T30 Making a grinding noise / Ram-rant / BIOS & Wireles

[jamman]

First...this board is awesome. Glad I found it.

I bought a T30 off of Ebay June 25,2006. It had a 30 day warranty, and the IBM web site recognizes that it expired July 25th.

1. I tried to increase the RAM two weeks ago and hit the bad front memory bay problem, I learned here to place a folded piece of paper under the door to solve the problem. I guess approaching IBM about a new motherboard will be fruitless at this point? The guy (fwi - DIMISOL) from EBAY basically won't return my emails about it. Anyway, for a computer I had for 60 days, I was pretty bummed out.

2. About 4 weeks ago, I noticed that the machine, when on my lap, would make a short sudden grinding noise if I moved suddenly, or tilted it too much. Then a week later, the machine failed to boot up, giving me a disc read error, use CTL+ALT+DELETE to try again. DIMISOL offered to send me a new harddrive at their cost, but suddenly after two weeks of not booting, one day the machine booted up and has been ok for the last week. I still hear this short grinding sound when I physically move the machine or tilt it or whatever.

Anyway, is this sound the harddrive grinding and maybe on its last legs? Is it the fan? As best I can tell it seems to be coming from the front left side of the machine, and the grinding sound does not seem to affect any performance that I can tell.

3. Does anyone have any info/experience/opinion about the BIOS hack that I've seen on some website that will let you add any PCI wireless card you want to?
Thanks to all!

[agarza]

No, I haven't had that issue with my T30, excepting the memory slot error. How exactly you did place the paper in order to make the T30 to recognize the memory module. I need to fix that laptop to sell it with 768MB, not 512MB,

Cheers

[dsigma6]

i don't think anything but the hard drive could cause a grinding noise. the motherboard or case could be flexing when you move it (are you using two hands to pick it up?), causing something to apply pressure to the hd.

if it's out of warranty, IBM isn't going to help you...i believe. this may be one of those cases where it's a known defect in the product, so maybe someone can add on that, or you can search more about it on the forum.

to the no-1802 hack, search on that too, there are dozens of pages on that matter.

[jamman]

I just took a postcard, folded it a couple of times, and as I replaced the door to the memory bay, I put the folded paper in between the door and the front (bad) memory slot. When you tighten the screw on the door, the paper apparently pushes the contacts of the memory SIMM into the right place.

I've seen some people say it works, some it doesn't. It seems IBM was replacing motherboards free of charge until a few months ago, now they will no longer do it, according to other posters.

[dsigma6]

i've never heard of any problems with wedging something in the memory slot, but doesn't that pose a bit of a fire hazard?

[agarza]

I just took a postcard, folded it a couple of times, and as I replaced the door to the memory bay, I put the folded paper in between the door and the front (bad) memory slot. When you tighten the screw on the door, the paper apparently pushes the contacts of the memory SIMM into the right place.

I've seen some people say it works, some it doesn't. It seems IBM was replacing motherboards free of charge until a few months ago, now they will no longer do it, according to other posters.

I managed to make it work.

Let's hope it doesn't induce a fire hazard. I don't think so because we're placing a simple piece of paper.

[gearguy]

A less fire hazard way to do it would be to use some of that special double sided thermal tape which is used to conduct heat away from computer components and into a heatsync.

I'd say about four strips of that stuck together should be more than enough

[wogeboy]

I'd have to agree, probably a bad hard drive.