T30 BIOS Crisis Recovery?

[The Doctor]

Hi, I've got a T30 with a corrupt BIOS, and I'm hoping somebody here can give me some advice.

The source of the problem is not mysterious, I was trying to edit the white list for wireless cards, and apparently I did not do a good job. When I flashed my modified BIOS, the computer would no longer reboot. When you turn it on, the back light comes on, but nothing is displayed. One thing that does give me some hope is that if I hit F1 or F12 as it's turning on, part of the IBM logo appears at the lower half of the screen. It stays there for a few seconds, then it disappears. The logo does not show up if I don't hit one of those two keys, this behavior leads me to believe that at least some part of the system is still somewhat functional, although obviously not functioning very well.

I have tried to follow the crisis recovery for a T43 as shown here http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=100075 , but have not had any success. I have tried it with and without the jumper in the parallel port, and I have tried both USB ports with the external USB floppy drive. Regardless of what I try, the disc comes on for a few seconds, and that is the end of it. I have also tried holding down function key plus B while I turn it on, with and without the jumper, that makes no difference.

My choices now are to continue trying to get this thing to recover, or to purchase a used motherboard off of eBay. I would still prefer to recover if I can, which is why I am posting here asking if anybody has any further advice on it. Does anybody here know if a USB floppy will work for crisis recovery on this model of ThinkPad? Is it possible to recover from a BIOS failure at all on this model?

I do have the dock for it, which provides a connector where I can hook up the stock IBM floppy drive, which is not a USB device. Am I likely to have better results if I try to use this drive? I ask instead of just trying it, because I don't currently know where the drive is, and would like to know if it's likely to work before I try searching for it.

Any words of wisdom you folks can offer would be appreciated.


TIA
Ed

[cadillacmike68]

Do you have the bootable BIOS update diskette? You can get one from Lenovo.com (download the image and make the diskette).

Of course you need another computer and the FDD, and it still may not work. But if you have the FDD and a spare computer to DL it from, it may be worth trying.

[T30alive]

bootable diskette that flashes bios with the FDD is a good choice. Can you get the boot options menu, i think F12?

I have seen weird things in the bios before in just changing memory size where the computer wouldn't boot. after some time the bios seems to adjust to the new memory and then boots.

i have seen a case where the screen is black and never boots due to a bad memory chip possibly damaging the mother board.

as for the wi-fi special bioses, i have not tried them. i have one T30 with 801.11G card in the mini-pci that works fine. seems it is running the original bios.