My T61p suffered from the dead Nvidia GPU issue, which hit me about 3 months ago. I ordered a used replacement motherboard online and installed it yesterday. I can't tell if the motherboard was DOA or if I possibly did something wrong while installing it... when I hit the power button, the fan starts for a short time (about 1 second) and the LEDs all turn on, but then the fan shuts off and all of the LEDs but the 'Z' one and the battery/plugged in ones shut off. The screen never turns on. If I try and boot with the memory pulled, it beeps 8 times, which I suspect is the expected behavior, but I can't get any further than the 1 second fan spin up when I put the memory back in.

I kind of suspect I'm in a worse situation than I was with the dead GPU. Anybody have any ideas?

Welcome to the forum!

Return the board to the seller and call it a day.

If you're unsure about the board swap process questions are welcomed around here on any and every aspect of it.

Good luck.

Figured as much. Thanks.