Just finished the reflow - not good. The T41 turns on but I get a mangled display, both on LCD and external. It boots normally thou. Pressing on the GPU does not help.

I will probably give it a second try. But what might have go wrong? I had a IR thermometer and a 2000W heat gut I bought on eBay.

I must admit that I was very afraid not to overheat the GPU and measuring the temp was quite hard because it was influenced by the hot air from the gun. So I might not have reached the full 230c. Would it be possible to act like that if this was true?

Before the reflow the machine would boot and work as long as no GPU intensive software was run and the laptop lied flat and was not moved.

Sounds like some of the solder points are connected to each other instead of just the GPU. You could give it a second try but I am not sure that will help. Did you at any time accidentally bump the motherboard or the table the motherboard was sitting on?

On what surface do you recommend doing the process? An insulating or a dispersing surface?

I have a (old) hardwood floors, (old) marble around the fireplace, a glass table, and a few bricks I could make a surface out of...

Same exact result on my T42. I'm bummed because I really thought I followed the process completely.

I did mine on a small metal end table that I had.




I wish I could give you guys more assistance

Woohoo I just did my first successful reflow!

OK, I'm going to give this a try.

Already have the IR thermometer. Use it for checking the temperature of my oven that I modified to bake pizza in 3 minutes at 800 degrees on the cleaning cycle. But that's a whole other story. Read this if you're curious about serious home pizza

http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

As for heat guns. Never used one and never owned one. Is this cheap $9.99 unit from Harbor Freight what I'm looking for? There's a Harbor Freight down the street so it will be handy.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/d ... mber=96289

Or do I need to get something fancier at Home Depot?

That should work fine

Well I just completed this and now when I plug in computer to AC cord the battery light lites up but does not blink like its charging. It just stays orange and does not blink. Computer will not do anything when I press the power button??? I took the laptop back apart and doublechecked my connections but still nothing.......any suggestions?
Thanks!

To sn22, and anyone else who tries this mod. I really don't want this to sound like I'd discourage anyone from trying this repair, but honestly if you are returning to this thread and asking what went wrong, there is a good argument for the fact that you should not have been attempting this repair in the first place due to a lack of expertise. It is not trivial to remove and replace a systemboard 'correctly' in these T4X machines, no less attempting to reheat a GPU to hundreds of degrees and keeping your fingers crossed. If you want my guess, I'd guess that you fried the systemboard. I'm sure the guys in this thread would tell you to retry the reflow.

nothing ventured, nothing gained. It was already broke, now its just "more broke", ha, ha. It was a good learning experiance for me and will continue to be as I am not quite done with it just yet.

Well, he already did - and the board is dead. Nothing to gain from doing a reflow a second time.



Exactly. For me, a infrared thermometer and head gun were something I didn't already have that I wanted to have so I didn't have an issue buying the items. If I wanted to, I could have even sold the stuff back on eBay and at least got half my money back. If someone already has the items then attempting a reflow yourself is an even better idea because then if it breaks even more, it had cost you no money at all to try.

I sent my t40 for the gpu repair and was told a month ago that it could not be repaired. I told them to just send it back to me as is and he agreed to.

It has been six weeks and after numerous phone calls and emails, I have been ignored.

Watch out for this #$#%%#$%!!!!

Can anyone who lives near Gilbert, Ill. help?

@SFKid - Who did you send your board to for repair?

Superior Reball in Gilberts, Illinois.

They are on EBAY and will rip you off if you do business with them.
Do NOT even think of sending these folks your laptop.


YOU have been warned!

after reading this topic i've deciding in buying a used (but in mint conditon) T41 with 1.4processor, 1gb of ram, cdrw, wireless, bag, original battery etc.
the whole package is a little over 100$
the symptoms are 99% the same as described here - and i hope i can fix it - not sure to replace my trusted T30 - but as a challenge to see if i can do it
i'll keep you posted

later edit:
got the machine - looks as out-of-the box, usb works as 2.0, wireless, everything
but the symptoms are the following:
it can run for hours without shutting down, sometimes you can flex it, move it around, other times it shuts down by itslef or when moved
when i run the pc doctor - after checking 4 of 32mb of videoram it shuts down - and it does every time i run the test...

Can you put some epoxy on the right places to prevent the GPU problem from happening?

Of course you need to do this before the problem occurs!

What do you guys think?

It does help reduce the chances of having problems.




May or may not be a solder connection problem. It is very possible that one of the solder connections for the vram is broken, but then again it could be something else.

i wrote on another topic
it runs the whole pcdoctor videocard test when running on batteries - (reduced gpu and vram frequency)

the thermometer i've ordered just arrived - trying to get a hold of a heatgun now

Then could you please tell me where i should apply the epoxy on this picture?

http://www.thinkpad-wiki.org/images/d/dc/BGA_T40.jpg

On my Dec. 2005 T42, the manufacturer placed the epoxy at the corners. There are two dots per corner, not right on the corner, but about 2-3mm from the corner point along each side.

Just about everything you would want to know about underfilling is here, (but in English): http://www.asymtek.com.cn/news/articles ... d_fcuf.pdf

The paper covers a variety of underfills, the corner type being only one - and the corner type they show is a single dot, placed right on each corner.

Pay attention to the subhead, "What Problem Does Underfill Solve" to see a final consideration: the coefficient of thermal expansion of your epoxy.

If my T42 makes it to the end-of-warranty point this December, I'm going to try the capillary flow type, just to add extra protection to the corner type that is already there.

I have an old T42p that packed up in February and I am now thinking of attempting this repair - but I don't know if the problem is the same. Here are the symptoms:
The screen flickered and hung. On reboot, nothing happened apart from power and battery light. Also nothing with drive in ultrabay. The backup battery was OK.

What I do is to lay a sheet of paper over the laptop and mark off screw locations. Then I push the removed screws into the paper at the corresponding locations. Separate, labelled sheets are used as the dismantling proceeds. If thin sheets of expanded polystyrene are available, they would be better. Paper is a bit flimsy.

the ibm hmm says exactly what type of screw goes where

you just have to separate them by "types" - length ant thread - a lot easier than marking each one

That's very useful if you drop them all! Holding them securely in paper or expanded polystyrene protects against that - and they don't need to be measured or categorised by type.

does this problem (gpu) also occurs with the T43 models?

i've killed it completely... actually it's in a coma...

did all that was said here, my arm went numb from holding the heatgun for as long as specified... let it "dry" until the thermometer indicated 25 degrees... and after putting it back together - when i press power - all leds light up for a second like on normal boot, than the Z and batt led remain on, fan running at max speed... and that's it...
if i remove the ram it makes the beeps... if i press the gpu on startup... nothing happens
the mobo didnt flex, no parts got loose... no visible damage...

i'll try again - maybe holding the gpu at 230 for some 5-10 seconds... i cant do any more harm...

if not - i'll look either for a R50/51/52 intel mobo or a cracked screen barebone intel R5x...

I've killed mine as well. It's totally dead and will not power up at all. I had difficulty with getting the temperature right during the reflow. The IR thermometer (brand new, from Maplin) was all over the place. It seemed to be reading quite differently over the chip. The heat gun (also brand new) was pointed squarely at it. It did just top 230 at one point, after which I slowly let it cool.

i'll try again - holding the gun for around 10secs at 230 degrees

i didn't have your problems though... i've managed to heat the board at a steady pace, cooling it the same way... wrapped it well in foil... maybe i haven't been holding the high temperature long enough

My problem is that I don't know if I was holding a steady temperature or not - i.e. if the thermometer reading was reliable. I checked it on a couple of light bulbs beforehand and they seemed fairly steady.

There are two possible improvements I could make. One is to heat the board up in a box to prevent any drafts. I heated it on the stone in front of a fireplace, which could have affected things. The other is to hold the heat gun on a camera stand and wind it up and down smoothly.