Service Forum

[JWD]

I would like to thank Victor and several other contributors for enabling me to work a miracle on my T30.
It was a classic case of an eBay purchase, discovering locked BIOS, trying to be "clever" and disconnecting the backup battery and ending up with a useless black piece of Titanium....
So I followed the instructions and the helpful pictures, used the Simple circuit attached to the serial port of another Thinkpad and eventually - hey presto!
There was one problem along the way. After I soldered the EPROM wires on I couldn't make the Thinkpad go to even the password prompt. Assuming I had done something awful (and probably terminal) to the EPROM, I then removed the wires I had so much difficulty attaching - due to shaky hands and 50+ year-old eyesight - only to fin it still went beep-beep-beep. So I put one stick of RAM back in and it was OK!
So, and I haven't knowingly seen this elsewhere, MAKE SURE YOU PUT SOME MEMORY BACK IN ONE SLOT before trying to power up. So then I re-attached the wires, shaky hands, struggling eyesight, had my wife stand holding the Thinkpad the right way up while I ran the programs. It took me a few seconds to work out I needed to click on the Icon on the decoded to get it to convert the password to something I could read and - then it all worked!

Victor, do you want the BIN file uploaded here somewhere? Many thanks for your instructions again.

John Downe
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I got back my T30!

[victor]

Hi John,

Well done and compliments to your wife.
I have a T30 P4m-2G and I am still very pleased with it. I hope you'll enjoy yours as much as I do.

Actually, you can send the dump to support-at-allservice.ro

Thanks.
Victor