Thinkpads Forum

kb3edk wrote:Rather than part the machine out or sell it on eBay I think I'll be replacing the mobo with the ATI equivalent, I've seen a few of these floating around online for $200ish (which is what I would have paid for a warranty extension anyway). They have the Radeon 3650 which seems to be on par with the Quadro 570M. While I'm tooling around quite nicely now on my new W520 I quite admire the overall sturdiness of my T61p along with its swanky IBM stickers... so I'm not ready to say goodbye to this box just yet.

Anyone else here done an nVidia to ATI retrofit? All the pictures I see look like it's exactly the same board right down to the millimeter aside from the GPU.

crashnburn wrote:I am wondering if I can do this kind of swap between T61 and X61T.. using the VGA driver disable trick? Arent they similar generation chipset etc?

Can this be done on XP only or Windows 7 as well?

kb3edk wrote:Hello fellow T61 owners,

Rather than part the machine out or sell it on eBay I think I'll be replacing the mobo with the ATI equivalent, I've seen a few of these floating around online for $200ish (which is what I would have paid for a warranty extension anyway). They have the Radeon 3650 which seems to be on par with the Quadro 570M. While I'm tooling around quite nicely now on my new W520 I quite admire the overall sturdiness of my T61p along with its swanky IBM stickers... so I'm not ready to say goodbye to this box just yet.

Anyone else here done an nVidia to ATI retrofit? All the pictures I see look like it's exactly the same board right down to the millimeter aside from the GPU.

king2048 wrote:Hi,

Does anybody know what the FRUs are for the replacement (non-defective) motherboards, or how they can be determined?

I have a T61 purchased in 2007; it has a failed NVS140M (i.e., G86 chip) with a 2007 date code. Acording to parts lookup (http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... sLookup.vm) the FRU for the mainboard is 41W1489. What would the FRU for its non-defective replacement be?

Any help would be appreciated.

eecon wrote:It does not work that way ..... the same boards and numbers were mixed with both good and bad Nvidia chips. You have to remove the keyboard and fan/heatsink, then read the date-code on the Nvidia chip itself (it will look like 0830A2 for the 30th week of 2008 as an example). Once you've done that post what you find and we'll see if it's a good one. Any Nvidia chip before the 28th or 29th week of 2008 is probably vulnerable.

Please read back a few pages through this thread to find most all your answers faster.

nvidia (R)
25N3CD 0725A2  <---- "0725" means it was produced in the 25th week of 2007.
A   TAIWAN
NB7101.00W
G86-740-A2 <-------- I need a G86-741-A2

kb3edk wrote:Thanks everyone for your very thoughtful responses! eecon, yours was especially useful as I have confirmed that what is being sold online as a T61p ATI motherboard is, in fact, pulled from a T500.

I'm going to start a separate thread in this forum under "Retrofit 15.4" T61p with T500 motherboard" and give this thread back to the folks who are still troubleshooting new instances of this defect.

Regards,

-Adam

king2048 wrote:Sorry, I should have been more clear. I already dismantled the laptop and checked the date code before posting. The full info:

Code: Select all

nvidia (R)
25N3CD 0725A2  <---- "0725" means it was produced in the 25th week of 2007.
A   TAIWAN
NB7101.00W
G86-740-A2 <-------- I need a G86-741-A2

The reason I'm asking about FRUs is that I want to be able to tell Lenovo exactly what part I need as a replacement, and I worry that if I give them the FRU for the old mainboard they'll ship me another one with an old (faulty) chip. I understand that older FRUs have a mix of bad and good chips, but I had also gotten the impression that, for a sufficiently new FRU, you'd be guaranteed a new chip. I'd gotten this idea from earlier posts in this thread, where people gave FRUs for both original and replacement mainboards, and these numbers differed.

So what FRU should one request to get the same mainboard but guarantee receiving a chip without the solder defect?

eecon wrote:Here you go (from my 15.4" T61 currently up on Ebay .... Note that the 14" T61 units may use different numbered mainboards):

king2048 wrote:Thanks! I actually have a 14.1" widescreen (and now, hopefully, I've finally managed to cover all the important details).

I've tried calling Lenovo support, and they don't seem to know themselves...

eecon wrote:Yes please .... let us know the codes you find on the Nivida chip. For the T61p series I believe the old chip would have G84-950-A2 and the newer ones after mid-July 2008 would be G84-951-A2, however the date code is the most important. Note that the numbers on the T61 vs the T61p chips will be different.

Try to get whomever sells you a replacment mainboard to understand about the date code on the Nvidia chip that comes pre-mounted on all boards ...... with a return guarranty if they send you a board with a pre-August 2008 Nvidia chip!

Amigaman wrote:Hi eecon,

Here's something interesting. My newly repaired T61p has a G84-950-A2, but it has a 2011 date code. I didn't even think they made these chips anymore!

Regards,

Ross..

eecon wrote: I'm tempted now to open up my two T61p units with "fixed" chips to confirm (and convert them to Artic Silver thermal paste while I'm at it).

In any event, I'd be real happy with your 2011 date code on the Nvidia chip .... nice going and congratulations.

Bánh mì wrote:I want to chime in here. Is having revision "A2" critical? I'm a bit confused in that I have a T61 purchased in late 2007 (third or fourth quarter and would need to check to get exact date). Using GPU-Z (but not disasembling the keyboard and heatsink which I wont do) it indicates my NVS 140M is a revision A2. But the release date panel indicates May 9, 2007. Not sure of GPU-Z refers to this as the original release date of the GPU of the actual chip in my T61. It does indicate revision A2 which seems inconsistent with previous comments about A2 being paired with motherboards in late 2008.

Lenovo is funky. I recall using an old version of some software and saw that they had put a 2006 production date LCD in my 2007 T61. But works fine and no issues for all these years.

Bánh mì wrote:Do you have knowledge of any software solutions to pull the information your point out from the GPU? I'm not keen on disassembling my T61 especially when it was built in 2007.

IMO, Lenovo should provide more transpercancy on the problems. When Toyota or other auto manufacturers do a recall they dont place time limits and dont penalize people who did pay for a warranty. Seems to me and as pointed out by someone else Lenovo's action is to place a limit on their liability when the fact of the matter is they sold a product which had a defect in design. When shipped it was defective due to the soldering.The proper remedy from a brand image and goodwill perspective is to just do a large scale recall and fix all units. If this were more of a consumer brand and not a niche brand it would come back to bite them in the behind hard resputationwise. It still can given a little publicity. Would make a great HBS case study on how not to run a business/manage a brand etc.

Verysad wrote:Is this repair worldwide ?

Verysad wrote:I am from bulgaria so am i ripped off ? Today i repla ed my motherboard but it was because my bios was flashed bad , any idea when the problem exactly shows up?
I mean after how many hours life of laptop or its random ? Is it possible that old laptops liks mine from 2007 not to have this problem ? My customer support here wont repair my laptop i am sure they are bad.

Verysad wrote:How about your units is it all repaired?