DIYbanter - View Single Post - IBM Thinkpad with a broken LAN connector. Any help?

Rick

wrote:

I could take home a pc from work. It's a Thinkpad with a 1,7 Pentium
CPU. It works very well except for a quite frustrating problem. Its
lan connector can't mantain a stable connection. As soon as a lan
cable is plugged into it it start to continuously getting ON and OFF
the network. This happens with Windows XP, but it also happens using a
Linuc livecd, and with different lan cables, so I guess it's a
hardware related problem.

Do you happen to know if this is easily fixable or what may cause it?

Thanks a million in advance.

Not knowing with series and model IBM this is all I can tell you is to
get that info off the bottom, go to the IBM web site, and download the
Hardware Reference Manual (HRM) for this specific lap top.

If you think the LAN socket itself has developed a problem:

If this is an IBM that uses a mini PCI combo card that contains the LAN
and/or modem on that card, chances are the sockets for the modem and LAN
are connected to the mini PCI card with a ribbon cable. If that's the
case those are the only two sockets on the back of the lap top which are
removeable and you are in luck. Replace the cable/socket assembly. But
also be prepared to do a full disassembly of the lap top - that cable
runs underneath the main board and is held in place with double sided
foam tape.

If the LAN connector looks ok:

Check the HRM for removal/insertion instructions for the mini PCI card
and reseat it to see if that corrects the problem.

But before you do any of that run the IBM PC Doctor disgnostics to see
what it has to say about the LAN hardware in this system. It should be
on the system already. If not, download it from IBM.

Rick