Thinkpads Forum

I (knowingly) bought a broken 570E off eBay. The LCD panel is broken badly, but an external monitor works... mostly.

Text mode is perfect, but sometimes in graphical mode the display jumps and shows a strange pattern, typically if there is a large portion of the screen being drawn.

This is on Ubuntu Linux.

When I move the mouse cursor, sparklies appear and disappear all over the screen. When a window showing text scrolls, large areas on the bottom half of the external display go white or noisy for very brief moments.

I know the LCD needs to be replaced, but is the video symptom a problem with the system board? Or perhaps is the bad display panel causing this issue?

If this were your machine, and you had a mind to fix it instead of sell it, would you replace the LCD panel or the system board first? Prices seem odd for this family, since parts seem rare: I can find a system board for $40 delivered, but displays are at least $50 (and get close to $300).

I would do some more testing before spending any money on it.
Open up the machine and disconnect the connector(s) for the lcd panel. Then power it up with external monitor attached.
Should, at least give you some of the answer.
Remember, that it is possible that the machine has more then one error.
By reading the ebay sellers description on the auction page, you might get some information about the machines history,
which might give some indications of the likelihood of multiple errors.
When it comes to parts, I would be out looking for a similar - also defect - machine.

It's been a while since I've last played with these ThinkPads, but my guess would be a faulty system board.

You can probably buy a working 570e for less than it would cost you to fix this one.

I've sold a complete working one in good shape for something like $110 a couple of months ago, slice included...

Your call. Just my $0.02.

Good luck.

whizkid wrote:When I move the mouse cursor, sparklies appear and disappear all over the screen. When a window showing text scrolls, large areas on the bottom half of the external display go white or noisy for very brief moments.

My 570E did this when I changed memory modules in it. I had a 256 stick in it and it was OK. I changed to a 128 stick (because I needed the 256 in another machine). That is when the sparkles showed up. I put the 256 back in and the sparkles went away. Both sticks tested OK with memtest86 for 24 hours.