I bought a Thinkpad R50p on ebay that is described as just broken,I emailed the seller and they said that when he puts its hard drive back in and plugs in an external monitor it tries to boot but gets stuck on the windows xp screen,he left it there for an hour. The LCD does not light up. Does this sound like the gpu issue or just screen backlight+dying hard drive? It would be really nice to get this working if at all possible,because it has the qxga screen. I already have a 1200w heat gun and I ordered a CCFL and inverter and infrared thermometer,so I should be prepared for either outcome,I was just wondering what people on here thought.

Welcome to the forum!

If it boots (sort of) on external screen, but fails on its own LCD there are many things that could possibly be wrong there, GPU being just one of them.

A bad hard drive will prevent booting in certain circumstances.

As will a failing SouthBridge chip.

Get the machine in, try booting it and accessing BIOS with all removable components out (hard and media drives, battery, wireless/modem cards) and report back the results.

Good luck.

I actually just got an email back from the seller right as you posted that,he said if he holds a flashlight up to the lcd,it works,so it seems like a backlight issue,still not sure why its not booting from the hard drive though. I'm hoping its just a bad install of windows (or bad hard drive or both) because he's not sending his drive,I have a new 250gb drive to put in it. Oh,and one more question: What thinkpad would a type 1170 be? I won this one as part of a 2 laptop lot,he said he's not sure what was wrong with the other one,he just wants it gone,it might be working fine. The only thing that will be missing from either one is the hard drive.
The auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 499wt_1416

The other machine is an old I-series which is next to worthless.

As I've previously stated, get the machine in and we'll take it from there...

Kinda what I figured when he said it probably worked but he didnt even feel like trying it,I said not to even worry about shipping it because I was only interested in the R50p,he said he'll ship it anyway because he just wants it gone. I will definitely come back when it gets here in a few days.

Just out of curiosity,did the r50p series ship with hitachi/ibm travelstar hard drives? I think I know what its problem is. I have a 30gb drive that does exactly the same thing the r50p is doing now. It will attempt to boot up but will sit on the xp screen forever,take it out and smack it on the desk and it boots right up,it usually only does this when its been sitting for a long time (which the thinkpad has been).I think I did a successful hardware diagnosis on a computer I haven't even seen yet.

I wish every kind of electronics failure could be resolved like that!



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Yeah,in this case its the read head getting stuck,if I leave it sitting there long enough without using it,on power up it just clicks and doesnt spin up at all,hit it on the desk and it works,other times it will try to boot then start ticking and get stuck at the xp screen with the loading bar looping forever,pull the drive and power down,hit it on the desk,throw it back in and it boots right up,and from what I've heard over the years this isnt too uncommon with the hitachi desktop drives either,they were nicknamed the deathstar instead of deskstar.

My thinkpad got here today!!! It ended up being a gpu issue,press down on the middle mouse button and it would boot,let go and the screen turned off. For now I have a folded up piece of aluminum foil between the gpu and heatsink until my infrared thermometer gets here,and its running great. Now the bad news: its not a qxga screen,its only uxga (which still looks awesome,but 2048x1536 would've been nice.) and the other weird thing is that it has a 1.5ghz pentium m instead of the 1.7 it should have. it has an IBM part number sticker on it,so it is a factory installed cpu,but according to the thinkwiki,the only cpu option was supposed to be a 1.7ghz banias. Other than that,it seems to be running pretty well.

Don't trust everything you read on ThinkWiki...

What's the full model number from the sticker on the bottom, 183?-???

its a 1832-EU0 or EUO,I'm not sure if thats a zero or O.

Click here for the Original Description

@Neil: why not post the details instead?

Product: ThinkPad R50p 1832-EU0 [change]
Original description: Based 1832-22U: P M 1.5GHz, 512MB RAM, 40GB 5400rpm HDD, 15 UXGA(1600x1200) TFT LCD, 128MB ATI FireGL T2, 24x24x24x/8x CDRW/DVD, Bluetooth/Modem, 1Gb Ether, IBM 802.11a/b/g wireless, Sec Chip, 9 cell Li-Ion Batt, WinXP Pro

Your R50p seems as ex-factory.

Oh, I dunno, maybe to give you the opportunity for a redundant post...

Really? Your original link did not point to the screen that comes up now, it went to:

Whassup?

Don't know, I haven't changed anything! The Lenovo Support site must be flaky tonight.

lenovo's site kept giving me file not found errors earlier trying to download the drivers,so thats probably why you were having issues with the specs page.

UPDATE:
I got the thermometer today but ended up not needing it. I tried using it,but like other people in the t40 reflow threads said,its pretty unreliable,becuase different parts of the chip heat up differently. I tried 3 times with the chip exposed trying to reflow,none of the 3 worked,one time I thought I completely killed it because it wouldn't light up even with pressure on the gpu. I finally made it work by setting the heatsink on it without screwing it in,then heated the heatsink up to 250C holding it there for about 10 seconds then gradually cooling it down,it only took about 2 minutes from start to finish and I'm typing on it right now with no shims needed,it boots reliably every time,I tried flexing the case,shaking it,... it stays running,before even with the shims it would freeze if I typed to hard and would freeze every time I moved it,and would boot up like 1 in 5 tries.

This thinkpad was exactly stock if thats its description,it has a 1.5ghz pentium m,it had 512mb ram with an ibm part number on it in the slot under the keyboard,I added another 512mb stick. it has a uxga screen not qxga (which is unfortunate,but not the end of the world),overall,I'm happy,especially for getting it for only about $15 after shipping. I won the bid for $.99,he had it listed as $27 for shipping,but later refunded me $13 because he said shipping was cheaper than expected.

Another interesting development:
About 15 minutes after my last post,my thinkpad froze with a white screen with black dashes moving all over the place,I turned it off and when I tried to turn it back on,it wouldn't boot up,it sat with just the power,battery,and wifi lights lit up (wifi isn't supposed to light up in the bios). I pushed on the gpu,no change,pushed on the chipset,no change,push on the cpu,it booted right up,let go and it froze. I tried taking the cpu out,not locking it all the way in place,trying to over lock it,... nothing worked,but pushing on it does,but shimming the heatsink doesnt,so my solution is a combination,I have the piece of aluminum I was using as a gpu shim under the heatsink and an itunes gift card folded in half on top of it,it was a pain to get the keyboard to go on,but the screw is right next to the part its pushing on,so it looks fine once put together. it's been stable for over an hour now,moving it all over the place,using it on my lap,... so I hope its actually stable this time. Any idea what would cause the cpu socket to go bad? It's not the cpu because thats one of the things I tried,I threw a 1.3ghz banias in it and got the same reaction.

I'd *strongly* advise you to start looking for a replacement board, you can use a T41p or a T42p planar, they are the same as one that was seen in R50p.

My guess is that some of the heat "spilled" in an unintended direction...

Good luck.

Well,you were right,it died again,its not coming back this time. I just won an auction for 2 t42s, will I be able to use my uxga screen from the r50p or will I be stuck with the xga screens in the t42s? they're both type 2379-R8U.

It will work fine.

You'll need the T4x series UXGA cable though, which is different (I believe it's shorter) to complete the swap.

Good luck.

Why does it need a different cable? Can't I just take the whole top case assembly and put it on the t42 bottom case?

Put an R50p Lid on a T42 chassis?
No way.
Remove UXGA LCD from the R50p lid, and put it (with a T42 UXGA-cable 91P6858) in the T42 lid.

I ended up pulling over the r50p display and cable,but used the t42 inverter and I'm typing this from it right now. it works great.
now I have a new quesion-how do I kill this annoying whining from the fan? it sounds like its hitting a speedbump every 10 seconds and whining between bumps. other than that I love this thing.

I added the heatsink from the r50p's gpu to the gpu on the t42,anyone know if this will help keep it alive? it just seems weird to me to see a radeon 7500 without a heatsink when any other computer I have seen it in it has a pretty decent sized heatsink and usually a fan.

You need to clean the fan or get a new one altogether.

As for the heatsink, I honestly see no gain in adding one to Radeon 7500. It's not the issue of overheating that was killing these boards in the first place...

Good luck.

good to know,I cleaned out the fan,it didn't help at all,the inside of this case was SPOTLESS somehow, I have 2 t42s,this one is in almost perfect condition,the other one is all scratched up on the top of the case,and the inside was coated with dust. I already sold that one for $75 and I'm keeping this one,so I basically got this one for $5 because I bought both of them for $60+$20 shipping. I ended up just installing the thinkpad fan control program,it fixed the issue. for some reason the bios was running it at speed 7 (max) when it hit 107 degrees F. this is compared to my dell that doesnt even turn the fan on until 140 degrees,then speeds it up at 165.

and another new device to attempt a reflow on... a dead t30 with a radeon 7500. I just successfully reflowed a compaq f700 with an nvidia 6150 last night and I'm typing this on it,but they are a lot more temp tolerant,I got it up to 320 degrees celcius because thats the temp I saw the chip sink at.