ThinkPad 701c 133MHz AMD - Broken GPU?

[superme900]

I recently bought a working ultra-rare AMD 133MHz ThinkPad 701c from reputable eBay seller Badabumm, when I received it, turned it on, and found out that it was not working, I was utterly disappointing as you might expect. Badabumm recommended trying an external VGA monitor to see if it was just the display that isn't working, I do have a docking station for it coming in the post although I'm not very confident that the problem lies within the display, rather, I believe the problem is in the GPU, if this is the case, is there no possible way to revive such a valuable item? Please see pictures below which demonstrate the graphical errors the screen displays.

http://i60.tinypic.com/aexthg.jpg

This is all the display comes up with after two BIOS beeps occur, if I press ESC the laptop seemingly continues to boot into Windows 95 (I once heard the startup tune play) although still displays a corrupted picture that vaguely resembles what should be on-screen.
Any help would be really appreciated!


Mod edit: huge picture, no warning, changed to link, Please read Forum Rules, item 5

[ilakast]

Welcome to the forum.

I hope you did not pay a price for a fully working 701C because this looks most probably as a GPu failure indeed. Even if external monitor works, if it were me I would return it for a full refund. Good luck

[superme900]

Unfortunately I did, I really don't wish to send it back but it might be my only sensible choice, a motherboard replacement is kinda hard as two of the four T1 screws holding the keyboard are stripped and besides; the motherboard is what makes it so valuable in the first place...

[TrowaBarton]

That's really unfortunate, without being able to take out those front screws you can't even attempt to service it, I mean you *could* break them and replace the bottom case for ~$30 but that still won't give you much idea of where the failure occurred.


So I'm wondering how these AMD motherboards came to be, from what I can tell they were never released by IBM and instead third parties are replacing the cpu with a pin compatible faster model?

[Saucey]

When selling my two 701C units, I did see an AMD offering from international eBay while checking what I should sell it for.
Looked it up, there was a third party in Europe (i think) that did sell it, I wondered if they had bare chassis or if they just gutted it and tossed the mobo aside.
I don't think it was IBM, but I think it is nuts that it was offered, if only this caught on, maybe there would be other companies who would of given more oomph to older machines...

Very neat model, it is unfortunate that it is having problems.
I wish I had better history of how AMD started.
Hope you can find a solution, welcome to the forum!

[superme900]

I believe the company was Hanz & Partner, based in Germany.

[pkiff]

I thought that these 133MHz AMD boards for the 701s were custom built by hand, replacing the original CPU with the compatible AMD CPU that was soldered into the board by hand. And the boards had to be modified in a couple other minor ways as well to make them work, so it wasn't just a straight CPU swap. A few of the oldtimers in this forum have working 133MHz 701 machines, with maxxed out 64MB memory as well, including the forum sysadmin. They used to be available on eBay only through one or two sellers, including a seller with the id: cuiinc. I don't recall seeing the Hantz & Partner supplier before, but maybe I was just never aware of them. The eBay seller used to offer to do the motherboard replacement for you as well, for an additional fee, if you sent your entire machine to them. And I think they supplied a instruction video to you if you were going to do it yourself.

[Kasm279]

I don't want to get your hopes up just in case I'm wrong, but that looks more like a screen/cable failure to me.

[ilakast]

I really don't wish to send it back but it might be my only sensible choice

Well done for sending it back and good luck finding another good one.

[Saucey]

is there any modifications need to be made for the AMD board to accept a 701C chassis?
Would I need new cables, daughter cards? I know I need to have a 600X power cord...

err... I just read the description eBay posting, guess it include the whole thing, photo is just the board.

Does anyone know if its just a mobo swap for future reference?
Yes, I know that I may strip the bolts if I'm not super careful and will need to replace them immediately if I decide to do remove the mobo.

[jflores]

Hello Saucey,

In case you still need one.... I have a working (new, never installed) AMD 133Mhz board available I was considering putting on eBay since I never had the b... to tear my 701C apart !
And I also have an ultrarare 64MB Memory stick that makes it sing on a 701C
Let me know

[TrowaBarton]

Oddly enough I think I wound up buying jflores's board on ebay...

The memory stick (which has been sealed the entire time) had faint white residue along the memory chips, system wouldn't POST with it, I wound up scrubbing it with vinegar and it worked fine afterwards.

The mobo posts and seems to operate fine, except until you try to load a video driver...

I put my hard drive back in after installing the board and with three operating systems (3.11, NT 4, 98) they all failed in their usual bad graphics ways. Only by reverting them to standard VGA drivers did any of them function.

The video chip shouldn't have changed at all, if I tell 98 to detect it the same inbox chips & tech driver will get installed.

Nothing against you jflores, you couldn't have known as it was never used, but it seems like the conversion process for some of these motherboards was not very stable or enduring.

I'm not really sure where to go from here either, it *works* DOS games and stuff ran fine, and since the only benefit of the video driver is higher colors I'll probably test out some of the more generic drivers for them.

[Theokretes]

So if I'm not mistaken, these are standard 701C motherboards with an Am5x86 soldered in? It does make me curious why the OP's 701C has a blue logo instead of the RGB styled ones. I don't have a single 701C with a blue logo. Weird.

The mobo posts and seems to operate fine, except until you try to load a video driver...

I put my hard drive back in after installing the board and with three operating systems (3.11, NT 4, 98) they all failed in their usual bad graphics ways. Only by reverting them to standard VGA drivers did any of them function.

The video chip shouldn't have changed at all, if I tell 98 to detect it the same inbox chips & tech driver will get installed.

Nothing against you jflores, you couldn't have known as it was never used, but it seems like the conversion process for some of these motherboards was not very stable or enduring.

I'm not really sure where to go from here either, it *works* DOS games and stuff ran fine, and since the only benefit of the video driver is higher colors I'll probably test out some of the more generic drivers for them.

Did you try updating the machine to the latest BIOS? If you don't have a copy of the BIOS or any of the now forgotten diagnostic tools (which I hastily extracted off of some old genuine diskettes I randomly obtained), let me know and I'll provide you a link to them via PM from my personal website.

Also we can do some testing what the differences are in windows 95 with an intel CPU to see if the same results occur etc. Windows 98 is probably a bit intense for a 701C unless it's stripped down with 98lite or something.

I have probably at least seven (most brand new) 701C motherboards (most with the higher capacity of memory onboard). If someone has the Am5x86 procedure documented somewhere, I could do the swap myself and report back.

Although I'm going to assume 'no' as most of the 701C information has sadly evaporated.

[RealBlackStuff]

Some 701c info here:
http://www.conradshome.com/thinkpad/701/overview/

Upgrade 701c CPU:
http://ee.lbl.gov/leres/butterfly/processor.html

Some general 'antique' info:
http://repair4laptop.org/disassembly_ibm.html

[Theokretes]

Some 701c info here:
http://www.conradshome.com/thinkpad/701/overview/

Upgrade 701c CPU:
http://ee.lbl.gov/leres/butterfly/processor.html

Some general 'antique' info:
http://repair4laptop.org/disassembly_ibm.html

Thanks RBS, although none of the pages go in depth as to how the procedure is performed.
(I'm not the biggest fan of the Am5x86 chips due to the horrible floating point-- but I am still deathly curious as to the procedure if there's more involved than just soldering on a surface mount Am5x86, or if more steps are involved). It would also be sort of fun to do, just for the sake of it.

But unless someone is familiar with the process or has performed it before, I think the exact specifics are lost. I guess I could always just solder one on, onto one of my spare boards and we could see what happens-- although I have a feeling a lot of glitching would.

You'll also note at how those pages never have any of the 701C-specific software listed (which took me a long time to find in rare hidden corners of the internet and the aforementioned diskettes which I was never specifically looking for).

[pkiff]

But unless someone is familiar with the process or has performed it before, I think the exact specifics are lost.

I don't think anyone ever wrote up the procedure in a publicly available forum or on a website anywhere back when they were being done. I'm pretty sure that I searched for that information back in the late 1990s and couldn't find a descriptive write up back then either.

[RealBlackStuff]

AFAIK these folks did it years ago: http://www.hantz.com/index.html

[TrowaBarton]

Did you try updating the machine to the latest BIOS? If you don't have a copy of the BIOS or any of the now forgotten diagnostic tools (which I hastily extracted off of some old genuine diskettes I randomly obtained), let me know and I'll provide you a link to them via PM from my personal website.

Also we can do some testing what the differences are in windows 95 with an intel CPU to see if the same results occur etc. Windows 98 is probably a bit intense for a 701C unless it's stripped down with 98lite or something.

I have probably at least seven (most brand new) 701C motherboards (most with the higher capacity of memory onboard). If someone has the Am5x86 procedure documented somewhere, I could do the swap myself and report back.

Although I'm going to assume 'no' as most of the 701C information has sadly evaporated.

Sorry for the delay, being the start of the fall semester at work its been super busy.
Yes the motherboard came with the latest bios and diagnostics installed, I have the file as well as I've upgraded a CS with it. As for 98, yes its sluggish, doing office XP updates was a several day process.... but its workable. Between 95 OSR2.x and 98, might as well just use 98 (I wanted FAT32 support).

[Norway Pad]

The mobo posts and seems to operate fine, except until you try to load a video driver...

I put my hard drive back in after installing the board and with three operating systems (3.11, NT 4, 98) they all failed in their usual bad graphics ways. Only by reverting them to standard VGA drivers did any of them function.

The video chip shouldn't have changed at all, if I tell 98 to detect it the same inbox chips & tech driver will get installed.

Maybe this has nothing to do with the board, but rather the 64MB memory module. I was doing some reading on the german ThinkWiki page, when I came across this, and remembered the problem you described:

Arbeitsspeicher: Rüstet man den Speicher mit einem 64MB Modul auf, wird der Onboard RAM deaktiviert. Es wird ein anderer Grafiktreiber benötigt, sonst werden leider nur 4 Farben dargestellt.

This translates into: If you upgrade to a 64MB module, the onboard RAM is disabeled. Another graphic driver is then used, which only gives 4 colors.

Is the onboard memory shared for graphics, so that the disabling of the onboard RAM also takes away memory access for the graphics chip? Have you tested with a smaller RAM module, or no module at all?

[Theokretes]

Maybe this has nothing to do with the board, but rather the 64MB memory module. This translates into: If you upgrade to a 64MB module, the onboard RAM is disabeled. Another graphic driver is then used, which only gives 4 colors. Is the onboard memory shared for graphics, so that the disabling of the onboard RAM also takes away memory access for the graphics chip? Have you tested with a smaller RAM module, or no module at all?

Good catch!

I don't believe 64MB modules should be used in a 701C (definitely not officially supported). Even a 32MB module is a bit of a stretch.

Yeah, sometimes unsupported hardware 'can' work on IBMs, but a lot of times it'll cause problems which is why the HMM doesn't mention them.

[pkiff]

Maybe this has nothing to do with the board, but rather the 64MB memory module. [....] Have you tested with a smaller RAM module, or no module at all?

Good catch!
I don't believe 64MB modules should be used in a 701C (definitely not officially supported). Even a 32MB module is a bit of a stretch.

The original motherboards only supported up to 48MB, I think. But the upgraded 133MHz boards definitely support 64MB, provided you use a specifically compatible 64MB chip.

I thought that TrowaBarton was claiming that he probably picked up jflores 701C on eBay, and jflores described his as including the specifically compatible, "ultrarare 64MB Memory stick":

I have a working (new, never installed) AMD 133Mhz board available I was considering putting on eBay since I never had the b... to tear my 701C apart !
And I also have an ultrarare 64MB Memory stick that makes it sing on a 701C

So he probably has a properly supported 64MB chip.

But Norway Pad's advice to try with a smaller RAM module (or different, or none) is probably still good advice. Incidentally, I don't think you can use the built in BIOS memory test with the 64MB module in an upgraded 133MHz board, because the BIOS test wasn't configured to work with that size/type properly.

[Theokretes]

The original motherboards only supported up to 48MB, I think. But the upgraded 133MHz boards definitely support 64MB, provided you use a specifically compatible 64MB chip.

The 133 Mhz upgrade is still an aftermarket modification so the hardware is still technically not designed for it; and there's no guarantee that each modification will perform without issue.

The original systems are designed to operate either at 20MB or 24MB (depending on how many chips are onboard). IBM only ever officially supported 16MB SO-DIMMs on the 701C (you can refer to the HMM for more information).
The systems CAN use 32MB, but again, none of the official FRUs were produced in that capacity so unexpected results may or may not arise. I haven't played with my 701Cs enough to come to anything conclusive about that.

[Norway Pad]

But unless someone is familiar with the process or has performed it before, I think the exact specifics are lost.

I don't think anyone ever wrote up the procedure in a publicly available forum or on a website anywhere back when they were being done. I'm pretty sure that I searched for that information back in the late 1990s and couldn't find a descriptive write up back then either.

By coincidence I ran into this today. https://blog.noq2.net/butterfly-on-spee ... z-mod.html The entry seems to be from October 2014, so quite recent. Interesting read. While I don't have the skills to succeed with this, I assume there are people here who can get some inspiration here.

[pkiff]

By coincidence I ran into this today. https://blog.noq2.net/butterfly-on-spee ... z-mod.html....

Awesome find, thanks!

[TrowaBarton]

Good catch!
I don't believe 64MB modules should be used in a 701C (definitely not officially supported). Even a 32MB module is a bit of a stretch.

The original motherboards only supported up to 48MB, I think. But the upgraded 133MHz boards definitely support 64MB, provided you use a specifically compatible 64MB chip.

I thought that TrowaBarton was claiming that he probably picked up jflores 701C on eBay, and jflores described his as including the specifically compatible, "ultrarare 64MB Memory stick":

I have a working (new, never installed) AMD 133Mhz board available I was considering putting on eBay since I never had the b... to tear my 701C apart !
And I also have an ultrarare 64MB Memory stick that makes it sing on a 701C

So he probably has a properly supported 64MB chip.

But Norway Pad's advice to try with a smaller RAM module (or different, or none) is probably still good advice. Incidentally, I don't think you can use the built in BIOS memory test with the 64MB module in an upgraded 133MHz board, because the BIOS test wasn't configured to work with that size/type properly.

It is in fact jflores' motherboard and memory stick. I'm sorry for the immense delays, I've kept putting the "Butterfly Project" on hold. I have recently made the unwise decision to purchase another one of these AMD motherboards and it actually does the exact same thing.

I was able to ONCE boot into 3.1 with the graphics driver installed and all subsequent attempts failed. The boards act in exactly the same ways, diagnostic tests for the system board and memory will freeze the machine.

I did put the 64MB stick into the second board, I'm sure I've tested without any module installed, but I will test it again as I really can't remember at this point.

Is there anyone out there that has an AMD133 board with working full color graphics?

[Khipata]

I know that one, I bid on it but lost, because it went WAAAY high above my budget...
Sorry for you having problems with it, but I can vouch for BADABUM, he is very honest person, and before putting on auction, he offered me that machine, but together with shipping charge to USA from Germany cost was very high, more than I paid for my esoteric 700T Type 2521. He also gave me some instructions how to disassemble the machine and I even bought T1 screwdriver for it. I have several 701c-s and brand new replacement boards or planars (regular ones), which I intend to replace one day.
If nothing comes from these comments here, my advice would be to return it, but if money is no concern, keep it, because that board itself is near impossible to find anywhere

[TrowaBarton]

Yeah I have nothing against the sellers of either board, it could be that the modification didn't have much longevity. I certainly don't need two of these boards and regardless of outcome I'll probably just try to sell one to recoup some of my losses (while clearly stating the graphical quirks, cause the boards technically work everything is stable per se, you just can't use the gpu driver, so 16 color is it, dos games and stuff don't seem affected from my testing). I wouldn't want to go through the hassle of trying to get a refund and shipping it back to Germany.

[fultontech]

Back about 1999-2000 I was doing the CPU upgrades on the 360PE and reselling them on ebay. I think I may still have the instructions and notes somewhere.