Long: What to do with this 'new' lot?

[nichevo]

Well in a flurry of something or other (dad in hospital, I needed a ride for him) I ebayed up a couple of parts/repair machines, one T41p and one T42. (Also a good used T400, but this is not that board so I will spare you.) Neither had HDD or power supply, both had a battery. The T41p had a drive bay cover (no caddy).

The T41p was bought because my own T41p, bought from the IBM SPP used PC site, went dim/pink (presumably the CCFL). The T42 was hard to explain except it was promised to boot to BIOS and I wasn't sure what the T41p would do, so I thought one way or the other I could Frankenstein up something.

My own T41p I had previously shipped off to an outfit in MI called Business Services, at

http://www.bztechservices.com/ibmlaptoprepair.htm

not wishing to be bothered (this was some time ago).

They replaced the backlight but said it promptly fried and wanted over $100 for something I think they described as the video relay chip - or I could send them another mobo which they would presumably scavenge. I asked them what part number? They gave me what I was not sure was the right answer (though perhaps it was a common part) and at length I asked for it back, and they returned it. No charge, I give them that.

Happily the display still displays, but very faintly, as if the backlight were quite shot. Just as I sent it to them (it had been limping along with the screen getting brighter after some warmup time, but finally conked).

I mentioned this on another thread and was advised too look out for squalls if these meatheads had fried my mobo (as I say apparently not). And that if my mobo fried backlights, nobody will be very interested in it at e.g. The Board Room.

Well...the mobo is not fried. The backlight is not on. (The video still displays, faintly.) My understanding of the problem is not complete.

But what is positive is that I have a pretty clean parts/repair T41p from eBay, bless the nice people at scottsales, and I took the HDD and 9-cell and optional RAM from my machine and put it in the 'new' T41p.

It worked - a few BSODs, a few hiccups digesting the last gen 802.11b card (I had upgraded my T41p to an Atheros abg card trying to avoid the 1802 (?) error I learned of here many moons ago), but it seems to boot and run OK.

• The screen is bright and has no bad pixels at first glance but there are a couple of wear marks - which are not at all bad, really only one of any note, but my old screen was cherry.
  
  The fan on the new machine makes a little noise which I simply don't recall or note in the other.
  
  My abg card and 1GB SODIMM are still inside the original machine.
  
  And my IBM SPP T41p was mfgr date 05/01 compared to the eBay T41p's date of 04/01 - so that GPU problem or any other crisis is theoretically a year farther down the road with the SPP piece than the new eBay piece.

So: do I gut them both, pull the abg card and SODIMM out of the SPP one and put in the eBay one, part out the stripped SPP machine to you good people, or run it on a KVM or as a headless server?

Do I bother trying the CCFL again, on my own this time? Should I try the inverter first? Should I delve into this "video relay circuit" issue which bztech said fried the first backlight? None of the above?

Also: would need a new HDD not only for this but for the T42. Can't readily find an IDE HDD bigger than a 250, which is not too shabby but of course is more $ than a SATA. Well, can do. A 30-40-60-80GB would be fine if anyone has lying around...

but as an alternative, how about I get one of the first-gen SATA 2nd HDD UBay Slim caddies, which ThinkWiki says is intended for the T6x+ but has a bit of plastic which I can somehow get off and fit into a T4x, and use that as a boot drive? Is it such a huge ronking performance bite on the PATA-SATA bridge that (even assuming I can in general live without the dvd-cdrw) I will be sorry? Is there a SATA-IDE pin adapter which would fit inline in the prime HDD bay? (Surely not?)

Other than that, quite happy with the ebay T41p. Both T41s are the 2374-GGU, by the way. Oh, and the DC jack on the eBay T41p might be a leeetle wiggly.

Now as to the ebay T42...

which is a 2379-R6U...

it is a 15" XGA (1024x768) which is no great shakes. It seems clean, which I suppose is all I ask, but I can only boot to BIOS because of what appears to be a CMOS, i.e. battery error (date always = 1998). The HMM says 14.1" and 15" models have a different SKU.

Also googling on a T42 CMOS battery turns up a part which says it obsoletes many other old SKUs.

What should I buy? (Am I wrong that this is the problem? Should I buy several - if the same part can be used - and swap all 3 of the CMOS batteries as long as I have them open?)

Then again, the plastics are not clean. The top lid has a crack on the right side, no biggie but I notice, esp. as it mars the fit of the top lid and the bezel together along the edge. Also the top of the lid is a bit scratched up.

And the plastic grille over the fan exhaust/heat exchanger is somewhat bashed up. I see no functional impact however.

This T42 has 1GB RAM (I think 512MB was standard), and a b/g card which is good enough. No HDD no caddy no drive cover no adapter, and apparently no good CMOS battery. (BTW it and the T41p both have the 6-cell battery - one is OK condition one is red, a little under half strength, haven't tried conditioning it yet.)

So for another $20-30-40 in parts , I guess I can get it online. More for a new LCD (what are options?) if I went down that road. Again, maybe a SATA HDD in a UBay caddy?

In sum: What would anyone do with these machines? Who would want them? What should I buy? What should I sell? All three appear fundamentally sound (except maybe my SPP T41p if it fried backlights). If I chose to keep them or value their use, I would think to max out all their RAM, but maybe that is a waste of time if I am to sell or part them.

Oh, they all have XPP COAs. Can I use the same recovery disk set on all? Or, having one good HDD with a recovery partition, can I use this to clone to new IDE or SATA HDDs of the others?


Umm...Also: on long boot, the T42 BIOS says that it is US Government property and should not be resold. ?!?!?!? Of course that was so many years ago. But should I call the GSA or the FBI or somebody? Will they care? Will they arrest me and/or my eBay seller? Will they offer me a new Lenovo in trade, haha?


Anyone with personal interest please PM me. I would be glad to sell any or all of them at this point, Dad can have that T400 or I can move into that one and give him my T61.

[nichevo]

Oh also, are those extended warranties eBay offers, SquareTrade or BuyShield, worth buying on these equipment?

[ajkula66]

It all really depends on your answers to the following questions:

a) Do you need the graphics "oomph" of the Fire GL T2 in T41p?

b) Do you really need/prefer SXGA+ over the common XGA screen?

Good luck and let us know.

[nichevo]

It all really depends on your answers to the following questions:

a) Do you need the graphics "oomph" of the Fire GL T2 in T41p?

b) Do you really need/prefer SXGA+ over the common XGA screen?

Good luck and let us know.

Umm...with respect, not sure what you are driving at here. My thought processes are not running with yours, perhaps. How would your advice to me differ depending on how I answered your questions above?

I would say,

1) I chose the T41p in the first place because (blushes) I wanted to be able to play GTA: San Andreas, which IIRC it did effectually. I do not really need two, though two appeals to some doubtless neurotic instinct in me, perhaps like the fantasy of dating twins. I could sell both, really (bye girls! ).

1a) On my top end machine I would love to have a lotta pixels i.e. 1080p or 1600x1200. OTOH no 17" and 15" form factor is not that desirable either - though maybe OK if weight <= about 5 lbs. Pretty happy with the T41p dpi.

2) I would not choose to keep the T42 because it is not cherry - so would prefer either to sell it, to fob it off on my dad who will not care, or restore it to mint condition. Only in the latter case would I care to upgrade the screen unless it would add more to the resale value than it cost me to implement. I would prefer to dispose of it unless it did something better than the T41p, which I don't see it doing as is, except as a superior doorstop/paperweight.

Really, I do not need any of these. I own a T61 which I now use as my daily ride, and a T400 which I will fully move into as soon as practicable (long story short, it came all wiped; I have a beta OS on it, need recovery disks). The T61 has 30-40 days of warranty left and the T400 is warranted into 2012.

In fact, if I could recoup more than my costs, I would sell them all and buy a new T420 or X220 or the like - the prices are pretty fair and if I got a machine faster than my Core 2 Quad at home, I could dispose of my two desktops as well.

I would be happy to end up with two machines, a front-line Thinkpad and a loaner/parent/girlfriend machine, and perhaps a third just for insurance.

I now have:

T41p 2374-GGU 05/01 (SPP with the CCFL issue or whatever) abg
T41p 2374-GGU 04/01 b
T42 2379-R6U 05/02 bg
T61 7659-VBN 08/06 (appx 40 days warranty remaining) agn
T400 2768-WBE 09/01 (warranty into 2012) agn+WWAN
If need be/at a profit, I would sell them all and get one new-gen T420/T520/X220 unless there were some flaw in the new makes. I could afford the new one, at least a base model, without selling the old, but how many of these do I need lying around the living room (don't answer that, ha ha)?

Possibly I would keep one or two of the old, and get the new Sandy Bridge-gen machine. I could keep one or two of the old and keep the T400. I would like to get and/or retain the machine(s) with the best capabilities and also build quality - I'm very tactile. One thing I do worry about is getting bashed with one of these design flaw issues, e.g. the GPU.

In the best of all possible worlds, I might want the front line machine (whether current T400 or new Sandy Bridge) plus an S10 or X1xx to see how I like the portability vs power tradeoffs. Quite happy with an i5/i7 +1 or +2 of whatever, ultimately. Think I would like a fingerprint reader and Bluetooth.



Oh that reminds me...what do I do with the WWAN on the T400? Get a service plan from Sprint or whoever? Do I need more hardware?

[ajkula66]

I guess you've pretty much answered your own question...at least the way I read it, which might be incorrect...

Give the T42 to your Dad.

Part out "the twins".

Sell the T61 as well.

Move on.

As for Wi Max, it's still in diapers in NY...be advised...

My $0.02 only...

[nichevo]

I guess you've pretty much answered your own question...at least the way I read it, which might be incorrect...

Give the T42 to your Dad.

Part out "the twins".

Sell the T61 as well.

Move on.

As for Wi Max, it's still in diapers in NY...not advised...

My $0.02 only...

Ahh, I see. Before I make a lot of assumptions, may I ask why? What is your reasoning?

I guess that implies the T41p are each worth more than the T42? See, I now HAVE one fully working T41p (with a tiny screen smudge but pretty nice). To make one fully working T42 I have more work and perhaps some expenditure and risk. Doable if it's really better that way, but...unless the resale value difference was somewhat significant, why not just keep the one good T41p? Will the price difference justify, say, $10 for a CMOS battery for the T42?

OK...assuming you're right...T41p disk can go into the T42. Though I tried that, wouldn't boot - hopefully just because I need the CMOS battery. Can I pull that from a T41p even though they are 14.1" and T42 is 15"? Or where is cheapest price+shipping? eBay? One of us Forum people? Forum sponsor? Radio Shack?

In general please let me know your thoughts on the values of the machines as I have described them, whole or for parts. LMK anything you need to know to better answer this.

[ajkula66]

You need a different HD cover for a 15" machine, they're like $5 or so on feebay. That's why T42 won't see the drive, most likely.

CMOS battery is a CMOS battery on *most* post-600 series ThinkPads...another $5 or so.

It's tough to value a machine that I haven't seen, but barebone units of this era are normally in the $75-100 range if fully functional, but missing a hard drive and adapter or something along these lines. If you have the patience, parting them out makes most sense financially IMHO.

Reasoning...T400 is a fairly fresh and still an extremely usable machine, for whatever purpose. I'd stay with that.

T61...a laptop that should sell easily if reasonably priced, since it has Intel graphics, agn card and a newer-type CPU...

My $0.02 only...

[nichevo]

You need a different HD cover for a 15" machine, they're like $5 or so on feebay. That's why T42 won't see the drive, most likely.

Umm...it seemed to slide home and fit. Maybe not - I will be vigilant given your advice - but I was hoping it was just the CMOS stopping boot, fearing that it was the T41p disk build. If you are right that is a strike against keeping the T42.

CMOS battery is a CMOS battery on *most* post-600 series ThinkPads...another $5 or so.

Yeah, $5 plus $5 (maybe) s&h, unless I pull from a t41p. Plus $5+5 for the hdd cover. Not only is that $10-20 actual cost putting into an obso machine (and for $20 I could get a used IDE HDD and actually use two of the machines), but there's also the time involved. Dad is in the hospital NOW and I don't want to wait a week, or a month from China, getting the parts. I can give him the T41p NOW with little or no additional time, effort or investment. You're not showing me $10-20 or more additional value in selling, whole or parted, the T41p vs the T42.

If it were a cost wash or even for less than say $25-50 net profit, I think I should prefer to keep the T41p - I am pretty sure it is a better machine in all respects, no?

Is it a better investment if I buy and install the CCFL then sell a working T41p? Any idea why the CCFL would have fried on those MI people? I agree if that is not the inverter or something I can swap in, but is a planar issue, that is a fatal flaw. I guess I would invest the $10 for a new CCFL, and the labor, once. If it fried again I would wash my hands of it.

Q: Do you think it is worth it to swap LCDs or entire upper halves of the two T41p, if I want to keep one? Also I gotta swap the RAM, wifi, maybe the fan.

What I would most like to do, what would make me happiest in my soul, is refurb the machines and sell them whole - but only if that were a decent investment. What might they go for new - not new, but whole and working?

It's tough to value a machine that I haven't seen, but barebone units of this era are normally in the $75-100 range if fully functional, but missing a hard drive and adapter or something along these lines. If you have the patience, parting them out makes most sense financially IMHO.

Oh, I have the patience. Do I take it down to a few sub-assemblies or break out and wrap each single part? Or do I take it down piece by piece as I sell each FRU and keep offering the rest as a P/R special? I understand that a car is worth like 3x as much if you can sell it as spare parts.

Reasoning...T400 is a fairly fresh and still an extremely usable machine, for whatever purpose. I'd stay with that.

Only thing is, I think I paid a very good price ($300) and if I could make a profit on it (sell for $400? $500?), I'd definitely do that and buy new.

T61...a laptop that should sell easily if reasonably priced, since it has Intel graphics, agn card and a newer-type CPU...

Well, what is reasonable? It was also out of the SPP program. Should I hope to get what I paid or more, esp. as I added RAM and HDD? (could put back the old HDD - not much point keeping the RAM, eh?) I think it has discrete graphics - no, I guess I am wrong - Mobile GMA X3100. Why would anyone prefer onboard graphics? Unless it is because the discrete are all lemons? Is that true on all Tpads or all notebooks?

My $0.02 only...

Oh, I feel I'm getting good value ;> I do thank you.

I should note in perfect honesty that the T61 has some kind of tiny nick or chip in the screen, at bottom to the right, just hidden by the battery icon on the taskbar. No idea where it came from, I am tempted to ask IBM if that is a known issue - I would swear I never marred it. Otherwise, flawless.

Also the T400 has a screen scratch, less than half an inch long and hardly visible. But I could not sell it as perfect and may have words with the ebay seller - unless I can sell it for more than I bought it for, ha ha. Again I wonder if IBM would fix under warranty?

[ajkula66]

The 14" HD cover fits, but it does NOT reach...the 15" cover has longer "legs"...and it's $5 shipped from NY...

Unless you're refurbishing a T4x for your own use, don't even bother. There's NO money to be made on these machines. Take it from someone who sold thousands of them.

Scratches on the screen are not covered under warranty.

Good luck.

[RealBlackStuff]

Since you claim you have plenty of time, buy a handful of CMOS batteries from Hong Kong at ~$1.50 a piece shipped!
Check eBay for "ibm cmos battery", then sort by lowest price.
All those yellow batteries (as shown on eBay) are all the same and fit in all your T4x machines, the T61 and probably also the T400.

[nichevo]

Since you claim you have plenty of time, buy a handful of CMOS batteries from Hong Kong at ~$1.50 a piece shipped!
Check eBay for "ibm cmos battery", then sort by lowest price.
All those yellow batteries (as shown on eBay) are all the same and fit in all your T4x machines, the T61 and probably also the T400.

OK...my concern was merely that they listed 2 FRUs for the 14 and 15 inch models. If all same then great. On your say-so have ordered one used from Chicago for $1.45 and 3 new from HK for $1.55.

I do have plenty of time as long as I have 2 working machines, 1 for Dad in hosp and 1 for me. If I decide to give Dad a T4x then no, I do not have time to wait on a new battery on a slow boat from China. If I use the T61 and T400 for those 2 roles then the T41ps and the T42 are free for leisurely playtime, sale, whatever. Question then is,

how most wisely to fix or dispose of the T4xen?

ISTM easiest is to just swap the ram, wifi, whatever to max out the working T41p. Keyboard maybe but seems like mensa mens between them. If I wanted to take what seems great trouble, I could swap out the cherry LCD from the first T41p, into the second which has the working backlight and no other known issues, but a very slight wear spot on the LCD. I am pretty finicky but this level of work might be foolish and if there is any risk it would seem not worth it.

If I kept both I guess I would get a new fan since the one makes a little noise - but maybe not bother, it doesn't sound really bad.

Obviously this seems laborious and leaves one with a gutted T41p. If I could fix the backlight and have it work this time, that would seem a yippee moment, but what if it fries again? I would invest the, what, $10? for the CCFL, and or the inverter or whatever else is needed, and the work to repair it, but only want to do that once. Or nonce, if it will be in vain.

So then I have one good T41p, to fix the 2nd to working status needs: 1 HDD and caddy, 1 CCFL or whatever, maybe some more RAM (or maybe skip that). Maybe a new fan. And an adapter I suppose. I could package it with either a 6-cell or 9-cell in indefinite (but not totally shot) condition. I might have a dock or two in storage.

Then I have the 15" 4:3 XGA/Radeon T42. Not cherry but apparently OK in function. Needs a CMOS battery, plus HDD, caddy and cover. If I kept it I would prefer to replace the cracked plastics (base, apparently, and lid) but that just feeds my instinct to dump it. if I went that far maybe I'd replace the LCD with the 1600x1200 and then at least it would have an extended capability - but would feel foolish spending more on a new screen than the whole is worth or would cost.

What FRUs for the fan and CCFL? Should I get an inverter? What FRU? What FRU for the Flexview IPS 1600x1200 15" should I be that nuts? What are the plastics (lid/base) FRUs? Yes I have the HMM, but I have some confusion which is why I ask.

Any other parts? Do I need a multimeter or other eqpt? How can I judge feasibility of the CCFL fix? How can I morally sell the mobo, or other parts, or the whole for p/r, knowing or suspecting a mobo prob that fries CCFLs?

Is either the T41p or the T42 worth fixing up to sell? Well I guess opinion here is "no." What are they estimated worth: as parts, as p/r, as working?

Oh and again, can I use the T41 recovery discs (XPP) for either T41 or T42?

[goofyGAguy]

How is Dad's health coming along, if one may ask?

[nichevo]

Thanks for asking! He had a bypass and there have been complications, infection, but he's relatively perky today. Ate some, was interested to play with my computer - so today of all days I only brought the one, ha ha. Bring two tomorrow ;>

I feel the people here are pretty reliable, but if I'm gonna leave a laptop in the room unsupervised (Dad does not count as supervision, on his meds!) in danger of damage or disappearance, I'd rather it be a T4x than something I'd miss more.

[RealBlackStuff]

RTFM, all the parts-info is in there: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-46464

[nichevo]

RTFM, yeah, like for the CMOS battery. OK tyvm.