Thinkpads Forum

I have a Thinkpad T500 and its motherboard failed. I ordered another one from ebay but I fear that I've ended up with an engineering sample or some other off-kilter board.

The board is glitchy and I think it has to do with an early BIOS revision of 0.9. Because I do not know the original model number for this motherboard I would like to see if its possible to determine this some other way so that I can get a BIOS update and hopefully solve my problem.

Here's what I know. In the CMOS utility, the BIOS says reveals itself as "7UET09JC", and shows a serial number.

Is there some utility or cross reference available that will tell me exactly what I have?

Thanks!

-m.

Well, isn't the first 7 characters of the serial the model number?

Welcome to the forum!

Is there a system serial number in BIOS? Not just the board serial?

As for the 0.9 revision...you're likely on the right track. The only times when I've seen a number lower than 1 was on pre-production units.

You might actually brick the board if you push the BIOS update on these machines...I've seen it happen.

That being said, as long as you know what graphics card the board has (Intel vs. ATi) you should be able to at least attempt to update the BIOS.

You might need a Maintenance Diskette to program the new serial (matching your machine type) which is Lenovo's proprietary software and not available to end-users.

Returning the board to the seller might not be a bad idea...

Good luck.

A BIOS that starts off 7UET is a T400 image. What is the FRU of the board? It doesn't sound like a real T500 board.