Got 600E...strange beep symptom...need help

[jack_zhan]

I picked up a 600E from my IT teacher's office as a "useless junk" for free today.

Fortunately it is complete with every parts except for the ultrabay drive. Coincidentally I have a spare ultrabay FDD, so I installed it, and the 600E looks pretty good now.

Plug in the AC power using my 701C's adapter, switch on, well, at least the LEDs turns on, not a complete junk The battery indicator keeps blinking orange, which indicates a low or dead battery. Then the beeps come. Two ?long? beeps followed by one short sharp beep(quotation marks because I am not sure if they are long beeps; they are just longer than the later beep). The HMM says nothing about this. Help!

PS: The former owner/seller put a "T61P" sticker on the lower left corner of the LCD assembly as well as a core 2 duo inside and a ATI Radeon graphics sticker on the palm rest. Was he trying to "convert" a 600E to a T61p? Ridiculous.

Edit: I noticed the backup battery is missing. Is there any compatible backup battery from other models, e.g. old T series?
The screen is blank during beeps. Is it possible that the screen is defective?

[pkiff]

Well, I'm not sure about all those beeps, but I would bet that you simply can't boot the device without a backup/CMOS battery installed. If you install a dead one, then you should at least get some error codes.

Also, I'm surprised that you are able to plug the adapter from your 701C to power the 600E. Those are not (should not be?) compatible plugs and I would have thought that they deliver different amps. I'm not sure what is going on there, but I wouldn't plug a 701 series adapter into a 600E. Or maybe you mean 770, and not 701C?

But getting a working backup/CMOS battery in there would be the first step to anything. You can get them for cheap off eBay. They are simply regular coin-size watch batteries wrapped in plastic with a couple leads attached, but it is dangerous to solder them yourself, and using tape to connect the leads can be unreliable. Your best bet for troubleshooting is probably to get one online somewhere.

If you want to try double-checking the screen, you could try plugging it into an external monitor during the boot sequence. Normally, you should see the boot sequence (Thinkpad logo, memory check, etc) on the external screen as well, though as I say, I wouldn't be surprised if you can't even get that far without a CMOS battery plugged in.

Phil.

[jack_zhan]

It is a 701C AC adapter. AFAIK, the amps rating shown on adapters are the max current they can withstand without melting. This may explain why it works.

Waiting for a fresh CMOS battery and a fresh main battery now. (The current main battery has a cracked case but luckily it doesn't leak)

[pkiff]

I was just checking elsewhere, and it looks like the 701 series uses a similar "16 volt" connector as what is used in many later Thinkpads, including the 600 series.

However, the original 701 series adapters I think are 2.2 amp, 35 watt adapters, like this one:
http://www.cheap-chargers.com/ac-adapte ... h6903.html
or this one:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Thinkpad-70 ... 19d78e6aca

The 600 series should have a 3.36 amp adapter (or higher), I think. As I say, if you've got an original 701 series adapter that is rated at 2.2 amps, then would recommend against plugging it into a 600 series machine. That might explain any problems you are having booting.

You should be able to boot it up without a main battery installed. You probably need a CMOS battery installed, though you should be able to use a dead one (though you will get errors).

Phil.

[jack_zhan]

I just checked its FRU number...it's 02K6815, an 16V/3.5A adapter likely for the X series. With 3.5A rating it should be okay.

Tried to boot on AC only but still showed the previous symptom. Now wait for the CMOS battery to come and see if it works.

-----------------------------
UPDATE:
I tried to connect the 600E to an external display, and expectedly the external monitor displayed something. From the monitor I figured out that the beeps are produced by the POST. The POST got two errors, 161 and 163, then finished and beeped twice. Then the ERROR screen appeared, with the sharp short beep. It seems the LCD, which remained blank all the time, is truly dead. Now go shopping for a replacement LCD. Are LCDs from 600 or 600X compatible?

Since the CMOS battery has not been installed yet, errors 161 and 163 are what I had expected. I am glad to see that no other codes are displayed, which means this 600E has no critical problem with anything other than the LCD.

[rkawakami]

A dark screen can be caused by a few things:

- a bad backlight (CCFL); it's the lamp inside the LCD panel that provides light to the display
- a bad inverter board; it's a small circuit board located below the LCD that converts a low DC voltage to a high AC voltage that powers the CCFL
- a blown fuse on the motherboard; the low DC voltage going to the inverter board is usually protected by such a fuse
- a bad lid switch; there's a small lever switch on the Sub Card that controls the backlight and hibernation/sleep modes: http://www.kawakami-ca.com/ibm_600x/sub_card/
- a bad LCD ribbon cable
- the system has been set to only output video to the VGA port; press the Fn+F7 key combination to toggle between LCD and VGA port

[jack_zhan]

I just saw the screen do something during boot. It flashed one time, with little and nearly unable to see lightness, and then displayed a horizontal line. The line is only slightly darker than the area surrounding it, and is hard to see. The line don't match anything displayed on the external monitor. Any ideas about what is going on here?

P.S. Fn+F7 tried with no luck. Since the line is not the correct thing to be displayed, it seems the problem is not on the backlight.

[Neil]

Most likely is a burned out CCFL, as those 600e machines are pretty old. And to answer your other question, yes the 600x lid (and LCD) are exactly the same.

[jack_zhan]

That's good news. I asked this question because I found a complete LCD assembly for sale at a decent price here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/310653603568

Now I can place an order confidently
------------------------------------------------------
Well here comes the interesting thing....

While I am waiting for the replacement LCD assembly and the fresh backup battery, I suddenly find that the problem is just as simple as a jammed lid switch...just a slight touch with a screw driver and the switch(and the screen) is fixed What the ****....

Well at least I get a cosmetically better lid....will change the lid and then resell the good screen to cover the cost of the poor poor speaker cable accidentally damaged during disassembly

BTW, you are right pkiff...without the backup battery the 600E just hangs at the Thinkpad logo screen refusing to boot any further.

[jack_zhan]

Hey guys! I have just got the 600E a fresh CMOS battery. Both good news and bad news. Good news is, the CMOS battery works as it should, errors 161 and 163 no longer appear. Bad news is, the 600E still hangs at the "IBM Thinkpad" logo screen. Now this seems to be the new problem. I have tried different hard disks and floppys, as well as their combinations, even with neither installed, but each time I power it on its symptom remains the same. Boot to the logo screen and stop. And I cannot enter setup/diagnostics because any keystroke at the logo screen produces nothing. Help!

Jack Zhan