Update: A31P in Koma - both - foulplay for lack of use???

[friedrich-eugen]

Hello,

our (my wifes and my home-office-machines) old A31P have been cared for a long time and been in use (about 2002-2011/2012) for long time. Since about 2011 we use "new" old hardware.

I happened to find my A31P working until autumn last year. Now it stopped booting, even no post is shown, but loading a battery works, the lights show... My wifes machine exactly the same !

My daughters A31P (a bit younger ones) are still - continously docked and connected to electricty - working, they boot quite normally.

First I though, that the bios batteries must have failed. They have not. On pushing the on-button, the usual lightshow Shows up, but no hdd drive spins up, no cooler starts, no boot-Screen Shows up, F1 has no function. Tried with less / different Memory, different batteries.

Both machines stopped working only after having been put off continous connection to their docks and to continous electrical connection.

Any hints to whats up?

- Died of lack of use or
- Died of shame?
- Bios lost its Memory?
- Dead electronic parts?

What will I have to do to wake the machine?

thanks in advance

[jronald]

Not unusal.
AJ66 (George) can fill you in, but these A31's are finickey beasts at times. You can try removing everything you can including the memory. Pull the CMOS battery and push the on button for 60 seconds. Reinstall the CMOS battery and try to power it on. It should give a 1331 Missing Memory code. If it does, add one stick of memory, and try again. Keep adding things back until it will no longer boot. Last thing added was bad.

Ron

[friedrich-eugen]

Well,
the machines are about ten to twelve years old... I stopped using them one to two years ago.

The younger one, having been used less lately, stopped first: Does not show anything... just the lights, batteries seem to be loading (which is giving me hope).

First I thought: ok, change the bios battery. I did. Nothing happened.

Now I believe the machines might have lost cmos-memory. Possible? Probable? How to resurrect them? Any hints or advice?
_______________________________________________________________________
Following Advice of ajkula66 I extracted memory and used the caps on, to no effect...

How to check on cmos battery (may be they sent me old/empty ones ?) ? Are thes cmos batteries reloading ? If, how much time does it take ?
_______________________________________________________________________

No POST visible, no Bios-access ...
_______________________________________________________________________
Thanks in advance...

[RealBlackStuff]

You can check a CMOS battery with a multimeter.
The A31 (and most others in Thinkpads) CMOS battery should read 3.0V or higher. (Red wire=Pos., Black=Neg.).
These CMOS batteries are NOT rechargeable.

[ajkula66]

They should be able to boot without the CMOS battery installed...

The fact that the "Caps Lock" light doesn't stay on usually makes me junk the board...

[friedrich-eugen]

RealBlackstuff,

thanks, it seems, that I bought "old" cmos batteries, that were still alive but too weak ...
I happend to find one in my spare stock, that at least started POST and Bios, as to be expected.
(1 of 4)...

It's the small and simple reasons, that produce the most trouble, as these happen to be ignored....

Now, where to get real fresh ones?? any advice?

Thanks to You all, ajkula66, jronald , RealBlackstuff and to Bill Morrow ...
A peaceful and successful, happy New Year to all

Sincerely Yours

[ajkula66]

thanks, it seems, that I bought "old" cmos batteries, that were still alive but too weak ...
I happend to find one in my spare stock, that at least started POST and Bios, as to be expected.
(1 of 4)...

I'd still be careful with the board that made it to the POST...these machines have a tendency of being moody and intermittent boots are a commonplace with them.

Discharging the system (pressing the "power" button on 10 times in a row and holding it down for a few seconds with the adapter, battery and drives removed) might help as well...

May they continue to serve you well in the new year...

[friedrich-eugen]

Thanks,

I 'm in the process of preparing to sell all but one of them (my childrens and my wifes machines) and my spare parts (quite a lot of them, all sorts of). I'll try to keep one as a memorial-piece. (As I still try to resurrect an old AST Ascentia 950N, one of my first Notebooks)

Sad enough I managed to have

- several systemboards, that only suffered from my lifting the security chip... and
- serveral UXGA displays, that only lack new backlights.

(As my eyes suffer from ageing I can not work sufficiently precise, my fingers do not succeed in finishing the placment of a spare backlight (final position of cabeling within the "foot" of the screen))

I do not think that the reason for my problem is something other than the cmos battery: I rebuilt the machines about ten years ago, they worked all the time, with only minor problems ... Aging material may well become a problem, but that should show differently ....

[friedrich-eugen]

Hello,

it still remains not completely solved ... I 'll come back next year...

[friedrich-eugen]

Hello
ajkula66, jronald,

intermediate report:

My personal machine has come back, after changeing cmos-battery. The machine, my wife has been using a long time and that machine had n't been upgraded as far as mine, has not (!).

Using poweron and capslock buttons for start, machine stays still, lights show and go again, battery lights and poweron lights stay.

It was this machine that did show for very short moment several (!) error codes (I was not able to memorize them in the time left to look at them), one of them was checksum error, but there were at least 3 others...

(1) I'll try still another cmos battery. But meanwhile I had the chance to test at least one of them (as its plug got destroyed) that one showed the right voltage.

(2) but I seem to lack understanding: Is there a tendency of the/a systemboard to "hold" voltage, allthough the machins is off (off ac, off battery)?

(3) Some machines have the addon of a security-chip.
I happend to mistakenly lift off the chip of some boards (I think I managed to "Kill" several boards this way, never got round to send them in to revive them.)

If the second machine has lost securitychip support via cmos battery supporting dc, will it be possible to revive the board (I think it should be possible)?!

Any advice will be welcome!! Thanks in advance

[RealBlackStuff]

The security chip is always matched to a certain board. If you try the chip on another board it will NEVER work.
And without that chip the board will not work either.
So if you'd still have all your security chips, try them out one at a time, until it matches.
And the three error codes (set date/set time/wrong checksum) that you saw/missed are all related to a bad/missing CMOS battery.

[friedrich-eugen]

Thanks RealBlackStuff,

So
I'll do try a new cmos battery. As I did not dismantle the machine, it can not be the security chip, if the chip holds the info needed in "hard"-memory.

I do have the boards all together packed for sending off (since some years), but never did....
I'll try that again.

[friedrich-eugen]

Well,

back online I hope You're all well, especially those suffering from lack of forum-activity ...

Update:
(1) One out of two machines has recovered from koma after exchanging cmos battery, one has not. The one that recovered shows relatively large daily adjustments of cmos clock (up to 0,5seconds). The one that did not, does not beep if out of memory. Powering on lights show, than subside (only power and battery lights staying on).
(2) Cmos-batteries are ok, at least measuring does say so.

Any advice would be appreciated ....

Thanks in advance