I bought a thinkpad r400 the other day as a project laptop. When bought the only problem I could see was a busted LCD. I brought it home and plugged it into an external monitor and it worked fine. I played around in Linux mint for a while, testing everything and everything worked as expected with no dead ports.
I then decided to check the LCD port as the display was broken to the point none of it worked (someone did a number on the display which was the only physical damage to the unit). I did not have the exact LCD, but one that was pin compatible. It was a 15 inch panel so I had to have it outside the laptop housing. It worked, but as it was a much higher res than the laptop could support, some of the display was distorted beyond the normal res the original display would have been. I took this as a success as that showed the LCD port was also working. I reinstalled the original busted lcd and then the problems started.
When I hooked the external monitor back up as before the laptop powered up, flashed the keyboard indicator leds then shut down. To try again I had to unplug the laptop. Again same thing. Everything starts off fine but it's acting like there is a short when the display should start up. I have tried disconnecting the LCD ribbon cable from the mainboard, same problem.
When I remove the ram, I do get a proper error beep, so the CPU and main chipset are at least working that far. But I am at a loss what could be the issue. I also now have a proper replacement LCD, but it's still not working. The replacement LCD works fine in a r61 I have which is nearly the same machine.
Every test was off just the AC adapter and no battery (I don't have one yet). The original drive I used to boot the laptop was a transcend SSD. It was removed after the laptop failed the first time. Ram is 2 sticks of 1gb that are known good and tested in another laptop.
I then decided to check the LCD port as the display was broken to the point none of it worked (someone did a number on the display which was the only physical damage to the unit). I did not have the exact LCD, but one that was pin compatible. It was a 15 inch panel so I had to have it outside the laptop housing. It worked, but as it was a much higher res than the laptop could support, some of the display was distorted beyond the normal res the original display would have been. I took this as a success as that showed the LCD port was also working. I reinstalled the original busted lcd and then the problems started.
When I hooked the external monitor back up as before the laptop powered up, flashed the keyboard indicator leds then shut down. To try again I had to unplug the laptop. Again same thing. Everything starts off fine but it's acting like there is a short when the display should start up. I have tried disconnecting the LCD ribbon cable from the mainboard, same problem.
When I remove the ram, I do get a proper error beep, so the CPU and main chipset are at least working that far. But I am at a loss what could be the issue. I also now have a proper replacement LCD, but it's still not working. The replacement LCD works fine in a r61 I have which is nearly the same machine.
Every test was off just the AC adapter and no battery (I don't have one yet). The original drive I used to boot the laptop was a transcend SSD. It was removed after the laptop failed the first time. Ram is 2 sticks of 1gb that are known good and tested in another laptop.
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