Help! T42P UXGA goes dark

[thinkaholic]

My wife's lovely Flexview 15" T42P (type 2373-N49) has begun to go black after a few minutes from booting. I have experienced GPU failures before on other TP units, and they usually exhibit other symptoms first, such as weird distortions. External monitor connected also just goes dark.

- Could this be anything other than the dreaded ATI GPU failure?

- Is there an R51 or R52 board that has a GPU that will drive this beautiful display?

- Any other thoughts from you TP gurus out there?

TIA for your help!

Greg

[RealBlackStuff]

Any T4x/R5x motherboard with an ATI GPU can drive your UXGA LCD.
If you get a T43/R52 motherboard, you will also need different CPU and RAM, and probably a reinstall of your OS.

[ajkula66]

My wife's lovely Flexview 15" T42P (type 2373-N49) has begun to go black after a few minutes from booting. I have experienced GPU failures before on other TP units, and they usually exhibit other symptoms first, such as weird distortions. External monitor connected also just goes dark.

- Could this be anything other than the dreaded ATI GPU failure?

No. That GPU is toast.

- Is there an R51 or R52 board that has a GPU that will drive this beautiful display?

If you're looking for an Intel-based board, the answer is "no".

- Any other thoughts from you TP gurus out there?

T43/p and R52 planars are a lot safer bet than any of the previous ones with ATi graphics. They can also be modified to take SATA drives so you can enjoy that nice FlexView for a few more years...

[thinkaholic]

Thanks to RBS and ajkula66 for their excellent help. I have found an R52 with CPU, RAM and ATI GPU at a reasonable price. Hopefully I will have the T42P up and running in a week or so. What a fabulous resource this forum is!

Greg

[thinkaholic]

Moving right along then! The "week or so" stretched out a bit, I finally completed the surgery on the wife's T42P/R52 yesterday. Most components worked fine. I had to cut off parts of the plastic Hard drive enclosure and an aluminum tab off the CD drive enclosure to make things fit. The long fan assembly from the R52 is too tall to fit, so I used the T42P fan. Despite what I have read about the space between the GPU and the heatsink being 2-3mm (requiring a rubber thermal pad), there was really zero clearance on mine. I just used AS5 on both the CPU and GPU. After assembly the HD caddy was quite a tight fit back into its enclosure.

SOFTWARE: I was hoping that the T42P HD would boot right up in the FrankenPad, but this was not to be. Is there a way to repair the WinXP install on this machine? Or will I have to do a clean install? One other possibility I thought of: If I were to clone the HD from my T43 would that likely boot on the R52 system?

Any help would be much appreciated!

[RealBlackStuff]

T42 and T43/R52 have different chipsets, that are not compatible.
Either clone the T43, which should work with the R52 out of the box, or better: install fresh.
Windows will run much better that way.
Also start looking for TTAV134 BIOS (available for T43/T43p and R52), to stop Error 1802 (wifi) and Error 2010 (HD) in it.

[thinkaholic]

Thanks RBS!

I'm working on the clone as we speak. Thanks for the tip on the BIOS compatibility issues. The final product looks like it will be a significant upgrade to the T42.

Greg