Service Forum

carmelocotón · Nou Venit Joined: 31 Dec 2005 Posts: 1

Hello Victor, hope you keep doing the great work you-re doing..

Unfortunately didn't work with my A30. I made it up to
"ERROR: Eeprom not available".

Let's see what was wrong:

1) eeprom: 24RF08 (8 pins). Didn't solder any of the three wires (SDA, SCL and GND), just contact.
>>>> question: may that be the main problem?

2)breadbord: seemed to work. In fact, when disconnecting the serial port out from the second laptop, the output was" ERROR: Circuit not found or bus error".
>>>>So far, is it enougth to confirm the breadboard is fully OK?

Furthermore, can you give advise on the following possible solutions?

A) make the work (breadboard,soldering,etc.? be done by an experienced person.
B) changing the motherboar (thinking about ebay, etc.) would help?
C) sending you the laptop? Costs? Time?

victor · S.F. Boss Joined: 07 Mar 2004 Posts: 2581 Location: Staff

The correct answear is A.

Thank you

wolfman · Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 4:05 pm Post subject: a combination approach

While I wouldn't disagree with Victor, you might try a combination--
have a pro solder the wires to your security chip and build the breadboard yourself.

This is the approach I took and it worked fine. My breadboard experience was decades old but I searched the net for help, asked questions here, and had some fun experimenting. See sticky thread http://www.allservice.ro/forum/viewtopic.php?t=123 "[Practice] Making a breadboard out of driven circuit diagram"

Soldering to the tiny pins on the security chip is another order of magnitude of skill level. I went to a friend in another department who does this and asked for this help. Note that you only need to solder SDA and SCL, GND can be connected to any chassis ground point (verify).

Depending on the Thinkpad model, the wires will have to be bent flat back across the motherboard and taped down to re-insert the memory or other chips, and you'll have to turn the laptop back upright to start it, hit F1, and eventually (blessedly) type in your recovered password--so be sure the wires are securely soldered and safely taped off and brought to the front where you can connect the driven or simple circuit to them.

Good luck!