T30 with failing memory slot

[badmanhk]

Thanks you all here!

I just resolid all pins of the bad memory slot of my T23. The bad memory slot works again!!

Alan from Hong Kong.

[Peter_Peril]

... but i had my soldering iron dialed down, so YMMV. i'm just glad i had a magnifying glass! thanks for all the help, everyone!

Okay I give up-- What does "YMMV" mean Additionally how much disassembly did it require to access the pins? You mentioned you "dialed down your iron" whats it rated at and to what temp did you use it. Sorry for the third degree, just trying to work up the nerve to give this a shot.

[tfflivemb2]

Okay I give up-- What does "YMMV" mean Additionally how much disassembly did it require to access the pins? You mentioned you "dialed down your iron" whats it rated at and to what temp did you use it. Sorry for the third degree, just trying to work up the nerve to give this a shot.

YMMV = Your Mileage May Vary (meaning that it might be different for you)

[BruceDickinson]

msmax and others who've soldered the pins--

did you actually touch the soldering iron to the little bits of solder on the circuit board pads?

-- or did you try to heat the solder indirectly by touching only the pins (and avoiding the pads and solder)?

thanks a lot.

[Rick Aguinaldo]

In my case I targeted the pads and then slide the tip of the iron toward the pin until it touches its end (the pin's). This way both the pins and the pads are heated directly at the same time.

[Msmax]

Just like Rick said...

for a good solder joint it is important that both parts get hot so the solder will attach to both parts.

Msmax

[Peter_Peril]

I;ve examined my slot ...errr connectors very closely with a magnifying glass and I swear I can't see any poor contact areas. Neither on the front or the back all the pins look bright and shiny. However--shimming doesn't seem to work either. I'm running with Bios Vers. 2.08, would that support system memory in excess of 1 GB; to what degree is bios support relevant to system memory access?

[t20user]

I;ve examined my slot ...errr connectors very closely with a magnifying glass and I swear I can't see any poor contact areas. Neither on the front or the back all the pins look bright and shiny.

I'm not sure a magnafying glass is strong enough to see this always. I used a microscope and it was somewhat difficult to see. I confirmed the pins I suspected by moving them slightly with an Xacto blade.

[thuur]

anybody who lives in belgium who is willing to do the soldering for me. Since I have never done it in my life

If you weren't able to have it fixed yet, I am about 40 minutes away and happy to do it for you


BTW, Good Soldering Practice is not to let the tip touch the soldering area for more than 3 seconds. Longer than this might result in component damage.

Judging by the pictures, a little extra tin couldn't hurt


R,

[spriggan]

OMG maastricht is only 20 minutes away. I live in Genk .

I visit Maastricht regularly

[BruceDickinson]

I'm not very skilled at soldering, but I was able to fix my failing T30 memory. I basically just remelted the solder and tried not to mess things up.

This is just to say that it wasn't too hard and it appears to have worked.

[spriggan]

I'm still gonna take his offer tho since I never even had a soldering bolt in my hand

hehe

[furiousmonkey]

My friend fixed his RAM slot with a high powered digital magnifer, go to google video and type

"T30 front RAM slot"

Its a two minute video of what the loose connections look like, when they are zoomed in on. The one on the very end is the worst.

[spriggan]

its seems like the soldering is just completely loose.

[Peter_Peril]

Man I wish I could afford a digital microscope or magnifier to facillitate this repair. It just not pratical to shell out the beans for a single use; yeah and I know many of you would say "quit yer kvetching...buy the tools and resell them afterwards." To which I would reply to much hassle for to little satisfaction. As such I'm looking at local repair shops to do the job. I think $59.99 is a fair price for this repair--so naturally the shops quote is considerably higher. What do you think is a reasonable price?

[SpawnyWhippet]

I tried this, first time out the T30 wouldn't reboot, I ran the soldering iron over each of the (200?) pins again to try and clean any invisible solder bridges. It now boots again, but no joy with the second RAM slot, stone dead.

[robert213]

I offered to fix the memory slots for awhile in our Marketplace (for a cost) and nobody took me up on the offer.....so I deleted the post.

Ok Guys,

I would like to have the memory slot in my T30 repaired. I do not have the ability to perform the repair myself. I live in Indianapolis, IN.

Does "phool@round" still offer to perform this repair?

Should I search for local authorized IBM/Leveno repair shop?

Should I ship my T30 to Hammerhead Technology?
http://www.hammerheadtech.com/

IBM/Lenovo Memory Slot Repair for the Thinkpad T30 Series Laptops
$65.00
We do not need to have the system board out of the laptop to repair this problem. Please ship the entire laptop to us, you can keep the AC Adapter, Battery, and hard drive if you want.

Is anyone familiar with "The Laptop Guy" in Columbus, OH?
http://www.laptopguy.com/repair_specialties.html

Any other thoughts?

[RealBlackStuff]

phool@round seems to have disappeared, so look for someone else.
You can pick up a used fully working T30 mobo on eBay between $50-150
Make sure you get the same type mobo!

[ZAGNUT]

Man I wish I could afford a digital microscope or magnifier to facillitate this repair. It just not pratical to shell out the beans for a single use; yeah and I know many of you would say "quit yer kvetching...buy the tools and resell them afterwards." To which I would reply to much hassle for to little satisfaction. As such I'm looking at local repair shops to do the job. I think $59.99 is a fair price for this repair--so naturally the shops quote is considerably higher. What do you think is a reasonable price?

you don't need any special magnifier to do the fix unless you want to locate the actual pins that have come loose.

if/when i ever get this problem on my T30 i'll just reflow all the pins and be done with it.



dave

[robert213]

Should I search for local authorized IBM/Leveno repair shop?

I located several local authorized IBM repair sites by comparing my local yellow pages phone directory against IBM's website...

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-44986
http://bplocator.lenovo.com/

None of the local repair sites have the proper equipment to perform motherboard repairs.

Is anyone familiar with "The Laptop Guy" in Columbus, OH?
http://www.laptopguy.com/repair_specialties.html

The person that I spoke with doesn't believe that a memory slot repair would be a permanent fix. He suggested replacing the whole mother board for a price around $300.00.

Should I ship my T30 to Hammerhead Technology?
http://www.hammerheadtech.com/

IBM/Lenovo Memory Slot Repair for the Thinkpad T30 Series Laptops
$65.00
We do not need to have the system board out of the laptop to repair this problem. Please ship the entire laptop to us, you can keep the AC Adapter, Battery, and hard drive if you want.

The person that I spoke with says that most of their business results from performing motherboard repairs. They have the proper equipment. They have done hundreds of T30 memory slot repairs with only a few unable to be fixed. Most repairs are done simply by reflowing the solder.

They recommend shipping your T30 through FedEX/Kinko's who has a shipping box for only $10. They suggested to go ahead and place the memory stick back into the bad memory slot.

[emk]

FYI, the resolder fix isn't nearly as easy as some people make it out to be. You need to be REALLY good at soldering to do it. I just tried mine last night, and hile I was briefly able to revive one of my dead DIMM slots, it failed again about 5 minutes later, and attempting the fix a second time destroyed the laptop completly.

If you want to chance it, I reccommend sending it to a professional.

[RealBlackStuff]

If you buy the proper flux (Chemtronics CW8100), and have a 25-30W soldering iron with a very fine tip, it takes less than 15 minutes to resolder both slots.
You need a steady hand, that is about all.

[emk]

I got correct electronics solder and a 25W tip. The slots did come back and die again relatively quickly, so I know it did somehting, but it's no 15 minute fix. I spend over an hour on it before I finally gave up and tossed the thing in the garbage.

[RealBlackStuff]

Assuming you threw the whole laptop away, if you take it out from the garbage again, please ship it to me.
I will reimburse you for your packing and postage.
PM me with your PayPal info.

[sncdrvr]

I've now successfully repaired my 3rd T30 ram slot. The 1st 2 machines had adequate amounts of solder and each pin refowed nicely with the required use of electrical flux/rosin. The 3rd machine that I reflowed couple days ago had a much greater amount of solder under the rear of the pins where there is no copper trace. I found I had caused two solder bridges just under the edge of the ram holder. Removed bridges with desoldering wick. After removing the bridges the machine would not boot. Closer inspection showed barely visible solder "splatter" between some other pins. I took my smallest straight blade jewelers screwdriver and very carefully and lightly scraped between each pin, then blew out the too fine to really see with a magnifying glass "splatter". Machine booted, now running 2 512 Mb sticks ram. Bios sees both sticks.

[onadesert]

I fixed my T30 memory slot problem yesterday. It is the second time with the same machine. When I had the same problem in 2003 I got the board replaced since that time it was still under 3 year warranty. I don't know when this problem came back but I realized it about a week ago. I did some search on the web about this problem if it can be fixed and found this fourm. Based on all the information I found I was convinced that it can be fixed and would be easy. I have access to all necessary tools at my work so I took my laptop to my work yesterday and looked at the solder joints of the slot with the problem under a microscope.

Let's call the slot that has the problem slot 1 and the other one slot 0 from now on. To make it easier for me to explain, let's assume the slot 1 is facing me while I look down the memory slots. Lets call the solder joints that are corvered by the memory stick in solt 1 inner side. With this naming my explanation would be a bit easier. It seemed to me that the problem is the broken joints on the left, at the end, side of slot 1. The inner side joints are much worse than the outer side joints. When I looked at all joints in slot 1 and slot 0 there was a sign of sever fatigue on inner side joints in slot 1. Believe or not, I got my master's degree on solder joint reliability prolem so know about solder joint fatigue and how it looks. Anway in my case more than a half of the inner side joints seemed broken. So I had to reflow all joints 1 by 1 with a solder iron to ensure that there is no broken joint left. I did on both side of the slot 1. Initially I tried a hot air gun to reflow but almost melt the plastic part of the memory slot even before the solder melt. So I would recommend using a solder iron for this job. Don't forget to add a little bit of flux before you put the iron on the joint. With flux job will be much easier.

I believe this memory slot problme is a design flaw. There are a lot of heat coming from memory sticks and the hard disk. The board where the memory slots are is heated up on both side by memory sticks and hard disk. So thre is sever thermo-mechanical fatigue on the solder joints. It seems that the slot 1 solder joints are closer to the hot spot of the hard disk. In addition less constraint on slot 1 because there is no screw that fix the board on to chassis close to slot 1. If the problem is really due to themo-mechanical fatigue resoldering the joints will not be a permanont solution. It will come back sooner or later depends on how often a user turn on and off the machine. An example is my case. I don't think removing the shock obsorber of the hard disk as someone mentioned in other thred will solve this problem.

[sncdrvr]

I agree with what you say about the potential that the problem will returm due to the design. Got to say that removing the rectangular blue soft plastic shock absorber and a good reflow that results in bright shiny joints with a nice radius gusset of solder at the end of the pin is most probaly superior to the origonal manufacturing job. Should get many years further use before problem reoccurs.

[dr.strangelove]

I purchased a T30 from eBay for a low price (around $125 shipped). Seller made no mention of the bad memory slot, but sure enough, it's there (he even labeled it "bad slot" with a post-it sticky note - how nice of him! The CDRW/DVD combo drive doesn't read DVD's either, but that's another story). I tried reflowing the solder joints, but I still had to apply pressure to the RAM module in order to get the board to recognize it. So I used a dental pick under a magnifying glass and isolated a few specific pins (on the inner side of slot1 at both the far left and right corners, using the nomenclature from the above post) whose joints had apparently come loose from the solder pads. I manually resoldered them (not reflowed - actually applied new solder), but after a couple of hours Windows was throwing periodic blue screens, and after reseating the RAM module it wouldn't come back to life.

*edit* Returned the machine - couldn't come to an agreement with the seller. Moral of the story: operate on the assumption that one of the slots is bad, and if there's enough solder there to reflow the other slot, so much the better.

[AEN007]

14December2009

Greetings.

I'm still trying to find someone to repair
my T30 failed second memory slot.
I could travel to Bayern or Baden-Württemberg ...

Any insights appreciated.
Thank you.
Regards,
AEN
Æ