X61, ok to run without palm rest fan?

[joejoe]

Hi,

Last night I got the dreaded "fan error" message on my X61. It's the palm rest fan. I know it's not the cpu fan because I replaced it last year and the palm rest fan has been noisy lately.

If I use the Esc button to log into the OS, is it okay to run without the palm rest fan?

thanks,

joejoe

[axur-delmeria]

Try lubricating the fan. I had an X61 with a similarly noisy 2nd fan. The "Fan error" popped up maybe one or twice a year, and temporarily fixed each time by putting a drop of oil (actually a bit less than 1 drop).

[unixed]

If you don't use the WWAN you can remove the card and the 2nd fan and replace the WLAN card with the popular half-size cooler running card frequently mentioned in this sub-forum (you need to flash middletons BIOS to remove the whitelist). That removes/reduces the heat sources. Running it like that is what everyone else does who doesn't have WWAN and a 2nd fan so if pressing <ESC> works you are in the same boat as them.

The problem with that 2nd fan is that there is no M a t s u s h i t a/Panasonic variant, I've yet to see one wear out. You can get that for the main fan, it is the reason for the superiority of the T61p Furukawa heatsink and others. This would be the best solution given your enviable location -- find a similarly-sized M a t s u s h i t a/Panasonic fan somehow, even if you have to cannibalize it. Then replace the (SUNON) 2nd fan unit internals. If you find such a fan, please post here.

You can just buy the 2nd fan, that is the simplest solution.

Somewhere in your part of the world someone produced a fan-substitute card (there's a youtube video iirc), I've had no luck finding one.

You can dump the EC firmware from a non-WWAN X61 and flash that onto yours.

Some of the above are harder than just pressing <ESC> on startup.

[FryPpy]

You can dump the EC firmware from a non-WWAN X61 and flash that onto yours.

My main X61 have T8300, 2nd fan and WWAN and still working fine.
But spare X61 (got it for body parts) have T7500 and haven't WWAN and 2nd fan (may be canibalized by someone in the past?), but "fan error" is here.

And i went EC way.
I haven't other X61 mother boards. So i have triedcomparing of EC dumps of this X61 units swapping identical bytes.... but no luck. Finally i have dumped EC from X61 tablet (there is no 2nd fan in tablet) and flashed it in X61 T7500... and it is working fine. No fan error and nothing have broken...

If someone have discowered which byte or bit in EC dump of X61 is 2nd fan presence indicator PLEASE WRITE THIS HERE.

[unixed]

The EC is H8S/2116BG20V, a renesas micro controller.
See this.