Thinkpads Forum

Today I had Onsite Warranty service at my home to replace my July 2007 built T61's motherboard due to the Nvidia GPU failure issue. All went well except we forgot to test the SD reader at the front of the 15.4" T61. This evening I realize the reader is dead ..... the driver for it loads and reports it's working but it's really not (WinXP Pro SP3).

I swapped the hard drive into my other T61p and it's 4-in-1 works fine and also booted both machines with a Linux Ubuntu CD ...... the repaired T61 does not see the 4-in-1 slot or any SD cards while the un-touched T61p still reads and sees the SD cards in Linux.

After looking through the Hardware Maintainance Manual from Jan 2008, it does not address whether the 4-in-1 slot is part of the main board or a separate plug in device.

Anyone happen to recall?

Either way, another service call is warranted before my warranty expires this August ... Thanks.

You should also look into renewing/extending your warranty!

Since your motherboard was replaced, i guess the BIOS settings will be different from before.
I'd first check and correct the settings in the BIOS if i were you. Maybe the SD card reader is
simply disabled, and you'd only have to reenable it?

rumbero wrote:Since your motherboard was replaced, i guess the BIOS settings will be different from before.
I'd first check and correct the settings in the BIOS if i were you. Maybe the SD card reader is
simply disabled, and you'd only have to reenable it?

Thanks for the advice .... we already looked and set the BIOS using my T61p sitting next to it as a reference during the Onsite Warranty service call (my T61p always had identical BIOS settings from before). Please note these are used as identical spare units to each other with the exception of the NVS 140M / FX570M GPU difference, and fortunately both Nvidia GPUs use the same video drivers. I can swap the HDD back in forth between the two without skipping a beat. I had to actually do just that, only minutes before a presentation at a client's office, on Monday when the T61 choked at power-up with the infamous Nvidia GPU Long-Short-Short beep failure. The client's VP walked in 15 seconds after swapping the HDD over to the T61p, and the day was saved .... as was the presentation and my consulting fee.

Anyway, I also downloaded the latest set of Lenovo driver/software for the 4-in-1 reader and reinstalled them (already had the latest, but thought they may had become corrupted).

The fresh main board on the serviced T61 has the same FRU as my original board except the green area had a different secondary rev stamping, plus the Nvidia G86 GPU was a much newer unit with a slightly different rev number as shown below (I also got to take a ton of photos of everything during the service call for documentation purposes plus he gladly used artic silver that I provided instead of the standard thermal grease found in his tool kit):


Old board FRU 42W7652 H5-5W with old Nvidia Chip marked on top with:

NVIDIA
23N3GH 0723A2 (23rd week of 2007)
A TAIWAN
NB9055.00W
G86-740-A2


New board FRU 43Y9047 H5-6W with new Nvidia Chip marked on top with:

NVIDIA
30N383 1030A2 (30th week of 2010)
A TAIWAN
N2R857.01R
G86-741-A2

_____________________________________________

I think it's going to require another main board (again) from looking at the Hardware Maintenance Manual.

I'll probably wait 30-45 days running the unit daily (instead of my T61p, which has warranty out to Aug 2012) and call it in as a new case because the hinges are also pretty sloppy with an inch of free play like the clutch on a car (whereas the T61p hinges have zero free play), plus the fan is starting to have a high pitched whine that my excellent ears do not hear on the T61p.

To the service tech's credit, he called Lenovo about the hinges (that he tried to tighten up to no avail) and they blew him off with a story that hinge replacements "now due to a new Lenovo policy, require the unit be sent into a Depot Repair Center, even for those with Onsite Warranty and TPP." Sounded like a bunch of Chinese Central Planning Bureau rubbish to both him and myself.

I'll get those hinges replaced with the next service call in a month or so for the 4-in-1 card reader.

RealBlackStuff wrote:You should also look into renewing/extending your warranty!

Unfortunately, I tried but they claim it already was extended at the time of purchase when I ordered it new with an upgrade to 4-Yrs Onsite w/TPP from a standard 3-Yr Depot (through my academic faculty/alumni portal). However, they are offering a 1-yr maintenance agreement for $199 to Aug 2012 (or 2-yrs for $329 to Aug 2013).

Not sure what's the difference between a warranty extension and a maintenance agreement?

Hey eecon, I'm keenly interested in this thread. I started my own thread, but didn't get much response... I'm convinced it's not a motherboard thing, given that the card reader works with Ubuntu. Let us know if you figure anything out other than a new board!

Paul Unger wrote:Hey eecon, I'm keenly interested in this thread. I started my own thread, but didn't get much response... I'm convinced it's not a motherboard thing, given that the card reader works with Ubuntu. Let us know if you figure anything out other than a new board!

Paul,

Thanks for the link to your thread.

Please note that in my case, the 4-in-1 reader on my newly serviced T61 does not work with Ubuntu nor WinXP Pro SP3, unfortunately. The 4-in 1 (both with and w/o a card inserted) does not even show up as an unformatted drive (as in your case) ..... Yet Windows Device Manager reports the Secure Digital Host Adapter to be installed and working okay.

My untouched T61p 4-in-1 reader, however still works with both operating systems.

Also, when I swap the Thinkpad hard drive between my T61p and T61, the newly serviced T61 reader remains dead while everything else works fine.

I'm pretty sure, in my case, it's a bad replacement main board that was installed .... no worries though, as I still have Onsite Warranty until August of this year.