? I cannot afford a motherboard at the moment to do it "right" and those Quadro FX board's arent exactly cheap or easy to find!

Thank you!

Welcome to the forum.
Two questions right away:
1) did you plug in the fan?
2) did you clean off the old, and apply fresh thermal paste (preferably Arctic Silver 5) between CPU and fan?

It might be a fuse, but the fuse is not trivial to fix. It is about 1/32" long and soldered to the board with lead-free solder. You need better equipment than a Radio Shack soldering iron.

Hello

Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately, I did remember to plug the fan in :/ I am hopin I forgot to myself! I used the factory thermal paste from te heatsink I got. It's just a new inbox original IBM heatsink. Definately cleaned up all the old stuff!

I also put a voltage meter on the motherboard fan connector and it is not giving any power at the fan connector (even with the thinkpad fan controller set to 7.

About that really small fuse... Where uis it? I am considering just adding a big glop of solder on it and run it fuseless. I am sure I can't be worst off than whee I am right now.

so
i wired the fan to the USB....
and i noticed that it is not getting the fan rpm signal on the tp control.

it looks like the whole fan controller is dead?

The fuse is on the bottom, near the vga port. It is marked F4. You cannot put a blob of solder anywhere. There is a resistor for something else really close (half the length of the fuse). The quick fix is to solder another fuse on top, but without some sort of decent equipment, you won't get any kind of connection. I'm not sure what you are testing. The 3rd lead is tach pulses coming back from the fan. There is a mosfet between the fuse and the fan. If you are hooking anything to a USB port, it's likely you cooked it.

Hello

Sorry for the late reply. I pulled my board put and the fan fuse (if I am checking the right one) was fine. I end up wiring the red wire on the fan to one of the USB ports internally ( red wire to the 5v fan) it seems to be working fine now. Except for the loud noise, everything seems to be ok.