Thinkpads Forum

I've been wanting to try out a 240X machine and finally picked up a complete, but non-working machine to play with. Ideally, I would have loved to get one of the ones in the marketplace, but couldn't justify spending that much on a toy... at least not yet.

At first, the machine wouldn't post. When plugged in the battery would charge and when the power button pushed, the green power led would come on. I can hear the fan running, but there are no beeps and the screen stays dark. I removed the motherboard, took out the modem and tried again-- it posted! So I thought, it must be a bad mini-pci card. I left the card out, reinstalled the keyboard and it doesn't post again. I've pulled the motherboard out checked to see if anything was loose (nope) and reseated everything, but there's no change. It seems that rapping the bottom of the laptop will usually make it boot again.

So far, this is what I have:

1. Post/No Post not affected by keyboard or MiniPCI.
2. No additional memory installed.

Has anyone run into this problem before? I think there might be a loose connection on the mainboard.... but that's just a guess. Any suggestions?

Does that board have inductors? If one is loose it might cause power related symptoms.
Here's what they look like on T21

It does have inductors. I gave each one a slight tug at the solder points when I had the motherboard out, but none of them have any give. On the T23 I had, the loose inductor popped off with I did that.

Maybe I'll try opening her up and try putting the soldering iron to each contact just to see if that helps. It not too difficult to disassemble.

Hmmm... touched up the only inductor I saw to no effect. Well it actually booted up a few times, and I was happy, but then stopped after I moved the board around it a bit.

Thinking that maybe this was something similar to the GPU issue in T4X models I tried flexing the board and hitting the power button. Well, it seems to consistently power on when I push down on the big Intel chip near the center of the board. I know its not the GPU but dont know what it is.

I guess the next step is to try a reflow myself as this machine isn't worth enough to pay a professional.