Thinkpads Forum

Just as I got to know my X220 and 600X another ThinkPad joined the fray, which I know very little about technically. The TP in question is a TransNote, complete, original, and presently not powering on.

It did work for a day and the original battery lasts for over an hour. I woke it from sleep today and it shut off and will not start up again. When it refuses to start, this is what it does:

Press power button, HD light comes on for a second, goes off, TP does nothing else. With the battery installed, the icon blinks quickly, goes out when I press power. There is a high-pitched clicking squeal coming from the AC-in area.

It did this when I first plugged it in, but it powered on a few minutes after I removed the main battery. Is it just a bad CMOS battery preventing power-up like in a PowerBook? I'm worried to ask if it is something worse.

Try removing the battery, and the AC Adapter....then hold the power button for about 10 seconds. The reattach the AC adapter and try to power on again.

It worked! Thank you, tfflivemb2. What a relief it was to hear the sweet sound of a mechanical hard drive spinning up.

I assume that reset the PMU? I am still working off of limited knowledge about IBM hardware, but could putting it to sleep with a bad CMOS battery have caused the problem? Since my intent is to travel with it, I am hoping to solve this issue.

You're welcome. Glad to hear it worked!

Yes, basically you are clearing any residual power/memory issues. I'd go into your power settings in Windows and set how you want it to "wake from sleep". Some Thinkpads require pushing the power button, the FN button, or the FN button in conjunction with another F-key..

Unfortunately, the TransNote has regressed to its temperamental state. I left it sleeping last night and it went off instead of waking up. The PMU reset method has also stopped working. I will leave it plugged in for a few hours sans battery after doing a reset and see if that makes any difference.

tfflivemb2, the FN button seems to be the wake up key. Interestingly, it is the same on my X220. Coming from a PowerBook, it took me a few tries to realize that.

A new oddity is the occasional powering up of the digital pad after the PMU reset without the computer side working. At the moment, nothing powers up save for the quick HD blink. Again, I am out of my element but I ran the PC-Doctor diagnostic software on what was labeled, "CMOS," and it passed. Does that mean the clock/BIOS battery is still holding a charge?

I appreciate any advice. Thank you!

To update:

I left it without power over night and it booted up to BIOS today, beeping twice after the lovely IBM ThinkPad splash screen and giving these two errors:

0251 System CMOS checksum bad - Default configuration used
0271 Date and time error Run IBM BIOS Setup Utility to reset the time and date.

Does that help the ThinkPad pros diagnose my boot up issue? I wish they stayed on the screen longer than 3 seconds. If I reset the time in BIOS, it will boot just fine. Since the CMOS battery is bad, could it be corrupting the power manager and in turn causing these sleep/power up issues?

Oh absolutely! Dead cmos batteries can easily affect it. Try changing it out. I think its a simple coin cell battery....like a 325 watch battery. I just sold my transnote, so I can't readily confirm it.

Phew! I am very relieved to hear that my issues can be traced back to these codes. I suppose I should hold off on celebrating until everything checks out, but at least most of the mystery has been solved.

I read a few posts that have me convinced TransNote batteries are more complicated (but of course they are! Why would they use anything standard?) to replace, but I would be very happy to be wrong.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... OS#p734976

Another post said that the TransNote uses two in series in a special container. Being based off the X20, I was hoping the TransNote would share some components. Can anyone confirm about the CMOS batteries?

OK, so its similar to a lot of newer thinkpads that have the yellow wrapped batteries. You still have options here. You can remove your CMOS and send it to someone to "refurbish" it, attempt the refurb yourself....or test the scenario, by removing the plastic wrap, and carefully removing the connectors from the sides of the battery, with a flat edged tool. Then using a new battery (same listed in post), line up the two battery connectors in the same order +/- vs top/bottom, and TIGHTLY wrap them with electrical tape, to keep them in contact with the sides of the battery.

This is more of a temporary fix, to see if it solves your issue. On the other hand, I've had this process last for years on a 600E.

Transnote MUST have two CMOS-batteries in a row.

I am happy to know that there are options to keep this computer going. In my research, I came across a post here by someone talking about their refurbishment service. When I have some free time I'll check back on that.

So am I correct in thinking that this double battery is really two standard cells combined? I might even be able to use shrink wrap with the electrical tape to ensure a tight connection.

Funny you should mention your 600E, tfflivemb2. I have a 600X that could use a new CMOS. Does that model at least have an easy to replace standard cell?

startac wrote:Funny you should mention your 600E, tfflivemb2. I have a 600X that could use a new CMOS. Does that model at least have an easy to replace standard cell?

The 600x uses a single battery, but its wrapped similar to the others.

Doesn't sound like a battery problem-- I run all of my vintage ThinkPads with their CMOS batteries removed and it does not cause power issues like that.

Check to see if the NiMH battery caused corrosion on the traces to the PCB it's attached to. Otherwise, it sounds like a power regulation issue on the system board.

See also this forum thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=116398