X20 rebuild problems

[bobcardone]

Hi all,
I just got 2 X20s for cheep...(no HD, mem, etc.)
One is a beater with a broken screen, but booted fine on an external monitor.
The other is pristine with a good screen but does not boot. When plugged in, the batt lite is green and the sleep lite is on. That's it...
I know these are old machines, but I like working on Thinkpads and this looked like a simple task of "marrying" all the good parts together into a decent machine.
All went well, got them both apart and re-assembled, good beater mobo into pristine case .
Threw in a HD and some mem and installed XP. Went well, put in a wifi card and a good battery and used the machine all weekend around the house with no problems.
This morning things changed...
I had left it plugged in but powered off overnite to charge the batt.
Tried to light it up but no joy- no boot, no indicator lights, no anything!
Pulled all the removable parts and checked them in other machines (HD, mem, wifi, batt, A/C adapter) all checked ok.
Does anyone have any clues as to what happened or what to check?
I'd really like to get either mobo working, these are interesting Thinkpads and different from the rest I've worked on so far (different screwdriver size, for one).
Help, pleez.....

[jamiphar]

Have you removed the CMOS battery? A bad CMOS battery can cause the same kind of strange problems like you're having. I would suggest you remove the CMOS battery and any power sources, hold the power button in for 30 seconds, and then test the laptop again with only the AC power.

[bobcardone]

They've been sitting in the "project" pile for a while, I drug them out and tried what you suggested.

Same symptoms, although the one that worked before seemed to emit a definite "click" the first time I tried it.
Very similar to the noise a T22 with the "blink of death" makes. Only made it the first time power was applied.
I polled the mobo out and examined it with a magnifying glass, nothing obvious but I may try solder reflowing some of the big stuff in the power section. I believe the problem with that board lies there.
The board with the stuck batt, sleep and thinklight is probably toast.
I'll start looking for another mobo, this X20 is in too good shape not to restore.

I really like the X2x series and have a fine X24 that works perfect. They seem better built than my X30 and I really like the rubbery finish. A shame they don't have the battery options the X3x series has.
Does the X2x series share the same "BOD" problems as the T2x series? I've been reading the forum about that to see if there are any clues there.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated!

[mini_g]

Minor note: I've had several situations where I couldn't boot my X20 and left it alone for about a month or more and it started to work just fine again.

I do understand your liking the X2x series. I've found that my X20 runs some items oddly better than my X32, no matter what the OS is, and at times had it looking as good as Vista in terms of the bling factor.