T21

[gradilli]

my thinkpad T21 is completely dead after a BIOS upgrade I made years ago, now I'd like to revive it but I've lost the original floppy disk drive.
Could you be so kind to let me have a step by step procedure to convert the floppy Bios into a bootable CD and force BIOS on thinkpad or some other way you can suggest? Many thanks

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

If the system is "completely dead", then there is no way you will be able to update the BIOS using any normal boot method. If the laptop failed to accept a BIOS update and could not be booted after that, then the normal repair is to replace the motherboard. While it might be possible to replace just the BIOS chip, you will have to have access to some fairly sophisticated equipment to do that.

However, even before you try/consider that step, I would remove the MiniPCI card from the bottom of the system. It's behind the panel near the middle of the system. That modem/ethernet card can go bad and sometimes when it does, the laptop fails to power up/boot.

On the other hand, if your laptop flashes the hard drive icon when you press the power button and does nothing else, then what you have is the "Blink of Death". It is a known problem with some T2x and A2x systems. It is usually NOT permanent. You MAY be able to get the system to boot again but the problem will eventually come back. If this is your case, then I would remove all power from the laptop (main battery, CMOS battery - but only if you know that there is NO Supervisor/BIOS password set, and the AC adapter). Let the system sit for a couple of days. You can even try the magical power reset trick: press the power button 10 to 15 times in a row, then press and hold it for 10 to 15 seconds. It's been reported that sometimes you can get "dead" systems to wake up again.

[JBUK]

When you say completely dead do you mean that it will not boot into the bios ? If so you will need to work on this first.
What symptoms do you have ? Is there any life at all ?
A motherboard swap could be your best option if you cannot get it to boot into DOS or Linux or from any bootable CD or USB key that you have. You will need a fully charged battery to be able to update the bios as well.

T2x parts are not expensive these days.

[gradilli]

many thanks for the answer and .. buona Pasqua .. (happy Easter everyone).
Ray, the laptop flashes the hard drive icon when I press the power button and does nothing else but the HDD was completely formatted for another usage at that time.
So now I try to follow the suggestion to "wake up", but first I should load Win98 or DOS on the HDD: is this ok?

to Jbuck, what do you mean by ..motherboard swap..?

[rkawakami]

If your hard drive LED briefly flashes when you press the power button, and the systems does nothing else (screen does not light up, no beeps or sounds from the speakers) then what you have is the Blink of Death. The problem is on the motherboard, which is why I and JBUK suggested to change (swap) the motherboard. However, given the age of the T21 and the good chance that a replacement motherboard will eventually have the same problem, it may not be cost-effective to do this. You will have to decide if it is worth your time and money. At the moment, I know of no easy, permanent cure to fix this problem. There has been some work done to solve this issue. I have seen some reports that adding a resistor has helped but nothing specific.

Formatting and loading an operating system on the hard drive will have NO effect on your Blink of Death problem; the system will do the same thing even if there is no hard drive connected. If you only intend on having a bootable hard drive in case your T21 does turn on at some point in the future, then I would suggest just a simple DOS install. If you load Windows 98 on the drive, I will have to assume that you will do this with another laptop. If that laptop is NOT another T21, then you will probably have some problems when the T21 boots the system (drivers will be wrong or missing).

[Block3r]

@rkawakami
Until I repaired my Thinkpad with BoD I studied everything that I found on Internet - including the german wiki and threads on other forums. I didn't find any information that HDD light flashes when BoD problem occurs. Even in my case only power flashed for a second. If I remembered correctly, when ADP3421 is broken in case of BoD, there is not enough electricity on the input of the power button - to check this closely I must look into schematic diagram.

[rkawakami]

My experience with the T2x and to a lesser degree, the A2x systems which have the Blink of Death, is that the hard drive LED briefly flashes. I just searched the archives here and there were a couple of instances where I wrote that the "power" LED blinks, but I think I made a mistake in those cases. From memory (it's been some time since I pulled out my BoD systems) it's the hard drive (HDD) LED that flashes when you press the power button. No matter if you quickly press the power button once, or hold it down for a second or two, the HDD LED will blink once real quickly.

The problem could be in the MAX1632 or the ADP3421 or associated circuitry. I believe that people have replaced both chips with varying degrees of success; some systems did boot again right away, while others continued to have the same problem. As far as I know, no long-term follow-up has been done on those systems which did boot.

It has been reported, both here on this forum, and on the German Thinkpad site, that adding a resistor between two pins of the ADP3421 will "fix" the BoD problem. This was documented here:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 36#p581636

However, if you scan down that thread about six posts, you'll see my warning about this repair. I can't recommended that you try this resistor cure as I equate it to putting a bare wire across a blown fuse in order to get something to work again. Essentially you will be losing any protection that the power controller is supposed to provide for the rest of the power system.

[gradilli]

thanks to all, T21 still dead, so I've bought a T43 for 50 Euros, ciao