Observations from a disassembled ThinkPad

[darrenf]

Tonight I learned, by accident, that the bluetooth controller is a USB device. I've been hunting for USB devices that I could disconnect in hopes of fixing the Microsoft USB2 power-saving bug so I cracked the case to disconnect the bluetooth. Here are my observations:

1. Disconnecting the bluetoothe card didn't seem to change the power characteristics of the machine. Ditto for the modem card

2. If one is careful, the bluetooth card can be installed or removed following removal of just the three screws at the bottom of the LCD bezel. One must be careful because there are screws on both sides of the screen that only allow one to lift the bezel a little without breaking it. These screws are covered with rectangular pieces of tape on the sides of the LCD lid.

3. Regarding the high-pitched noise that several people have noted with aggrevation: a crude stethoscope test shows that the sound comes from multiple sources including the bottom edge of the north-bridge/south-bridge chip, the general area of the CPU and the smaller of two chips under the WWAN slot. I don't think there will be a simple fix for this one.

4. Removing the wireless card has the same impact on power as disabling it with the front-mounted switch -- virtually none. The impact was around 0.4W. Pretty impressive. This is the Intel card.

My other observations are outlined here and here

-darren