A20M type 2628 Boot/Post Failure

[Comatose152]

Hi guys, first time posting but i have browsed through these forums time to time and can usually find some help, im very thankful there are still so many thinkpad enthusiasts that understand these things inside and out!

I woke this morning to find that my A20m that im utilising as my university PC failed to power on, the night before i had been messing about playing some ultima before i went to bed, but i didnt think i noticed anything abnormal, however i thought possibly it powered down a little faster than i was used to. The system usually runs fine with stock celeron cpu, 2X 64mb of IBM genuine RAM and 6gb IDE laptop HD, i belive it was an EX-business laptop and the mini-pci network card had been gutted from it before i got my hands on it. Its running dual boot config of Win98SE and Lucid Puppy Linux 4.2 installed frugally, the dual boot is configured though win98 boot option to run GRUB4DOS to boot puppy and thus has a stock win 9x bootmngr

*** THE CMOS BATTERY HAS BEEN DRY FOR SOME TIME - I HAVE YET TO REPLACE IT BUT WILL TRY IT OUT ASAP***

When attempting to power on, the HDD light flashes on, LCD flashes Black and floppy "beeps" to life all for a few milliseconds after the button is pushed, after which the laptop is powered off, this occurs wih both battery in and AC in, battery out AC in, Battery in AC out, the only difference being that when the battery is installed the battery indicator is acting a little strange staying green and flashing every 3 seconds... when powered on it goes out.

I've removed all peripherals (other than the floppy drive) including the RAM CD drive HDD, but recive no errors, just the same symptoms, so i have the belief thaat this is a power issue well before POST. I have very little idea how a gremlins got into my perfectly working a20m and completely destroyed it over night but, i supose thats the nature of the beast of using a 20 odd year laptop. If anyones had any experince with this issue or any insight to what else i might try feel free to give your opinions ill try anything to be quite honest. right now im just going to try the wait it out and itll fix itself method Thanks for any and all help!

Comatose

[thinkpadcollection]

These machines acts even more stranger with no cmos battery voltage, just get another one from ebay. I really rather prefer that get a T500 or T510 instead for your college if you can afford that. 98 is so unsecure, unstable and no web browser support anymore. Also graphical is necessary if doing this on a website for part of homework in future. A2x series also is limited to 512MB and CPU is locked to low clocking if main battery is not working. T500 and T510 does not do this if you do not need battery and can take two 4MB for total of 8MB.

Brain fart: I mean T500 or T400 or T510 and T410 can take 4GB pair of memory modules for total of 8GB.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

If the same behaviour persists once the CMOS battery is replaced, you're looking at a phenomenon called "The Blink Of Death" or BOD which is quite common on ThinkPads of this era, and there's unfortunately no cure for it apart from a motherboard swap.

Good luck.

[Comatose152]

first thank you so much for the replies, im going to go grab a 3032 button battery in a minute. Hopefully old faithful isnt dead yet, but it doesn't seem like its going to make to much of a recovery, if it is a case of BoD i might just keep my eyes out for a second hand a20m around and se i i can gut that one. However in the mean time, is it ok if i ask your opinion? My local classifieds seem to have a t400 for sale and are asking around $79 USD, do you think i might be better off with something like that? it reletively cheap from what ive seen but i havent had much to do with the T series... What do you guys think?

[RealBlackStuff]

Bit off-topic, but here goes:
T400 is quite a bit more modern than your A20m.
14.1" T400 is the smaller sister of the 15.4" T500.
T400 comes with 2 screen resolutions, 1280X800 and 1440x900.
Look for the latter one if possible, preferably with Intel graphics GPU.
T400 is more "portable" than the T500.

The T500 has 3 screen options, 1280x800, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200