R40 Video Problem

[mortodifame]

Hi All,

Great forums! This is my first post.

I've had thinkpads for the last 10 years or so. My main machine, an R40, just developed a video problem that I think is caused by the Radeon 7500, but I wanted to get other opinions. The problem is that when I grab a window by the title bar and move it around, the window's contents (title bar,menu bar, body) start to get dots of different colours beside objects such as buttons, images, etc. This also happens in browsers to webpages when I scroll up or down. Causing a window to be repainted by F5 or by minimizing and restoring, restores to window and removes the dots.

If I move the Hardware Acceleration slider to None in Panels>Display>Settings>Advanced>Troubleshoot, the problem goes away. If I move the slider one tick up, the problem re- appears. The latest Disk Doctor did not find any faults. I installed the latest video driver with no improvement.

Obviously, it appears that the 7500 has developed a hardware fault in accelerated mode and is not repainting properly, but I'm wondering if anyone here has experienced this problem on an R40 or the Radeon 7500 and, if so, how they fixed it. Anyone have any other Ideas?

Thanks.

[phool@round]

Welcome to the Forum mortodifame!

I don't have an R40 but I do have an R50 with the ATI 9000 that has the same issue.....

It's been a project laptop for over a year now, I bought it knowing about the problem and have been waiting to purchase a pro rework station. The problem you and I have with our video chips plaques the T40/41's as well. It's the type that isn't an easy fix. Normally a replacement system board is the only solution. Your chip is loosing it's connection to the system board and will most likely start to loose video entirely. Board flex and chip heat are the contributing factors.

It's possible to fix but takes a great amount of luck more than skill. Requires a hot air rework gun or the shade tree fix is to use a paint stripping heat gun. In either case the repair is difficult. The chip doesn't have pins but uses solder ball connections. If they are heated too much they will pool and possibly the silicon will crack. If not heated enough the problem remains. Everything surrounding the chip can be protected using tin foil but anything plastic may melt even with a shield. It's a tough repair to do.

A temp fix that I performed was to clamp the chip down using it's heatsink with homemade bracing. It works but it's not something that I would brag about. The R's casings are plastic which isn't easy to cure flexing. Mine was so sensitive I couldn't place my hands on the palmrest. Now I can type all day, it boots up everytime, I can transport it while it's running but.......I have zero graphic acceleration.

The best suggestion is to find another system board at a decent price if you intend on keeping your R40.

[Harryc]

Run PC-Doctor on that failing R40. It has several intensive GPU tests that may pick out a problem.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 56222.html

[mortodifame]

Thanks for the reply phool@round,

I had read on these forums about the poor solder issue, but I had thought that since my problem disappears when acceleration is off that the problem must lie with the chip itself, but I guess some pins are also used for acceleration purposes as well. Anyway, I have a hardware problem and your reply confirmed it, thanks again.

[mortodifame]

Hi Harryc,

I ran the latest PC-Doctor GPU tests on the machine about ten times in succession, but it always passed. I think that, as Phool@round suggested, it must be an intermittent GPU pin connection problem, but the weird thing is that when I play a Web video or DVD in a window, the display is perfect and the machine has never crashed. However, if I just move the window while the video is playing OR stopped, then the dots appear. Of course, when the video is playing, the pixels get repainted often so it's difficult to see if any have been missed, like when the image in the window is static. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.

[phool@round]

There is one more thing that could cause the artifacts, heat. On the R50 with an M9 it uses a passive heatsink. The processors fan draws a small amount of air over it. Maybe dust buildup in the inlet, outlet or fan blades is lowering the effeciency? It's just a thought. The M7's I've seen don't even use heat sinks usually.

iBooks also use the M7's and later models used the M9's and they've had a long track record of failing and needing board replacements. I know, I've owned both and replaced the boards twice. At least Apple agreed to replace them out of warranty up to three times. IBM from what I understand knows about it but will only replace if under warranty.