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Fixing an IBM T40 with No Video (in Downtown)
I picked up this IBM T40 on 31Mar2012. The owner lives very near to my office. I went to meet him after work. He gave me the information below to help me fixing it:
"It required a numbered card of some kind which we could not figure out. ... the screen is not functioning either to some degree or not at all. It has not been used for quite some time so out of sight, out of mind."
When I returned home, I checked this T40. One of the arrow key had cap missing. Otherwise, it is in mint condition. It booted up but it had no video on LCD screen nor external monitor. My instinct was that the video chip had solder disconnected. I took the laptop apart. The video chip had no sign of repair before. It was good to test my reflow process again. I did the reflow on 22Apr2012 and installed Windows XP to test the video chip stability. It had been working without error for a week.
On 28Apr2012, I found a 60GB Hitachi hard drive which has no bad sectors. I tried EasyUS Todo Backup to clone the original 40GB hard drive to the 60GB hard drive. The cloning was completed successfully but system could not boot up.
I installed the Windows XP from beginning which could test the video chip stability again. At first, I installed the wireless driver to get connection to Internet. After that, I ran Windows Updates, followed by .Net 2.0 installation and ThinkAdvantage System Update Both Windows Update and System Updates ran over 2 hours. The T40 video did not have any problems.
I took a backup so that the Access IBM key can restore the T40 quickly. With a bigger 60 GB hard drive, this T40 was picked up by a young man living in downtown on 23Jun2012.