R40 fan bug??

[Gold007]

Hi! I got an r40 a few months ago, it had the rear usb port broken off, the battery and the adapter dead and it has some broken plastics. But it was totally working. Now I replaced that usb port and when i put it back together, the fan wouldn't spin. It would make a few rotations at startup, but not spin really(it doesn't make any noise, so I can just see it with the keyboard off) Also, no fan error message at boot. And even if the cpu temperature is like 70-80°C it wouldn't spin up. In tpfancontrol, it would show fan state 1 or 2, but no fan activity. If I set it to manual mode, it will spin up a little for like 2 secs, then shut off for ~5secs then this repeating for ever. When it's shut off the fan state would also change to 0, then when it spins up it goes back to 7(or whatever is set). For me this seems like a bug or fault in the controller or something.
I remember, once I had the same issue, but I disassembled it, put it together and it worked perfectly. Now it doesn't...
Oh and also: it always shows 0 rpm. And if I set it to "smart" it would work sometimes, but not everytime. If I set it to "BIOS" at like 70°C it stops, but if I set it to smart it would spin up usually.

Can anyone help?

[RealBlackStuff]

R40 was built by Acer, not exactly known for quality...
Fan-problems with it are quite well known.
Enter this in Google search: r40 fan problem site:forum.thinkpads.com

[Gold007]

Yes, I know this and I searched for it for about 2 days. My problem is not that the fan is not working, or it has failed, but that something went wrong with the controller. As I said it starts and stops continuously in manual mode, somewhat works in smart, but does nothing in bios mode...

Edit: OK, now I get fan error.... So I will have to replace the fan or is it the motherboard?

[ajkula66]

Edit: OK, now I get fan error.... So I will have to replace the fan or is it the motherboard?

Try another fan...

[Gold007]

I tried another fan. It was just a random 5v fan I got from a bad laptop, non-IBM so I had to rewire it(of course the pinout is different ) But this one does the same so the motherboard -or at least the controller circuit- is bad.
This means that I need to replace the motherboard, which I wouldn't. So I'm thinking of hardwiring it to a 5v point somewhere on the board(may put a resistor in series) Does anyone by any chance know where can I find 5v on the board?

[jronald]

Well I was going to offer to ship you a box of R40 pieces/parts for very close to cost...except cost was right at $60.00USD.

Sorry
Ron

[Gold007]

Well I was going to offer to ship you a box of R40 pieces/parts for very close to cost...except cost was right at $60.00USD.

Sorry
Ron

That's very nice of you! It would've been great...
It's a shame they charge that much for international shipping. And that's why I usually buy parts from china... (they ask like $2-3 for shipping on all over the world, or even no shipping cost!) You can imagine what I feel when I find just the perfect part I need and it's really cheap; then I look at the shipping cost and realize that it's around $40-50 for a part that costs like $5....

Anyway, thank you very much!

[RealBlackStuff]

The USB port supplies +5V and Ground.

[Gold007]

The USB port supplies +5V and Ground.

Well, you're right I feel really stupid now How could I not think about that...
I'll see how it works and then report back, this might help a few people here who has the same issue

[Gold007]

Okay, I hardwired it to 5V, now it works. It's quite loud and the rpm is continuously changing, so it's kinda irritating, but at least it won't overheat

Thanks for the help guys!

[RealBlackStuff]

If the RPM keeps changing when connected to a USB port, then your Southbridge must be malfunctioning.
I'd say the mobo is near its end.

[Gold007]

Maybe I'd just need a big capacitor, maybe just the voltage regulator for 5V_USB is bad. Or not, I don't know. But it's sure that something is not OK with the board.

I'll try to sell it ASAP, till it's at least in working condition...