T30 dies on boot

[thomaslp]

Hi,
I have 2 IBM T30. When turning on power it detects memory and as soon as the monitor is turned on the laptop dies. The only way to start it again is to remove the power cable and the battery.

I know memory is detected because when I remove the memory it stalls before the LCD is powered on and it does not "die" unless I press the powerbutton.

Second thing is that the laptops boots fine if I connect an external TFT monitor. This also confirms that memory is detected.

I tried connecting a T30 LCD that I know works but the situation is the same....

The laptops dies even before the IBM logo is displayed. It dies as soon as my eye registers the backlight is turned on.

I found this thread http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... highlight= which describes the issue as well but no solution. Maybee somebody found out something since the above thread was posted in 2006?

I have seen this issue on 3 T30 laptops and I would be very happy if this can be solved without changing the motherboard.

[thomaslp]

I creaked this one. First I realised that the laptop had a bad memory socket. I soldered it but the booting problem were still there.

Then I tried resoldering the 4 inductors but that did not solve anything.

I finally concentrated about the 2 blue fuses located near the LCD plug. I took the change and desoldered the fuses. Then I desoldered 2 fuses from a known working motherboard and soldered them on the defect mobo.

After plugging in the most critical devices I powered it on and the backlight turned on....and stayed on....no shutting down. I took a known working LCD and plugged it in and BINGO.....I got the IBM logo. I have not used any time yet on the "original" LCD but my guess is that the inverter needs to be replaced.

Could this issue be caused by a broken inverter that messes up the fuses on the motherboard?

Gotta go....I am installing XP on the laptop right now and I hear the XP music....that's another good sign

[RealBlackStuff]

You mean one or both of the Fuses F5 and F14 were 'gone'?
Got to try that on a faulty T30 mobo I have!

[thomaslp]

Yep that is the ones. I fixed a second one too and here I only replaced the F14 fuse. And the laptop's inverter was broken on this one too. I think that the failed inverter might cause damage to the fuse since I have seen this on 2 motherboards now.

By the way I used a hot air desoldering station to remove the fuses. I added a little extra solder to the motherboard and hot air to resolder the replacement fuses.

[jamnkats]

thanks so much for this post! My T30 workhorse (4 years daily use by me) has been getting this error - I cleaned the fan and it is still very intermittant, but I need to figure it out before it dies.

I have a T30 parts machine (bad mobo) so I hope the hardware manual will show me how to swap the fan out.

[tfflivemb2]

I have a T30 parts machine (bad mobo) so I hope the hardware manual will show me how to swap the fan out.

It will...

As to the OP...thanks! I'll have to keep an eye out for this in the future...

[madkat]

swapping the fan is extremely easy...
just be careful that there are 2 types of fan for the t30
one is for processors up to 1.8 included, the other one is for the 2.0 and 2.2
right now i have (temporary) a 1.8 fan on my 2.0 T30 - it's running ok, but under heavy load, the mobmeter showed even 83 degrees...