Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

Small problem with my S31, during a RAM swap between different machines the S31 froze at power on with the display going bright white, power key had no effect so I had to pull the battery.

I replaced the new RAM with the original RAM and at power on I get an image from the video ram buffer from last boot before normal boot and operation.

The BIOS is the latest, the only two problems I can see are that the power and sleep indicators do not work any more and the display brightness has either full on and medium brightness. The display cannot dim to zero.

Everything else is working fine, battery is charging and still lasts 3.5 hours.

I'm wondering if the LCD inverter is damaged or whether the video RAM is the problem as it notes that a memory address is reserved for the video ram.

Reserved area
The following conventional memory addresses are reserved by the system program (BIOS) and others.

* C0000-CBFFF : Reserved for Video BIOS
* E0000-FFFFF : Reserved for System BIOS

Any ideas?

What OS are you using?

Using W2K SP4 and Ubuntu LTS at the moment, although the power indicators are dead from boot.

It sustained a short, there's no doubt. With the Silicon Motion Lynx3DM the memory is built into the GPU die. No work around there.

Thanks, that makes sense.

I'll just have to live with it, not really worth getting a new board.

Anything in the Event logs on either OS? I'm wondering if maybe just the BIOS is corrupt. Maybe re-flashing might untangle it? I'd try removing the CMOS battery, mains battery, no power at all and let it sit for a day. Plug in the CMOS, power it up and see what might happen. Both are long shots but may give more clues......

I just don't know if it's the OS the BIOS or even the memory controller/chipset that's steering the memory address snafu. An S31 over here would be worth saving, not too many around!

Nothing in the logs, the machine works fine.

Just tried going into the BIOS with the battery removed, pulled the power then re-applied power.

The ghost image of the BIOS is the first thing on the screen for around 3 seconds.

I've already tried flashing the BIOS but it is already the most current version. Removing the CMOS battery now, see what happens tomorrow.

Thx