Motherboard Tester's ??

[JimmyD]

I've seen some on E-Bay but really not a lot of info. supplied. Anyone use or know of any that can help in trouble shooting mobo's. Naturally expense has to be considered.
All reply's appreciated. jimmy

[jhonyl]

I am not sure that I have understood your question, as in if you want to just tell if the motherboard is good or not, or if you want to actually know exactly what is wrong with it, and fix it.

Anyway, I only know how to tell if the motherboard is OK, and this is by running a stress test on it such as Prime95. If it pass then all is well. If not, then you still can't know what is wrong, because it can be the memory or the CPU. You can run Memtest86 to check the memory, if it is OK then it is the motherboard or the CPU. But if the motherboard or the CPU are faulty you would probably get bad results on a memory test too, because of mistakes in the other components. Well then you can only know if everything is well. If it isn't you need to replace one of the components and test again, until you get a working set. An other option is to test your memory with memtest86 in another computer that does pass Prime95, then you can get an OK on the memory without buying more memory.

Memtest86, and Prime95 are free, but it will only tell you if all is well. If you have spare parts, then you can determine the faulty unit.

[JimmyD]

What I mean is a self powered pci card that is inserted and give's a readout (numeric) code that identify's motherboard components and the condition of the component's. Not swap and try (FRU ) procedure.
I'm sure they are available just don't have the specific data on them. jimmy

[JHEM]

No generic one for laptops, they're all too different.

Regards,

James

[bhtooefr]

You mean a POST Probe?

None that I know of that is specifically for laptops - you'd have to run keyboardless to get to the Mini-PCI slot, anyway.

Two alternatives, though.

The first is to use a regular desktop POST Probe in an IBM Dock II.

The second is to get a PCI to Mini-PCI adaptor (I've seen exactly one, and can't find it - googling just gives me adaptors that go the other way, so one can use an old Mini-PCI WiFi card in a desktop), and use the POST Probe in that. However, there'll be this huge contraption sticking out of the top of your laptop, with the keyboard dangling off to the side.

Now, the next problem: Nobody's expecting a POST probe on a laptop, and IBM won't have published the POST codes - just the beep codes. You COULD try the codes for a similar IBM desktop, but that's unlikely to work completely. For that matter, IBM may well have left off the POST probe capability.