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Thinkpad 600E no boot - Help

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2025 1:16 am
by GenkiMan
Hello,

I have a Thinkpad 600E at 366 mhz as my "daily" windows 98 machine, essentially for gaming.
In the begining of the week after a playing session of classic simcity in DOS it stopped working.
When i turn it on, i see the main light turn to green, Power Status (first light from the left) turns on and the Caps Lock/Num Lock/Scroll Lock (5th and last light) turns on. I can ear a pop from the speakers and thats it, no fan, no hdd sound, no LCD Display turning on.
I have tried to reset the machine, tried turning on with no sticks of ram, no hard drive, no battery, no cd drive...the result is always tthe same. I have tried 3 PSU's and battery only, same result.
I have a parallel port post analyser and i get this sequence

01 FF
02 7F
03 5F
04 5E
05 1E
06 0E
07 06
08 04
09 00
04 00 <-hangs here

I would apreciate youre help because i really like this laptop and would love to bring it back?

Re: Thinkpad 600E no boot - Help

Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2025 5:13 am
by dabhidhuaghd
Hello there,

I'd like to offer my help. Are you still experiencing this issue?

Could you describe what happens connected to Mains Power Supply and an external display with the Battery, Hard Disk Drive and any UltraSlim devices (Floppy, Optical, Battery etc.) removed.

Thank you.

Re: Thinkpad 600E no boot - Help

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2025 8:09 am
by GenkiMan
Hi,
Yes i still have the issue.
With everithing removed and connected to an external monitor and mains power i get:
-> Power Light charging the battery
When i power on, i get:
-> click from speakers
-> sound from HDD but no activity
-> light from HDD turns green
-> no display
-> no fan

First i thought it was the CPU, tried with a celeron mmc-2 and another p2-366 mmc-2 and got the same results
I also thought it could be the internal ram, but when i check the ram chips for voltage, everithing seems to be ok, i have no shorts to ground.


Its a simillar fault to this one:
https://www.forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=55072

Re: Thinkpad 600E no boot - Help

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2025 12:29 pm
by panips
from the error code I still think it's something with the CPU. Did you try to re-flash the bios?

Re: Thinkpad 600E no boot - Help

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2025 7:01 am
by dabhidhuaghd
Thanks for providing all of that information. @panips might be right. If it was the RAM causing an issue, you would likeley get some angry beeping on startup.
I see you've tested other processors on this motherboard, have you tested any of those processors on another motherboard?
On a desktop computer, you can have this issue with a faulty power supply. That's a little more difficult to test on a laptop!

Re: Thinkpad 600E no boot - Help

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2025 11:35 am
by GenkiMan
Hi, thanks for replying

Yes, the processors are from other laptops.
I bought a second 600E working but in bad shape, my plan is to swap the motherboard but first i will try to compare both with an osciloscope and see what is diferent.
I will report my findings here later.