Thinkpads Forum

Greetings,

I bought my first X200 mid-summer this year and I'm delighted with it, I upgraded its original hdd already and I'm making it a versatile and robust portable little machine. No problems whatsoever (just some thinkpad_acpi headaches but that's a matter for another thread under linux questions), until last saturday. I was doing just some light web-browsing when suddenly I noticed some hissing sound. It went on for a good 5-10s, as I was so shock up at first I couldn't figure out whether it was my music playing or my laptop being burned.

Fair enough, a little bit afterwards, I hear these rattling noise coming from my fan and I decide to shut it down.

I searched for reference on this forum and found some quality threads on this subject already:

• viewtopic.php?t=100642

• viewtopic.php?t=124136

• viewtopic.php?t=130724

I guess I'll start disassembling my machine to start probing (I had to repaste it anyways and I'll also check my wireless radio switch as it has become very delicate and sensitive with my palm resting on top of it resulting on sudden wifi drops). I therefore ask for your help and expertise to assist me on this matter.

My main concern is that I'd understand that my fan wasn't spinning at all and that the fuse was just blown but my laptop is still booting up OK. It will POST, and only on rare occassions will it display the FAN ERROR message. You can check it for yourself here and here (homemade webms w/ sound). What's happening? Half-burned fuse? Rattling -but still somewhat operative- fan? Hissing sounded like a blown fuse.

My plan is to disassembly the fan entirely and check continuity and give it some 3-5v to check if it spins alright. I'll also look for the F4(N) fuse to check continuity and report back. I've also read something about the fan wire sensor and checking the motherboad fan connector but I don't know how.

As soon as I've disassemblied it I'll report back with photos. I think it'll be helpful for others dealing with the same situation in the future and I don't mind making this a feature-rich thread being it my first one as well .

My first suspect is the fan. The X200 is over a decade old by now, and the fan's bearings have probably worn out.

First of all, Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you had a good time with your beloved ones. I couldn't update earlier because I was pretty busy last week but finally I made some progress.

So, basically, I've disassembled the laptop following the hardware maintenance manual and I've been tinkering with the fan and fuses. Let's get into it:
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FAN

The fan seems to run OK. I could make it spin at lower and high rpms with no problem, and did not hear any sound resembling the one I uploaded on my first post. I tested it upside down as well and couldn't listen any rumble.

Fan seems to work under 5V and max load of 350 mA. I tested it with a draw of 250mA and 150mA and felt pretty good. I have yet to find the way to supply enough power to go full speed (maybe thats when the faulty noises start).

Here you have some video to see it for yourselves in case I missed anything. The fan connector had 3 wires (red-blue-orange). I couldn't find the diagram but it appears that RED is 5v, BLUE is ground, and ORANGE is FAN_TACHOMETER or some kind of sensor? Can someone confirm? I used a voltmeter and found out that the orange cable outputs a range of (1,6-2.5V) depending on the fan rpms.

Last but not least, I attach some more photos. (I will continue disassembling it, plus I have some cleaning to do as well). Where exactly are the fan BEARINGS?





FUSES

I've found and check'd for continuity a total of 10 fuses from F1 to F12. I'm missing F9 and F10 (I can not find them). All of them were OK. I recall that F4 was, suppossedly, the fan fuse (although F11 is right next to the fan connector). Can someone confirm this?

Anyways, here are some photos of the main motherboard (front/back) with the fuses encircled. If someone finds the last two remaining I'll check them no problem.






FRONT:
F8-F11-F12
BACK:
F1-F2-F3-F4-F5-F6-F7

---

So, what do you guys recommend I do now? If I want to check startup, what are the minimal components required for POST/BIOS? Can I just put back the power supply, RAM, FAN and give it a go to see how it responds?

F4 = Fan
F9 and F10 do not exist (maybe on earlier prototypes?).

Fan bearing is under the round metal cover that you see in the 3rd fan picture.
You can probably access it between the green PCB immediately under it, and the black fan-frame.
I've never done it, so others will know more.

It seems possible that you just got a loose piece of some debris in the fan and disassembling the system allowed it to fall out. The hiss might have been caused by it rubbing along the inner part of the spinning fan. This once happened to me with the spring from the cardbus door on my X61.

I wouldn't advice disassembling the fan itself. In fact, I'd just try reassembling the system at this point and testing all the fan speeds in your OS to see if there's any issue. You'll need thinkpad_acpi working to do that in Linux. Then it's controlled by writing fan levels to /proc/acpi/ibm/fan and reading back the speeds.

Sweater Fish Deluxe I think your guess was right!

I'm currently writting this reply from my X200, so thats good news. I put it back yesterday; first time doing so, a little nervous overall and made some misteps, but the hardware maintenance manual was very helpful. After cleaning the fan blades, repasting the cpu and some general proper maintenance/cleaning it seems to work okay now, so probably it was some debris that got stuck on the fan the reason it made that horrible sound.

I didn't find anything inside though, so its kinda weird. Maybe some cable? It had to be big enough to stop it from moving because I don't know how come I got a couple of "FAN ERROR" messages on BIOS/POST when all this happened some weeks ago. That plus the hissing sound at first made me panic.

I followed this guide, and a couple of stackoverflow threads as to what the whole /proc/acpi/ibm pseudo-filesystem was, and I could properly read and write fan speed/levels with success.

Currently it's running iddle almost at 2000 rpm and the system is < 40ºC just browsing. I'll keep you guys posted. I appreciate your help! Thank you all!

PD: offtopic - I mentioned that I was going to take advantage of the whole disassembly thing to look into another problem that came up recently, the wireless radio switch. In my case it became overly sensitive and in the end it didn't work completely. It failed continuity between the outermost pins with the ON position, so I figured out that the switch was no good.

My original idea was to replace it with a similar switch that I've got hanging around but it proved way more difficult that I thought and I ripped the middle pin from the motherboard on accident. For anyone having this issue, I recommed this reading. I ended up soldering a brigde between pins 1-3. I've also read that you could just put a little blob of solder between two tiny silver heads next to C501, which are in fact the same connection.

Does anyone knows what the middle pin do? Some people say its just ground, so I wonder if some nomal-2-terminal switch between the outermost pins would work just as well? Anyhow, I'm happy and done tinkering on it for some time, so I will just soft-block radios if I need to.

Happy new year!

Pin 2 on switch SW1 controlling the WiFi radio is a No Connect. It shouldn't go anywhere. Pin 1 is connected to ground, while Pin 3 is the on/off signal. Shorting the C501 "capacitor" is the same as connecting Pin 3 to ground. My guess is that the switch is actually an SPDT, with Pin 1 being NO, Pin 2 being NC and Pin 3 Common.