Thinkpads Forum

Hi!

I recently got ahold of a IBM Thinkpad, model 600X. It
has a 20Gb HD and 256Mb RAM.

When I first turned it on it reported sevral errors, all
but one were solved by replacing the CMOS battery.

The remaining error is 8081 (PC Card presence test failure).

I don't know how to fix this one. I dissassembled and
reassembled the laptop without seeing anything obvious.

The error persists.

I would really appreciate any help.


Thank you for your time.

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

I've never seen this error and the only other reference that I can find in the archives was from 2005 (in a 560) and there was no reply made to that thread. My guess would be that if you have not found any obvious shorts on the pins to the PCMCIA (PC Card) slot then what you might have is a bad chipset on the motherboard. Not much you can do about that besides replacing the whole board.

Hmm... now that I'm looking at a 600X motherboard you might want to try this: remove the card cage, take a close look at the black connector on the motherboard and see if you see any dirt or contamination along the leads. If there is, you can clean it with a cotton swab dipped in isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol. Allow it to dry. Don't re-install the card cage and assemble the system enough to get it to power up. If there's no 8081 error, re-install the card cage and power up again. If you get an error the second time, then there's an easy solution: replace the card cage. If you get the error no matter if the card cage is installed or not, then there's something on the motherboard causing the problem.

I was about to try your suggestion when I discovered
something new...

It seems as if, for some reason, the display has decided to stop working.

I'm investigating it right now.

Well... it outputs on the external VGA conector so atleast it isn't a total write-off.

Is it possible to run some sort of diagnostics?

PC Doctor, as referenced in this thread. You can create either a bootable floppy disk or CDROM. Although I don't think that there's a test to check the PC Card slot without having to buy a very expensive cable.

edit: Just checked.. (it's be awhile since I ran PC Doc on a 600X). There's a PCMCIA test under the Systemboard test category which does not require any additional hardware. Exactly what it checks, I don't know. But I'd say if your system fails this test, then you've got a motherboard issue.

I can't get past the 8081 error so booting from the
CD won't happen.

Right now, I'm focusing on getting the display to work
again. I'm not sure what happened to it, could be something
I did when I disassembled it...

When I turn on the power the screen flickers, almost
like it get's turned on and off. When I shine a flashlight
at it I can see horizontal lines that slowly dissapear.

There is no obvious damage to the cables that connect
the screen to the motherboard.

Any ideas?

kv32 wrote:When I turn on the power the screen flickers, almost like it get's turned on and off. When I shine a flashlight
at it I can see horizontal lines that slowly dissapear.?

I have a number of 600x's that do that - solution I have found is replacing the Sub Card, the problem I suspect is the screen cutout switch is broken - Ray has detailed how to source/replace the switch on his website http://www.rkawakami.net/ibm_600x/sub_card/ - but as I have a number of spares I haven't investigated to confirm this is the actual issue.

As to the 8081 error - boot the laptop with the PCMCIA cage removed - if you still get the error it's my guess it is the board as i regularily boot 600X motherboards without cages and never see this error

I checked the switch and you were right - it is broken. I will
look for a replacement switch or sub board.

When I boot the Laptop (external VGA) with the PCMCIA cage
removed the error still shows up.

I am guessing that fixing the motherboard won't be easy?

More than likely. There may be a component which has lifted slightly off of the motherboard (broken solder joint) or it may be an actual electronic failure of a part. In either case it is a "needle in the haystack" situation. You could get lucky by inspecting every square millimeter of the motherboard and see the bad solder connection. Or there may be an obviously burnt part. But if there's something wrong internally with an integrated circuit, you're not going to find it by looking at it. Electrical schematics are not available for the Thinkpads as far as we know so that makes it even tougher.

Is it possible to somehow get pass the 8081 error and boot from the HD?

Even if the PCMCIA is kaputt it would be nice to actually be able to use the computer.

I don't know. The only other 8081 error I could find in the archives did not mention the possibility of this. There might be an edit you could do in the BIOS via the hex editor but I also don't know if there's been any investigation into what/where/if you can change to bypass the check of the PCMCIA presence test.

That wasn't quite what I was thinking of.

When the 8081 error shows up it doesn't allow the boot process to continue. I was
wondering if there was a button one could press to do so.

What I was thinking of should not necessarily be specific to the 8081 but any error that
stops the boot process.

Is there something like that

--edit:

Besides, how am I going to flash a new BIOS if I can't boot the computer past POST?

Hmm... going back through all of the posts in this thread it does not seem like this was mentioned/asked:

Are you able to hold the F1 key down when powering up and access the BIOS?

If so, the hex editor I was talking about is accessible when you are in the Config menu by pressing CTRL-D. There's a couple of known edits that can be made to disable the on-board memory or the trackpoint, but as far as I know, nothing about the PCMCIA sub-system.

Actually, now that I think of it.. if you can get into the BIOS screen, try the Config/Initialize function to see if that helps. It probably couldn't hurt as you can't seem to do much with the system as it is.

Holding down the F1 key while booting does not produce any results.

Although I can't see how, maybee I'm doing it wrong?

Accessing the system BIOS ("Easy-Setup") is done by pressing the F1 key down, turning on the system power and keeping the F1 key down until you see the Easy-Setup screen. It appears that the POST sequence is being stopped prior to giving you access to the BIOS when you get the 8081 error. I don't know of any specific key sequence you can enter to "bypass" the error, but would suggest ESCAPE, SPACE or ENTER.

Also I don't know of any way to completely bypass the POST operation. My understanding is that this testing needs to take place in order for the system to be usable.

rkawakami wrote:I don't know of any specific key sequence you can enter to "bypass" the error, but would suggest ESCAPE, SPACE or ENTER.

With a different error (see discussion of bypassing error 127 in the Official 770 Upgrade Thread) it is possible to bypass the error and continue booting up by pressing ESC, followed by F1. Pressing ESC would bring up an error screen, which could be bypassed by then pressing F1 instead of power switching off and on. No idea if that sequence would work with other errors.

Phil.