R40 turns on but only shows "power on" LED

[noospy]

Hi everyone, I'm a new user. Even though I've owned 3 Thinkpads, I'm not an expert with these .

Last week I received an R40 (type 2681 ELG) for free. It's not working, but I'd like to let it come back to life. Unfortunately the symptoms are really bad: when I try to turn it on, fans start to spin and so does the HDD, but nothing appears on the screen, not even the ThinkPad screen. All the LEDs turn of except the power on one. After a few seconds, the HDD turns off again.

I tried several things I read in some old posts on this forum, without success:
- hard reset (take out battery, hold power on button for 30 s, then plug in the AC power)
- take out RAM modules to see if it beeps on start up (it doesn't!!)
- take out everything I could (battery, HDD, RAM, DVD, Wi-Fi card has probably been stolen...) to see if there was any problem with them
- then I realized that the screen chassis has a crack in the lower left corner, so I thought the problem could be related to the GPU soldering issue: tried to depress on the lower part of the keyboard and/or the trackpad: nothing changed, but I'm not sure I'm doing it right!

I read that there is the possibility to flash the BIOS via the floppy drive: on boot, it should check if there is any disk to update itself; is that correct? Maybe this could let me check if there is any problem with the BIOS or the motherboard. I can use the floppy drive I have on my T22 (God bless it), and I downloaded the software from the Lenovo site, but I don't know how to create the floppy. Can anyone help with this?

By the way, do you have any other idea on what to do? Thank you a lot!

Dario (sorry for mistakes, I'm writing with a smartphone)

[RealBlackStuff]

If you remove everything, including RAM, then try to boot and it does NOT beep 1-3-3-1, the motherboard needs to be replaced.
There's nothing else you can do with it.

[noospy]

If you remove everything, including RAM, then try to boot and it does NOT beep 1-3-3-1, the motherboard needs to be replaced.
There's nothing else you can do with it.

Ok but how can I be sure the speaker is actually working? I don't know anything about the history of this PC...

Anyway, is there a way to test all the other components? It might be worth buying a new motherboard on Ebay (any hint on what to search? Any hint on possible upgrades? ) but I don't how it worked, when it worked.

Last question: I couldn't find any help for the bios floppy...is there any guide on how to create it? I need it also for the T22...

Thanks again

Dario

[noospy]

I was wondering if any R40 motherboard can fit in my 2681 ELG, it has a P4, should be 1.9 GHz. What's the fastest processor I can put in an R40? Sorry for all the questions, tried to search the forums but couldn't find much about R40.

[RealBlackStuff]

Believe me, any money spent on resurrecting that oldie, is money thrown out of the window!
It is not even an IBM machine!
It was built by ACER, and it shows...

[ilakast]

Last question: I couldn't find any help for the bios floppy...is there any guide on how to create it? I need it also for the T22...

Double check your current bios version before trying to update your T22. Run the .exe file, insert a floppy disk and follow the onscreen instructions. When you reach 100% the disk is ready. Reboot and make sure you boot up from the floppy drive. That's it. I doubt you can update your R40 since it doesn't even boot. It's a pity because it has decent graphics (15 SXGA+(1400x1050))...