Thinkpads Forum

I have a T61 with a failed bios flash that doesn't post when you try to boot it. It's a 14inch widescreen with nVidia. It's in almost new condition so I'd like to salvage it, is there anyway to fix this poor thing?

I know the manuals say replace system board, but I have a 15inch motherboard with a failed nVidia graphics, would it be possible to transplant the bios chip?

Are there any other methods of repair? any suggestions?

Swapping BIOS chips rarely works in real life. Let's leave it as that.

There's an advertisement somewhere on the forum for a company that restores machines with failed BIOS upgrades, and they got some good reviews, but the service was not inexpensive as far as I can recall...

My advice would be to part all of the defective machines out and be done with them, but that's me...

Good luck.

I did go looking for a motherboard or damaged t61 to use to fix it and ended up buying a complete working model that even has a higher resolution screen for $140. The cheapest "cracked screen" I found was 125, which would have been an insane route to go. I'm also pleased that the new tp is intel based, not nvidia, but I still think I want to fix this pc.

I once looked into doing a bios password recovery and found a very good step by step guide. It required unsoldering the bios and using an eprom burner, I eventually decided it wasn't worth my time, but if I have a trashed systemboard with a good bios, and a laptop with a bad bios, seems silly to not try. The only thing I'm unsure of is one is 14 and the other is 15inch. That could be a problem.

Thanks for replying.

TuuS wrote:

The only thing I'm unsure of is one is 14 and the other is 15inch. That could be a problem.

That WILL be a problem AFAIK.