R51 doesn't charge battery & LED stays on after turning off

[omero72]

Hello

Today I bought a 2nd hand R51 (2887-K2G, 2006 make) and everything's working perfectly (RAM; HDD, Display, the speed, the OS, etc.)

There's just one small but important problem: The unit doesn't seem to charge the battery. Additionaly, when I turn the computer off and unplug the DC cable, the battery LED stays on in orange or green color depending on the charge level of the battery (which I have charged using another R51, of course)

Actually, I saw the orange LED on while I was unboxing the R51 this morning. It can't be the battery or the AC Adaptor because I've tested with different batteries and AC adaptors, still the same problem.

Also, when I unplug the AC adaptors cable, I don't hear the usual beep sound, I expect from all Thinkpad laptops. So, surely there must be something wrong with the hardware somewhere.

I've taken a look at the vicinity of the battery and the DC cable input and there I saw what was looking like a fuse "FU" (the same as this one: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=55504) I've tested it but it's working (i.e. closed-circuit)

There are some other fuses on R51's board, but I haven't tested them yet.
Any suggestion is appreciated,thanks.

[RealBlackStuff]

I had a T43p mobo with that fuse blown.
It worked fine on battery, but not on AC.
After piggybacking that fuse with a working (same) one I connected just AC
To my horror I saw the GPU dying right after powering on, i.e. picture started garbling, turning all shades of white/gray and finally white.
$70.- down the drain

[omero72]

Oh, that's really horrorful. But that also indicates that there was something else causing the fuse blow at the very start and when you renew the fuse, it must have blown the GPU.

As for my case, today I asked a local technician about that problem and he said this:

"If IBM makes such a problem, than it's no use trying to repair it, because the charge circuit is integrated to the motherboard"

But I still find it hard to accept how a motherboard having no problem other than charging the battery cannot be repaired.

[billp117]

I had the same problem with an R51...it is now in a box of spare parts. I could not justify any more labor to fix the problem.