thinkpad: no power, no lights, no start

[Richard Galli]

My Thinkpad T30 was working perfectly yesterday morning. Later when I tried to turn it on, it failed to power up. The "battery status" LCD flickered dimly, but the fan did not turn on and nothing else happened either. I was running on battery at the time, so I plugged in the power adapter. Same problem.

I tried removing the battery and runnng on wall power only. Same problem. I disconnected and reconnected power several times, no change.

Eventually, the dimly flickering green LCD light no longer flickered.

When I got home I tried a spare AC power adapter, no help.

I opened the computer and checked all connnections, including keyboard. I took out all the stuff so it no longer had memory, CPU or any other removable component. No power response.

I reinstalled memory, CPU. Nothing turned on, and no power indication from the battery status LCD.

Any ideas?

Could the failure of an old CMOS battery cause the computer to go completely dead, so that known good battery and AC power supplies are unable to be recognized?

Help!

Thanks.

Richard Galli
richard[at]gallilaw[dot]com