IBM Thinkpad Troubles

JAYMZ · Post by **JAYMZ** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:26 am

I own an A31p without the internal wireless card. Got a good deal on it about a year and a half ago with leftover Warranty (which happened to expire in May).

Last night after working all day then all evening working in the yard, I was tired... put the laptop in my bag and zipped it up. This morning at work I accidentally dropped the bag on the floor... after booting it up I noticed my PCMCIA Wireless card was still in the slot and was no longer working.

Having the appropriate toolkit at my disposal I took the laptop apart and found the carrier board that holds the PCMCIA cardslots and FireWire port had a busted connector that does not allow the PCMCIA cardslots to work.

I called IBM support who promptly advised my that my Warranty was up and that I could be billed for the service call. Given the option to call IBM parts and order the part I did that instead of sending the laptop in with a check for $425 just for them to open the box. Let alone parts, labor and other crap. So... on the phone with IBM parts the message tells me "If calling after 5pm or before 10 am in your local calling area Monday thru Friday or on Saturday, Sunday or Holidays there will be a $399 fee for all orders.

After the "Frack That" and hanging up I did some searching for parts and found the mini PCI wireless card on eBay. Besides that card, what else would I need (besides drivers) to make that work? And does anyone have access to getting parts for these bad boys to get my PCI card slots working again?

sglass · Post by **sglass** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 5:39 pm

James-

Call me at work monday

I have a thinkpad behind my desk I can part out. I don't know if it has wifi, but if you remind me-I'll check while we are on the phone.

Seth

440roadrunner · Post by **440roadrunner** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:55 pm

I'm not real familiar with your model, but not all miniPCI cards are created equal. some are physically larger, and will not fit the same.

Do you know how to navigate lenovo support? Have you found the "hardware maintenance manual?"

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-39796

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... OME-LENOVO

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... idate=true

Also, check this out

http://forum.thinkpads.com/index.php

JAYMZ · Post by **JAYMZ** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 8:04 am

Got it.

I forgot to check back here, but tvsjr provided some great information for me.

Basically what I needed to do was order the PCMCIA card slot and carrier board. It's actually a specific one just for the A3x series. $20 later shipped to the house and it's on the way.

In the process I also found a complete kit to run some internal wireless on my laptop... woo hoo!!

kcbooboo · Post by **kcbooboo** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 9:06 am

My Dell Inspiron has a similar removable cage and PCMCIA connector assembly. I had to replace the motherboard in my laptop and one of the two slots didn't work. Rather than send the whole thing back, I just swapped the PCMCIA assembly and got everything working again. Amazing how they know just what parts are subject to breaking when you drop the computer with a card plugged in.

Glad you didn't send it to them for such an inexpensive part. Now the problem will be taking the whole thing apart to get the assembly off the board to swap it. That's where the $400 price comes into effect.

Bob M.

JAYMZ · Post by **JAYMZ** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 9:11 am

Well no. That's just the service charge. They said they would charge labor on top of that. I asked them about flat rate repair and the guy came back with "Flat rate what?"

And I had the entire laptop apart and back together without any extra "pieces" in about 40 minutes or so. Luckily I found the service manual online, which gave me the step by step on how to dissassemble(and re-assemble) the machine.

440roadrunner · Post by **440roadrunner** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 10:34 am

"Luckily I found the service manual online"

If you'd bothered to read my post, I posted the link to the hardware maintenance manual

thebigphish · Post by **thebigphish** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 11:51 am

chill. his next post after yours was how he forgot to check back here, thus negating your post until AFTER he found the stuff.

JAYMZ · Post by **JAYMZ** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 11:59 am

440roadrunner wrote:"Luckily I found the service manual online"

If you'd bothered to read my post, I posted the link to the hardware maintenance manual

Snippy snippy snippy...

Don't sweat it dude. I had the manual before I even posted, and was more looking for a source for the parts.

Jim2121 · Post by **Jim2121** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 5:45 pm

JAYMZ wrote:
440roadrunner wrote:"Luckily I found the service manual online"

If you'd bothered to read my post, I posted the link to the hardware maintenance manual
Snippy snippy snippy...

Don't sweat it dude. I had the manual before I even posted, and was more looking for a source for the parts.

I was just about to do a search for a place to find parts, when my radio went off -- back to work!! I'll leave you with the 1st. page I found though:
http://priorityelectronics.stores.yahoo ... parts.html

later, Jim Happy 4th of July......

JAYMZ · Post by **JAYMZ** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 6:22 am

A quick search didnt yield the appropriate part. Although they have some reasonable pricing on hard drives... so that might be a possibility for a hard drive upgrade. I used ACS Outlet for the part. They had a decent selection of parts for Dell, Thinkpad, HP and Compaq. And according to the delivery confirmation the part is sitting at the house now (hopefully UPS remembered to close my garage this time, but that's another story).

http://www.acsoutlet.com

From TVSJR:

http://forum.thinkpads.com is the Batlabs for IBM Thinkpads. They gots some pretty fart smellers there.