t4xp dead video - repair?

[manamana]

I have a T41p that had the video chip go some time back. it is no longer under warranty ("certified refurbished"), and since I did not need the computer at the time, I shelved it till I had time.

recently I've been talking to people and looking into getting a replacement motherboard. Surprisingly, this appears to be quite a problem with T4xp thinkpads: between myself and 8 other people I've talked to with 41 or 42p laptops, 6 have had the video die. even more oddly, all 6 were heavy rhino users, and the 3 who had no problems never use rhino. it's wierd.

I've also been watching ebay for a new motherboard, and the T4xp boards run quite a bit more $, and also draw far more bids. Oddly, most places selling t4xp boards also offer to buy your dead board, and some places advertise that they can fix your non-working board, rather than doing a full replacement.

so I've been wondering: is the dead-video thing simply a matter of blown capacitors or burnt resistors? based on the minimal evidence I have, I'm thinking the problems are heat related (the firegl pushes the heat envelope of the design under certain useage situations).

so does anyone know what's involved with such a repair? I'm fairly handy with a soldering iron, and even if I kill it, it's not like I wasn't going to have to buy a new board anyway.

[xkeithx]

what is rhino??

[manamana]

3d CAD application. my theory is that rhino (or certain operations in rhino) uses the openGL featureset in a different way than most programs do, which somehow causes the Firegl T2 to heat up a bit more than normal.

Might be complete hogwash, but it's the best guess I have. I'm more just concerned with how these buyers on ebay and other places are so eager to buy dead boards and fix them. It must be fairly easy and fairly cheap, so I want to know how.

[manamana]

I'm more just concerned with how these buyers on ebay and other places are so eager to buy dead boards and fix them. It must be fairly easy and fairly cheap, so I want to know how.

anyone?

[christopher_wolf]

I'm more just concerned with how these buyers on ebay and other places are so eager to buy dead boards and fix them. It must be fairly easy and fairly cheap, so I want to know how.

anyone?

Must have a very "special" group of friends as I have seen and worked with many T4X Series Thinkpads and have yet to come across one that has experienced a hardware-faulted video problem.

To my knowledge, you can't effectively repair a T4X planar board if the video, primarily the GPU and not just edge connectors on the sides of the mobo, is a problem as the GPU is soldered onto the system board.

[Dead1nside]

You're scaring me buying my T41p now.

[manamana]

yeah, I know, it's weird. every t41p/t42p owner I know that uses rhino has had this problem. every t41p/t42p owner I know that doesn't use rhino is happy as a clam. Any t41p/t42p owners out there use rhino regularly and not see any issues?

I'm not naive enough to think that such a small group signifies some design or manufacturing problem...but of the t41p/t42p problems I've seen reported/asked about on the net, this one is way up there, and seems to be particular to the 'p' models (I have not contacted others on this board or elsewhere who report the same problem to see if they use rhino or not)

The full issue:

starts with video going blocky/distorted after some period of use (when the laptop is warmed up). external monitor shows the same problems. At first, things can sorta be fixed (or at least, something changes) temporarily by putting pressure on various points on the laptop, or can be fixed for a longer period by rebooting.

the time that these fixes work for shortens as the problem progresses, and eventually video goes dead entirely. rebooting still fixes it for a short (and eventually, very short) period, and the time the laptop is useable is longer if starting from a cold boot rather than a reboot.

so it might just be a connector issue, but I had initially ruled that out as an external monitor shows the same problems.

it also just occoured to me, typing that out, that the situation is pretty consistant with bad video ram. maybe these repair guys have some way of identifing the one or two flakey ram chips and just replace those (perhaps with good chips culled from other boards with one or two bad chips)

I don't know. I do know that I'm not going to pay $600-800 for a replacement motherboard when I can buy used, working t41p for $700-900.

[christopher_wolf]

Interesting as I have been using Rhino on and off for about half a year now and I have yet to notice any problems. Maybe it is the kind of environment?

I really would like to take a look at the hardware on those systems and see if, indeed, it got "fried."

Maybe it does affect only the "P" models.

[manamana]

yeah, from what I've seen, I wouldn't expect you to have any problems - you have a t43 non-p. (FWIW, I've also yet to see/hear of a t43p with this issue)

I thought of environment the first time I heard about the problem. From what I can tell, nothing consistant, and certainly nothing anyone could reasonably suspect of causing permenent damage (though I can only guarantee this in my own case)

here's a Mobo for cheap if you want to see one (sounds like the same problem): ebay