R-40 Thinkpad

I believe I discussed my attempts at getting my R-40 IBM Thinkpad working again in one of my random topic blogs. It's been a good three years since it last worked, so I decided it was worth one last shot in trying to get the laptop functioning again. I mean, when it worked, it was a good laptop. Obviously it's not doing me much good now. I decided to track down a new system board for the machine, because everything pointed to that being the problem. The machine would proceed to start up, but nothing else happened. No beeping, the screen would remain blank, and the laptop would not continue the start-up procedure. I would insert a CD into the tray and it would try loading up. But obviously the machine was not responding.

I received my "new" system board in the mail about a month back and proceeded to put the machine back together. It wasn't exactly new; more along the lines that it was used. But the outfit I bought the board from had tested it before shipment and it worked fine. After I had everything put back together, I attempted to turn the laptop on. It ended up doing the exact same thing as it did before. Absolutely no change, no difference. Talk about a frustrating turn of events. So I am lead to believe that it might be a different problem, an issue that I am unaware of and that I plan on tracking additional information down on it.

So that particular project is on a stand-still for the time being. My hope was to have a back-up to my existing desktop unit which I discussed before as recently being slow. However, that machine has performed much better lately, partly because I unloaded a bunch of unused programming. Yet I still haven't given up on getting the R-40 Thinkpad up and running. I have read recently that that particular machine has had its fair share of issues and is probably not the most reliable laptop out there. Honestly, if I can't get the problem figured out, I am not going to go any further with it and will end up scrapping the project altogether. The prices of laptop computers these days are fairly reasonable and if I feel the need for one, I can always buy a new one.

So as we all know regarding life, not everything goes as planned. I was hoping that buying a new/used system board for the laptop would solve the problem and it'd be working today. However, that has not happened and I am still planning on digging into the problem further. I am beginning to wonder if it might be a power supply issue or something along those lines. Maybe there's a faulty wire or something. Whatever the case, it may take some time figuring out. And if I don't ever figure it out, there's always the trash bin where it can end up going.