T41 dead?

[Polymath]

Hi. New here, but not new to thinkpads.

I have a T20, G40, T41, and a T42. The G40 and T42 still see daily use.

The T41 however might have finally given up its ghost. It got a new motherboard about 7 years ago while it was still under warranty, after the wife spilled a soda on it.

The only activity or lights are the battery light which, with the battery installed, stays orange but for a quick flash of green when I first plug it in.

With the power adapter plugged in, but no battery, I get only a brief flicker of light when I plug it in, or push the power button.

I re-seated the ram. I did the "pushing the power button 20 times with no battery or A/C power" protocol. I removed the ultrabay.

Any tips or suggestions?

[Neil]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

Sure sounds to me like the system board is dead. Motherboards of that vintage just don't age very well. The solder breaks down, and all sorts of things stop working. You can get replacements boards for >$40, but unless there is something really special about this particular T41, I would say just replace it with something newer. T60 models are selling >$100, and T400/500 are not much more.

[Polymath]

I figured it was hopeless. I know it isn't worth spending more than like $15 to fix. I'll just strip it of its useful bits (RAM, battery, etc) for my T42.

I've been watching e-bay for a cheap barebones T60 (~$50) for the last couple of days. Then the T42 can be my spare.

In a year or two I'll move up to the T400/500 series, once they're under $100. Gotta love cheap computing.

[DRobinson]

In a year or two I'll move up to the T400/500 series, once they're under $100. Gotta love cheap computing.

If you already have a hard drive, OS, and power supply, you can find T400 for around or under 100 bucks. We will see how fast they continue to drop in price. I have my thoughts in regards to the economics of the past several years and a slowing of Moore's law that some of these more powerful 'older' systems may continue to hold some value. They are very capable of running the current OS out of Redmond. My guess is that we will not know until after the first of the year. How many i5/i7 systems will hit the secondary market? That is what will kill the value of any Core2Duo machines.