Blank screen on boot - TPi1500

[Jimthree]

Hi,

I've been having an on going nightmare with TPi1500 (2645-54G), ever since the power socket become wobbly and broke off inside the machine. I took it into a local computer shop and they opened it up and told me there was nothing they could do and sent it of to IBM. I was advised that the cost of the repair was £400, so I asked them so send it back without repair. (this exceeds the market value of the machine IMHO)

That was all in the past, I took the matter into my own hands, and read up all about the machine, I read the FRU document and learnt how to take the machine apart and which part was faulty. I then ordered a refurbished DC/DC board from a company in the states which arrived just the other day. I fitted it, closed up the machine, and joy of joys, when i put the ac cord in, the battery began to charge. I left it to charge the battery completely then powered up the machine. To my utter disappointment, the hard drive span up and tracked briefly, the cpu fan spun up, but beyond that I had nothing, blank screen and no beeps.

One thing i was also very disappointed at, was someone, either at the local computer shop that opened the machine up first or at IBM who looked at it afterwards has broken one of the small ribbon cables connecting the keyboard to the mainboard. The actual ribbon cable in question is the one coming from the mouse nipple, and it has been completely severed. I never considered this to be too much of a problem because I was perfectly happy using an external mouse. But would the fact that this cable was not connected to the main bard be enough to cause a blank screen and no boot up? I've spent all morning reading about TPs with blank screens on boot up and tonight I'll go and stick my multimeter on the cmos battery to see if it is any good and I'll take the ram out and re-fit it (not that it has ever been removed) and check that everything is back in place snugly. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to restore life to this machine, and especially on the likelihood that the severed mouse cable is causing these symptoms?

Thanks for your time reading this long post....

Jim

[SeanM]

2645 is usually a 600 of some kind. . you sure about that type number?

If it's an i1500, and depending on the type/model. . . the catch that comes to my mind in reassembling them is that there's a cable for the floppy drive that plugs into the system board in the area of the dimm sockets. If you forget to plug that in while reassembling the unit, that connector will get jammed in the wrong place and cause things to not quite go back together correctly.