Thinkpads Forum

Hey all, been a while since I've been here and even longer since I've posted. Right now I'm trying to get my old Thinkpad 770 to boot. Last time I used it was back in January with no problems, but since then it has been unplugged from AC power and untouched until now. When I try booting, the fan turns on full speed, slows down, and speeds up again as usual, but nothing appears on the screen. The hard drive isn't accessed and neither is the CD-ROM drive, and it doesn't emit any beeps at all. I've tried taking out the hard drive, CD-ROM drive, battery (holds enough charge to run the laptop's fan for about 30 minutes, charges), CMOS battery (works, haven't tested with a voltmeter though) and RAM and there is no difference. It's late at the moment and I don't have an external monitor I can try right now, but the lack of any beeps makes me expect a blank screen when I try it tomorrow.

This happened to me before a few years ago but I was able to get it working again somehow. Unfortunately I have no idea what I did to make it work.

What could be the problem if the laptop was in safe storage from the last time it was used until now? Did something go wrong because it didn't have a source of power for several months besides the CMOS battery?

Thanks in advance for any input, it is greatly appreciated. I will post again tomorrow after I try hooking it up to an external monitor.

External monitor was blank as well. Any ideas?

Not sure what the problem is, but you might try to get into your BIOS by pressing and holding F1 after you use the power button to turn it on. Also, can you confirm that you don't even see the memory count posting when you turn it on? And you might try pressing and holding the power button to make sure that the laptop is indeed turned off fully and you are starting from a cold boot. Lastly, does the power light turn on? And which icons show up in the LCD panel?

Phil.

The memory count does not show on the display when I turn it on. The LCD panel shows that I have a 100% charged battery and flashes the battery icon, caps lock, num lock and scroll lock icons when I power it on, just like it would when it would boot. The power light does turn on. Pressing and holding F1 doesn't seem to do anything, nor does pressing Escape. Still no beeps and nothing comes up on the display.

I'm thinking it might be a problem with the built-in 32 MB of RAM since it's so old. Unfortunately it's not a 770X/Z so I can't remove it. I thought it would be a good idea to disable it with the BIOS hex editor back in January but I didn't end up doing it. Now I'm regretting it. If nothing else gets it to boot I may try desoldering the built-in RAM, but I'd rather keep that as a last ditch effort.

Thank you for your time Phil!

SilentDude56k wrote:I'm thinking it might be a problem with the built-in 32 MB of RAM since it's so old.

I'm not the best resource for these kinds of troubleshooting errors, but if I had to guess, I would say that if it were your built-in RAM, you woulld get an error code at boot, before your memory count was able to even start or display. But you aren't getting any display of anything. And you aren't getting any display on the external monitor either.

I would double-check the LCD screen with a bright light to make sure that the backlight is not dead and so preventing you from seeing text that actually is indeed showing up on the screen. Also double-check the LCD slider to make sure you haven't turned the brightness down down too low to see.

My next guess after that would be a hardware problem with your Video somewhere (video card, cable connecting to the LCD, or connection on the motherboard). I don't have a recommendation for how to test those or figure out which one might be the culprit, aside from trial and error replacements.

Phil.

Took a flashlight to the screen and still saw nothing. According to the 770 beep and no beep codes (http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... LXVBW.html) it's either the system board (hope not), DC/DC card, or the CPU card. I still have the original 200 MHz Pentium MMX packed away somewhere, so I can try that if needed. If I have time tomorrow I'm going to open it up to see if anything is visibly broken or unseated. According to the Lenovo site it looks like an improperly seated CPU card could cause this. If reseating it and the video card doesn't work I'll swap out the processors and cross my fingers.

Interesting to note is the floppy drive receives power when connected with the external cable but not in the UltraBay. Probably doesn't mean anything, but hey, it can't hurt to keep that in mind.

Thanks Phil, and any further suggestions are appreciated. This old thing has some sentimental value to me so it means a lot to get it back in working order.

EDIT: If I have time later today I will open it up and see what I can do.