Ethernet hardware failure?

[rkruz]

THe RJ45 port is not working on this R40 Thinkpad. Even that activity lights do not flash. I have tried several different RJ-45 ports and routers and no activity lights. The diagnostics performed by "Access IBM" do not indicate any issues. I also downloaded the latest ethernet drivers with no change.

Is this probably a hardware failure on the motherboard?

I can get access to WWW via the USB on the cable modem and the PCMCIA wireless card also connects to www so its not a desperate situation. At worse I can get a USB to RJ45 converter to get to RKJ45 jacks.

any thoughts?

[rkruz]

any ideas? thx

[jdhurst]

You need a hardware maintenance manual (look in the FAQ) to see where the ethernet card is. On some machines, it is on a daughtercard (replaceable); on some machines, it is on the motherboard.

You can always get a PCMCIA wired NIC and use that (means changing your wireless NIC when you want to do this).
... JDH

[rkruz]

thanks for that. Do you mean the FAQ in this forum? I didnt see any reference to the manual there.
thanks again

[tomh009]

You can find all the HMMs here:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 39298.html

[rkruz]

many thanks for the manual.

It appears the R40 does not have a daughter board for the ethernet interface. It does however show one for the telephone modem. So an easy daughter board replacement is out.

I ran the PC diagnostic that starts during boot. It shows the ethernet port test ok. During this test, I noticed the bottom (yellow) light blink a few times during the diagnostic. So im back to wondering if the hardware is really bad to the RJ-45. I have deleted the driver and let it install the again with same bad result.

No matter, using a pCMcia to ethernet or USB will work fine as was suggested by someone. But thought I wring dry all attempts to fix the existing ethernet port.

thanks again

[SeanM]

You would probably need a new motherboard to fix it.

However, occasionally, some of the pins in the port get bent. Specifically, the pin on either end can get flexed down until it no longer makes contact. Shine a light into the port and see if the pins on each/either end are lower than the rest. If so, you can try, very carefully, to flex them back up with a tiny screwdriver or creatively shaped paperclip.