Thinkpads Forum

Blades appear to be ticking something.

I have a 600 laying around doing nothing. Are the fans easily interchangeable? (Note my signature..easy is the word)

Conversely, the 600e is used for MS-Dos data bases and I rarely use it more than 20 minutes at a time. Maybe it doesn't need an operating fan?

I can only answer in a theoretical sense, as I have never carried out this swap. But I have been looking into the same thing, as the fan in my 600 is making a slight noise. So I looked into which 600 models have compatible fan/heatsink units. And according to the 600/600E HMM, these two models use the same fan/heatsink unit, FRU 05K4830. The change comes with the 600X, which uses fan 08K5909, and fan 08K6290 for the 600X 2465-5Fx and -9Fx models, which I believe are the native 650MHz PIII speesdstep enabled units.

I don't know what the differences between these types of fans and heatsinks are, and if the 600X ones could be installed in the 600 / 600E models as an upgrade. But since you already have a spare 600, you have parts there that's compatible. If the 600 is still working, maybe buying a fan/heatsink on eBay instead of parting out the 600 could be an idea, but that's up to you. A plain 600 isn't worth much these days anyway.

If the fan is detected by the system to be absent (Disconnected) or non-functioning, the laptop will throw Error 192 during POST.

For the "easy" reference, I don't see your signature, though..

Well Shucks, I decided to do to the computer what I did to recalcitrant kids, turned it over, gave the bottom a sharp whack, the noise went away and I can hear the fan start.

Amazing what can be done with old-fashioned tech.

LOL!

From your original description (Blades appear to be ticking something), maybe there was something stuck in your fan. If so, it seems like your method fixed it. Awesome.