ThinkWiki - User contributions [en]

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-27T06:37:49Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already (Thank you!). I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun ( I am not brave enough to try the fire solution, see post above), Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter ''Changing the CPU'') [[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|50px|1]]
** glue an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|50px|2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|50px|3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (I got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board. [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|50px|4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|50px|5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot until the solder got molten into a droplet. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip. :-)
** Removed the Al-container, reconnect the keyboard, harddisk, ... and uff, it's still working. [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|50px|6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** Cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU and the Cu-block of the fan assembly. Leave some space so that the CPU still can make contact to the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|50px|6]], [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|50px|7]]
** Fixed it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly so that the original fixating metal sheet (the one you have to take away in order to lift the fan assembly) pushed my Cu-sheet down, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly on the lower side. [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|50px|9]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|50px|10]]
** Put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip and by this giving way for air entering the fan. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|50px|11]]
** I also covered the edges of the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.
** putting everything back in place (this is actually typed on the re-soldered machine :-))

The blue lines are almost completely gone, very small areas occasionally show up. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure, if it gets annoying again. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using Linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu Linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

File:Mw tp10.jpg

2007-08-27T06:37:09Z

Markusw:

Make sure that the sheet presses slightly on the ATI-chip. This will distribute the heat conducting paste.

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T13:58:00Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already (Thank you!). I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun ( I am not brave enough to try the fire solution, see post above), Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter ''Changing the CPU'') [[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|50px|1]]
** glue an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|50px|2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|50px|3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (I got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board. [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|50px|4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|50px|5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot until the solder got molten into a droplet. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip. :-)
** Removed the Al-container, reconnect the keyboard, harddisk, ... and uff, it's still working. [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|50px|6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** Cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. Leave some space so that the CPU still can make contact to the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|50px|6]], [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|50px|7]]
** Fixed it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly so that the original fixating metal sheet (the one you have to take away in order to lift the fan assembly) pushed my Cu-sheet down, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly on the lower side. [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|50px|9]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|50px|10]]
** Put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip and by this giving way for air entering the fan. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|50px|11]]
** I also covered the edges of the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.
** putting everything back in place (this is actually typed on the re-soldered machine :-))

The blue lines are almost completely gone, very small areas occasionally show up. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure, if it gets annoying again. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using Linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu Linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T13:53:54Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already (Thank you!). I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun ( I am not brave enough to try the fire solution, see post above), Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter ''Changing the CPU'', Fig. 1) [[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|50px|1]]
** glue an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?) (Figs. 2 and 3).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|50px|2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|50px|3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (I got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board (Fig. 4). [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|50px|4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away (Fig. 5). [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|50px|5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot until the solder got molten into a droplet. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip. :-)
** Uff, it's still working (Fig. 6). [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|50px|6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** Cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. Leave some space so that the CPU still can make contact to the Cu-block of the fan assembly (Figs. 7 and 8). [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|50px|6]], [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|50px|7]]
** Fixed it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly so that the original fixating metal sheet (the one you have to take away in order to lift the fan assembly) pushed my Cu-sheet down, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly on the lower side (Figs. 9 and 10). [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|50px|9]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|50px|10]]
** Put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip and by this giving way for air entering the fan (Fig. 11). [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|50px|11]]
** I also covered the edges of the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.
** putting everything back in place (this is actually typed on the re-soldered machine :-))

The blue lines are almost completely gone, very small areas occasionally show up. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure, if gets annoying again. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T13:52:37Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already (Thank you!). I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun ( I am not brave enough to try the fire solution, see post above), Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter ''Changing the CPU'', Fig. 1) [[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|50px|1]]
** glue an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?) (Figs. 2 and 3).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|50px|2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|50px|3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (I got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board (Fig. 4). [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|50px|4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away (Fig. 5). [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|50px|5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot until the solder got molten into a droplet. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip. :-)
** Uff, it's still working (Fig. 6). [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|50px|6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** Cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. Leave some space so that the CPU still can make contact to the Cu-block of the fan assembly (Figs. 7 and 8). [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|50px|6]], [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|50px|7]]
** Fixed it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly so that the original fixating metal sheet (the one you have to take away in order to lift the fan assembly) pushed my Cu-sheet down, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly on the lower side (Figs. 9 and 10). [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|50px|9]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|50px|10]]
** Put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip and by this giving way for air entering the fan (Fig. 11). [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|50px|11]]
** I also covered the edges of the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.
** putting everything back in place (this is actually typed on the re-soldered machine :-))

The blue lines are almost completely gone, very small areas occasionally show up. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure, if gets annoying again. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T13:48:20Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already (Thank you!). I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun ( I am not brave enough to try the fire solution, see post above), Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter ''Changing the CPU'', Fig. 1) [[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|thumb|50px|1]]
** glue an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?) (Figs. 2 and 3).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|50px|2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|50px|3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (I got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board (Fig. 4). [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|50px|4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away (Fig. 5). [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|50px|5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot until the solder got molten into a droplet. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip. :-)
** Uff, it's still working (Fig. 6). [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|50px|6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** Cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. Leave some space so that the CPU still can make contact to the Cu-block of the fan assembly (Figs. 7 and 8). [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|50px|6]], [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|50px|7]]
** Fixed it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly so that the original fixating metal sheet (the one you have to take away in order to lift the fan assembly) pushed my Cu-sheet down, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly on the lower side (Figs. 9 and 10). [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|50px|9]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|50px|10]]
** Put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip and by this giving way for air entering the fan (Fig. 11). [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|50px|11]]
** I also covered the edges of the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.
** putting everything back in place (this is actually typed on the re-soldered machine :-))

The blue lines are almost completely gone, very small areas occasionally show up. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure, if gets annoying again. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:59:31Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter ''Changing the CPU'') [[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 1]]
** glue an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (I got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot until the solder got molten into a droplet. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip. :-)
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** Cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. Leave some space so that the CPU still can make contact to the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 6]], [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 7]]
** Fixed it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly so that the original fixating metal sheet (the one you have to take away in order to lift the fan assembly) pushed my Cu-sheet down, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly on the lower side. [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 9]]
** Put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip and by this giving way for air entering the fan. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the edges of the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are almost completely gone, very small areas occasionally show up. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:58:34Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter ''Changing the CPU'') [[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 1]]
** glue an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (I got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot until the solder got molten into a droplet. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip. :-)
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** Cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. Leave some space so that the CPU still can make contact to the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 6]], [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 7]]
** Fixed it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly so that the original fixating metal sheet (the one you have to take away in order to lift the fan assembly) pushed my Cu-sheet down, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly on the lower side. [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 9]]
** Put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip and by this giving way for air entering the fan. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are almost completely gone, very small areas occasionally show up. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:56:39Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter ''Changing the CPU'', [[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 1]]
** glue an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (remember it got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot until the solder got molten into a droplet. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip. :-)
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** Cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. Leave some space so that the CPU still can make contact to the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 6]], [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 7]]
** Fixed it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly so that the original fixating metal sheet (the one you have to take away in order to lift the fan assembly) pushed my Cu-sheet down, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly on the lower side. [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 9]]
** Put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip and by this giving way for air entering the fan. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are almost completely gone, very small areas occasionally show up. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:52:30Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter "changing the CPU",
[[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 1]]
** "glue" an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (remember it got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot until the solder got molten into a droplet. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip. :-)
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** Cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. Leave some space so that the CPU still can make contact to the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 6]], [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 7]]
** Fixed it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly so that the original fixating metal sheet (the one you have to take away in order to lift the fan assembly) pushed my Cu-sheet down, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly on the lower side. [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 9]]
** Put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip and by this giving way for air entering the fan. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|50px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are almost completely gone, very small areas occasionally show up. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:50:47Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter "changing the CPU",
[[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 1]]
** "glue" an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (remember it got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot until the solder got molten into a droplet. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip. :-)
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** Cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. Leave some space so that the CPU still can make contact to the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]], [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 7]]
** Fixed it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly so that the original fixating metal sheet (the one you have to take away in order to lift the fan assembly) pushed my Cu-sheet down, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly on the lower side. [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 9]]
** Put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip and by this giving way for air entering the fan. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are almost completely gone, very small areas occasionally show up. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:41:43Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter "changing the CPU",
[[Image:Mw_tp01b.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 1]]
** "glue" an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (remember it got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip.
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]
** fix it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly to that the original fixating metal sheet pushed my Cu-sheet do, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 7], [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 9]]
** put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are not gone completely. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:41:10Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter "changing the CPU",
[[Image:Mw_tp01.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 1]]
** "glue" an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during re-soldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (remember it got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the main board... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diameter) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indicating that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip.
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]
** fix it to the assembly by some self made clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly to that the original fixating metal sheet pushed my Cu-sheet do, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 7], [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 9]]
** put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are not gone completely. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my TP) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:39:15Z

Markusw: /* 2007 */

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatever you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

* Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter "changing the CPU",
[[Image:Mw_tp01.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 1]]
** "glue" an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during resoldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (remember it got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the mainboard... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diametre) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indacting that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip.
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]
** fix it to the assembly by some selfmade clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly to that the original fixating metall sheet pushed my Cu-sheet do, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 7], [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 9]]
** put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are not gone completely. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my thinkpad) and in videos displayed by kaffein and similar players did not come back so far. :-) I also have the impression, that the temperature of the air from the fan is not as hot as it used to be, as is the temperature of the lower side of the notebook. This part used to become quite hot. I put the fan to maximum power by ''sudo sh -c "echo 0x2F 0x07 > /proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump"'' (for kubuntu linux).

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:33:53Z

Markusw:

==2006==
date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

==2007==
January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatver you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

*Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter "changing the CPU",
[[Image:Mw_tp01.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 1]]
** "glue" an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during resoldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (remember it got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the mainboard... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diametre) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indacting that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip.
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]
** fix it to the assembly by some selfmade clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly to that the original fixating metall sheet pushed my Cu-sheet do, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 7], [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 9]]
** put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are not gone completely. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my thinkpad) and in videos displayed by kaffein and simiar players did not come back so far. :-)

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Issues with the Wiki

2007-08-26T10:21:22Z

Markusw: /* Troubles encountered */

This page is a provisorium. It's a list of things that are going wrong after the update to help [[User:akw|Akw]] track and fix them.

== JavaScript and CSS ==

'''Enabling user Javascript and CSS for MediaWiki'''

Could ThinkWiki's MediaWiki installation get these options enabled (typically set in LocalSettings.php):

* [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:%24wgAllowUserCss wgAllowUserCss]
* [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:%24wgAllowUserJs wgAllowUserJs]

These options allow users to have their own custom Javascript and CSS. I (and others) like to have our own custom themes and Javascript when working with MediaWiki-powered websites.

--[[User:SamatJain|SamatJain]] 22:04, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a great security risk. What is it good for?

--[[User:Thinker|Thinker]] 00:14, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

It allowers users to set their own customizations via Javascript and CSS. It's a minor security risk which is why MediaWiki ships with it off, but Wikipedia and other popular websites using MediaWiki ship with it on.

--[[User:SamatJain|SamatJain]] 20:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing minor about it. The web security model is site-wise when dealing with MediaWiki, there is no easy (read: manageable) way for an user, even one that uses NoScript+Firefox or something else equally powerful, to really filter out trusted from untrusted content when you start allowing people to write JavaScript into a Wiki.

CSS is less of a problem, but it could still hork the site if one is not careful, and MediaWiki already allows us to change the pages well enough. If you need to change thinkwiki CSS for your own viewing pleasure, any browser worth its bytes lets you layer your own CSS on top of a site's. I would not be strongly against enabling CSS, but I don't see any reason to do it, either.

JavaScript submissions, OTOH, is something that must remain disabled. IMO, if you really can't survive without tacking different JavaScript code than what thinkwiki already has, you can use greasemonkey or some other such system to do it in your own browser.

If thinkwiki starts allowing users to set javascript on their pages, I would have to block javascript completely on my side, for example. At that time, it is likely I will just go away. Other contributors might feel the same. It is not that I have anything against JavaScript. It is the fact that I cannot *trust* user-submitted JavaScript.

--[[User:Hmh|hmh]] 12:26, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

These options only enable Javascript and CSS for user pages, i.e. for User:User/Monobook.css and User/Monobook.js, specifically ''not'' for other pages. Disabling these options was done by default as a precaution against XSS vulnerabilies [http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/mediawiki-announce/28572 long since been fixed]. Unfortunately, while I agree with you about disabling user Javascript as a precaution, I do not think the wgAllowUserCss option has any effect unless the wgAllowUserJs option is enabled as well.

--[[User:SamatJain|SamatJain]] 18:52, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't get the point ether.
Why you want to use css/javascript on user pages? You always say why you think its no problem, but not what you want to do. If you need some funky looking stuff or buttons there you should use something like myspace. This Wikis (and almost all other) purpose is collecting the main - Thinkpad - content, not something cool/funky/special on userpages

As Hmh, I would block js immediately and may leave the site, even if its only on userpages, because I don't want to mind clicking "the false links"

--[[User:BDKMPSS|BDKMPSS]], 30 July 2007

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki#Customisation Wikipedia's section on MediaWiki customization] describes some of the extensions and addons available. For example, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cacycle/wikEd wikiEd] is a WYSIWYG editor such that instead of having to remember MediaWiki's markup, they use an editor that's only enabled for use them. This kind of extending is difficult to do with Stylish or Greasemonkey.

I'll repeat, since I've not been apparently misunderstood:
* Users ''won't'' be able to add Javascript or CSS to arbitrary pages, only those under their user profile (these are called "user pages")
* Only those users logged in will see these their own changes, no other users will.
Given these things, I don't understand why people need to threaten they're going to stop contributing to ThinkWiki? There isn't a way you're going to turn ThinkWiki into MySpace. If you don't use specifically use any CSS or Javascript through these features, it will not effect you at all.

What I personally want to do, I want to use a MediaWiki modification I wrote, [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gallery_of_user_styles#Nullbook Nullbook]. I feel as if I am much more efficient with this theme.

--[[User:SamatJain|SamatJain]] 21:58, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand what exactly $wgAllowUserJs is supposed to do, and its [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:%24wgAllowUserCss documentation] is worthless. The crux of the matter is this: if those features are enabled, is there any way ''you'' can cause ''me'' to execute JavaScript (or apply CSS) that ''you'' wrote, in ''any'' page on ThinkWiki? If not, why?

--[[User:Thinker|Thinker]] 22:17, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_styles User styles on the MediaWiki site] describes a bit more how these options work and what is provided to any modification that depends upon them. Unless there exist security-related bugs (which is the reason these features are tagged possible security risks, and why they are proactively disabled by default), by design, no, there is no way that I can cause you to execute Javascript or apply CSS that I had put into one of my own "user pages" (i.e. those under [[User:SamatJain]]).

--[[User:SamatJain|SamatJain]] 22:53, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

'''If and only if''' such javascript and css changes are limited so that the user who made them is the only one who gets them, then I have nothing against it.

That said, I'd prefer if the relevant mediawiki code was audited a bit before it is enabled.

PS: Whomever is doing it, please stop screwing around with the formatting: there must be one empty line before and after signatures, it makes the dialog a '''lot''' more readable.

--[[User:Hmh|hmh]] 02:53, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

== Troubles encountered ==

'''/usr/bin/convert'''

I think the computer this wiki is running on is missing the imagemagick software tools especially convert to create thumbnails of images --[[User:Markusw|Markusw]] 10:21, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

----

'''Problem with cmdroot'''

Following String is not handled correct by template cmdroot:
"fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --revision=thinkpad.1.0 kernel_image"

see here:
{{cmdroot|fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --revision=thinkpad.1.0 kernel_image}}

----

'''Can not open page to edit without introducing modifications'''

If I open the [[X31]] model page and without touching anything I hit preview, the div token is decomposed and appears in the preview page, and of course, the photo is not in the right place.

:[[User:Ungoliant|Ungoliant]] 19:24, 20 February 2007 (CET)

----

'''Can not upload SVG'''
I get the upload warning:
".svg" is not a recommended image file format.
:[[User:Matt|Matt]] 14:02, 3 December 2006 (CET)

----

Is there a way to contact a registered user, for example to confirm information. I have found that AdamZ claims that the X20 is bootable via USB. My information indicates the contrary. Isn't there a way to contact a registered user through MediaWiki? --[[User:Rolf|Rolf]] 00:30, 9 September 2006 (CEST)

php error encountered when attempting to update Bios Upgrade page:
<blockquote>
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 133781 bytes) in /home/akw/htdocs/thinkwiki.org/mediawiki-1.5.6/includes/MagicWord.php on line 250
</blockquote>
--[[User:roadends|roadends]] 02:30, 20 March 2006 (EDT)
----

* [[ThinkWiki:SpamBlackList]] does not appear to work anymore
--[[User:Tonko|Tonko]] 03:40, 11 March 2006 (CET)
----
You can't (easliy do a multiline {{cmdresult|cmdresult}}, can you? See:

{{cmdresult|foo
bar
baz}}

or

{{cmdresult|foo
bar (after whitespace)
baz (after whitespace)}}

This works (but is not so nice)

{{cmdresult|foo

bar (after empty line)

baz (after empty line)}}

Any suggestions?

[[User:Pebolle|Paul Bolle]] 10:27, 24 January 2006 (CET)
----
I think the best way is to use single cmdresult calls for each line and prefix them with a colon. Like so:
<pre><nowiki>
:{{cmdresult|foo}}
:{{cmdresult|bar}}
:{{cmdresult|baz}}
</nowiki></pre>, which results in
:{{cmdresult|foo}}
:{{cmdresult|bar}}
:{{cmdresult|baz}}

Alternatively, you can use at the ende of each line within one call, like this:
<tt><nowiki>{{cmdresult|foo 
bar 
baz}}</nowiki></tt>
, which will result in

{{cmdresult|foo 
bar 
baz}}

[[User:Wyrfel|Wyrfel]] 12:13, 24 January 2006 (CET)
----
I have just got a MySQL problem when I edited a page, a query was not to its liking. It is quite easy to reproduce, just edit any page ;-)

History did get updated, and the page was also updated, so I have no idea what broke when that query failed.

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
(SQL query hidden)
from within function "SearchMySQL4::update". MySQL returned error "1062: Duplicate entry ' ' for key 3 (localhost)".

[[User:Hmh|hmh]] 2006-02-17, 20:12 UTC
----
More database problems, this time the search function:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
(SQL query hidden)
from within function "". MySQL returned error "145: Table './thinkwiki/searchindex' is marked as crashed and should be repaired (localhost)".

[[User:Hmh|hmh]] 2006-02-21, 15:07 UTC
----
The server time would appear to be off a lot, is it possible to setup ntpd, or to run ntpdate every hour or so using cron?
--[[User:Tonko|Tonko]] 05:11, 22 February 2006 (CET)
----
Search still seems broken, searching for DVI brings up nothing.
--[[User:Jumpfroggy|Jumpfroggy]] 00:03, 17 March 2006 (CET)
----
Error creating thumbnail: /home/thinkwiki/htdocs/mediawiki-1.10.0/bin/ulimit4.sh: line 4: /usr/bin/convert: No such file or directory

----

'''"Your signature with timestamp"-Button'''

This Button simply doesn't work, it adds <nowiki>--~~~~</nowiki> 
I think its a bunch on javascript so I may add: 
I use Firefox (branded as Icewasel) on Debian Testing 
Preferences: 
Raw signatures (without automatic link) OFF 
Show edit toolbar (JavaScript) ON 
(Oh... Yes its javascript)

EDIT:
Even in my Windows XP SP2 Virtual Machine it don't work in Internet Explorer 7.0

--[[User:BDKMPSS|BDKMPSS]] 29 July 2007

----

'''Confirmation E-mail'''

It just don't work. It neither is in my spam dir nor works with any other address.
Tried multiple times, waited hours, days, weeks... gave up and wrote this here...

--[[User:BDKMPSS|BDKMPSS]] 29 July 2007

----

== Troubles confirmed ==
* [[Special:Benchmarks]] doesn't find it's data

(update 2007-03-24: this page is not listed in the special pages category anymore, so the bug is now worked around).

== Fixed problems ==
* http://thinkwiki.org/ reverted again to the default MediaWiki theme. '''Cannot reproduce this one (15.01.06, akw)'''
* File upload is disabled - '''Argh. Fixed (15.01.06, akw)'''
* URL contains index.php(/) before the actual page name - '''This has been fixed (28.05.05, akw)'''
* The categories page doesn't link to [[:Category:ThinkWiki]] - '''Fixed (29.05.05, akw)'''
* http://thinkwiki.org/ is broken (no www prefix), this was working before - '''Fixed (29.05.05, akw)'''
* On logging in a requester pops up asking to confirm a password change - '''seems like it's implicitly been fixed (29.05.2005, wyrfel)'''
* In Navigation bar, "&lt;download&gt;" leads to [http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/--error:_link_target_missing--] - '''fixed (30.06.2005)'''
* direct link to [[:Category:Models]] missing in Navigation '''Fixed (10.07.05, akw)'''
* It seems the Wiki has trouble updating the edit history, i'm getting mysql query errors on saving pages. The pages get saved, however. '''Fixed (12.05.2005)'''

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:16:40Z

Markusw:

date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten''' [[Category: A31p]]
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatver you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

*Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter "changing the CPU",
[[Image:Mw_tp01.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 1]]
** "glue" an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free. Stress might shift the ATI-chip during resoldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (remember it got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the mainboard... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diametre) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indacting that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip.
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]
** fix it to the assembly by some selfmade clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly to that the original fixating metall sheet pushed my Cu-sheet do, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 7], [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 9]]
** put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are not gone completely. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my thinkpad) and in videos displayed by kaffein and simiar players did not come back so far. :-)

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T10:14:48Z

Markusw:

date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten'''
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatver you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

*Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter "changing the CPU",
[[Image:Mw_tp01.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 1]]
** "glue" an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free
(Fig. 3). Stress might shift the ATI-chip during resoldering (?).[[Image:Mw_tp02.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 2]], [[Image:Mw_tp03.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 3]]
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil. I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (remember it got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the mainboard... [[Image:Mw_tp04.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 4]]
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diametre) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away. [[Image:Mw_tp11.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 5]]
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indacting that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip.
** Uff, it's still working [[Image:Mw_tp05.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp06.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 6]]
** fix it to the assembly by some selfmade clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly to that the original fixating metall sheet pushed my Cu-sheet do, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly. [[Image:Mw_tp07.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 7], [[Image:Mw_tp08.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 8]], [[Image:Mw_tp09.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 9]]
** put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before. Make sure that the end of the bridge makes good contact to the chip. [[Image:Mw_tp10.jpg|thumb|100px|Fig. 10]]
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation.

The blue lines are not gone completely. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my thinkpad) and in videos displayed by kaffein and simiar players did not come back so far. :-)

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis

File:Mw tp11.jpg

2007-08-26T10:09:21Z

Markusw: testing the heater assembly for resoldering the GPU in a TP A31p

testing the heater assembly for resoldering the GPU in a TP A31p

File:Mw tp10.jpg

2007-08-26T09:58:17Z

Markusw: Make sure that the sheet presses slightly on the ATI-chip. This will distributed the heat conducting paste.

Make sure that the sheet presses slightly on the ATI-chip. This will distributed the heat conducting paste.

File:Mw tp09.jpg

2007-08-26T09:56:45Z

Markusw: Verion 2 of the Cu-bridge mounted and clamped. Note the slight bending of the sheet to get some spring like action of the left end, that will touch the ATI-chip.

Verion 2 of the Cu-bridge mounted and clamped. Note the slight bending of the sheet to get some spring like action of the left end, that will touch the ATI-chip.

File:Mw tp08.jpg

2007-08-26T09:55:03Z

Markusw: fan-assembly, Cu-sheet bridge and applied heat conducting paste (sorry for the quality)

fan-assembly, Cu-sheet bridge and applied heat conducting paste (sorry for the quality)

File:Mw tp07.jpg

2007-08-26T09:53:24Z

Markusw: Bended Cu-sheet (first version). It's better to do it without the side wings and use separate clamps

Bended Cu-sheet (first version). It's better to do it without the side wings and use separate clamps

File:Mw tp06.jpg

2007-08-26T09:51:52Z

Markusw: Cu-sheet to make a heat bridge

Cu-sheet to make a heat bridge

File:Mw tp05.jpg

2007-08-26T09:50:01Z

Markusw: Uff, it's still working ...

Uff, it's still working ...

File:Mw tp04.jpg

2007-08-26T09:49:09Z

Markusw: Cover the open computer with Al-foil from the kitchen. Looks like a surgeon's working place. :-)

Cover the open computer with Al-foil from the kitchen. Looks like a surgeon's working place. :-)

File:Mw tp03.jpg

2007-08-26T09:48:02Z

Markusw: "Glued" Al-pot on the graphic chip

"Glued" Al-pot on the graphic chip

File:Mw tp02.jpg

2007-08-26T09:46:20Z

Markusw: Applying some heat conducting paste to an empty Al-pot of a tealight

Applying some heat conducting paste to an empty Al-pot of a tealight

File:Mw tp01b.jpg

2007-08-26T09:45:12Z

Markusw: Opened TP A31p

Opened TP A31p

File:Mw tp01.jpg

2007-08-26T09:43:10Z

Markusw: Opened TP A31p

Opened TP A31p

Talk:Problem with garbled screen

2007-08-26T09:41:56Z

Markusw:

date/contributor unknown
Got an A30 with this problem, don't know what GFX card it has. None of these things seems to help. But a clean reinstall will make it useable during the first boot, during that boot everything runs perfect, after a reboot the screen gets messed up and it can't boot windows in anything but Failsafe mode. Sadly i can't get it fixed under the warrenty as it is 3-4 years old.

Jan 18, 2006 - Me too
Just finished a day of working on an A30 with the garbled display problem. Ours boots to the IBM splash screen, but has blue vertical lines running across the screen. When booting to safe mode or to any text mode or utility, the display is responsive (i.e. can navigate using arrow keys, select choices, etc.) but is garbled much like the pictures in the main article of the LILO boot loader screen. The 'garbling' is consistent, and it appears that every other character in the character set gets substituted by the character one value higher than it in the set. For example, capital 'A' displays fine, but capital 'B' get substituted with capital 'C'. 'C' is also fine, but 'D' is substituted with 'E', and so on. The lowercase set corresponds to this pattern exactly as well. As such, the display can be deciphered, but is practically unusable in text mode. When Windows loads, however, everything looks normal. The only Windows-related problem is our inability to load the ATI Radeon driver - the system will not load the GUI with it installed, but will work normally with the generic Windows VGA driver.

Just to be thorough, I did flash the system BIOS and embedded controller software with latest versions, with no change in the display problem.

I attempted to reseat the video connector, but had no luck. Best price I found on a replacement system board was US$279.00, but I haven't decided whether or not to repair it yet.

June 1, 2006 - Here's what happens to me
Since a few monthes, I also get the blue thick lines running accross the screen, but only if I enter the BIOS setup utility. In my experience there is no relation between the strange "features" shown by my laptop and the PC temperature, but it is much more likely that the screen becomes completely unusable if it is hot. 

"Normally" in X I have thin light blue lines that run across the windows and move with it until I resize the window or cover it with a just opened window. In that case the part of the "dirty" window that was covered by the "clean" window becomes "clean"...at least until you move it again. If I move the window very fast it becomes completely light blue. It's like if the driver (or the hardware) could not refresh properly the windows. Take a look at [http://www.maurocremonini.it/thinkpad_jun012006.jpg this screenshot]. 

Are we all sure that we are facing an actual hardware problem? Has anybody ever tried to run X by just using the generic VGA driver? I gather from the previous post that MS-Windows does not show problems in that case. I would try myself, but I do not know how to change the driver for X! 

June 16, 2006 - This is my experience with this problem
I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on my portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, the phenomenon started.

When I install Windows 2000, except for the first installation stage, than I have a garbaged screen, everything works fine. I can have my full resolution, but, as described above, I can't install the display driver tools. Also, watching video's isn't smooth because it is disrupted by vertical blue or purple lines.

Installing Windows XP is not possible, I only get a resolution of 640x480 8 bit color, when I change the resolution to more colors or more pixels, I only get a blank screen (but you can see the backlight is lit)

I already dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Also, when going into the BIOS, the inverted screen (gray with blue letters) is normal, but above and below there are blue lines.

Also, take a look at this:
[http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=8315359#post8315359 discussion and screenshot] 

I hope we can find more people with this problem and mybe a solution?

June 21, 2006 - An update
It is very funny (er...) that when I switch from 24 to 16 bit colour depth the vertical blue lines I was talking about above turn yellow!!! The problem is now not as big as it was some days ago and I think it is related to 3D direct rendering I managed to enable a few days ago. There must be also an issue with laptop temperature because if I place the laptop directly on the air conditioner the problem becomes much less disturbing (although it does not disappear).

I first noticed this problem when upgrading to KDE 3.5 in Suse 9.3. Before then I had never had any kind of issue with my graphic card. What did it change from KDE 3.4 to KDE 3.5? Did 3.5 require a new version of Xorg that contained a buggy "radeon" driver for Mobility M7 cards? How many other people here experience some kind of problem with the "radeon" driver in Xorg? Thank you all.

July 24, 2006 - "more people"
Caught my refurbished A30p (type 2653) too :-( It's quite hot here, having read up the discussion. But the notebook was powered off this morning just OK (no artifacts, not that very much heated -- after taking it inside rueksack with a few other things to the office by car (everything as usual) and trying to boot up I've got those infamouse blue vertical lines all over the initial "IBM ThinkPad" boot logo, and on top of (non-scaled) BIOS "window". Text-mode would get screwed up just like reported here on Jan 18, 2006 or at a pcreview.co.uk discussion.

From what we've figured out here with a colleague who has *vast* experience with different hardware, it seems like physical VideoRAM corruption -- due to casual overheating, or mechanical problems with wires on the board between videochip and VRAM. IOW it's rather not easily fixable, I'm afraid the new mobo or new notebook might be the two reasonable choices :-(

I've also requested help on: [https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=%2Fresults%2FsubmitQuestionResults.vm&sitestyle=lenovo IBM support site] but frankly, doubt it will really fix anything. ''
(still no human reply, only an automated notice)''

'''UPDATE/FIXED:''' the guy I've bought the notebook from took it back for a service, and it was air-soldered back into shape. Another guy who was actually fixing the thing told that it was undersoldering of Radeon chip (the other two potential targets were undersoldered VRAM or mainboard micro-cracks -- the latter being unrepairable). The whole trouble has cost me $70 in [http://www.kam.in.ua/ Kiev, Ukraine].

Folks tell that they also have repaired Toshibas with similar problem (obviously not the models with integrated graphics), and refused to fix Sony devices because 100% of previous attempts failed.

[[Category:A30]], [[Category:A30p]]

September 28, 2006 - Toasty GPU
Set the fan to max. Stopped the problem from getting worse. Problem is linux has the auto fan control. Which works fin in most laptops. But the A30 line has the GPU right beside the CPU with no heat sink. So if the fan turns on when the CPU is at 58C then the GPU is already extremely toasty. SO IF YOU LOVE YOUR LAPPY SET THE FAN TO MAX. FORGET THE NOISE. Remember the A30 line are heavy beasts meant to replace desktops. This means heat. And lots of it. --[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]]
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed

December 27, 2006 - ThinkPad A30p display defects

Same here... my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U) has developed the infamous display problem that has plagued many A30p owners; flashing blue lines, unreadable, garbled text when the machine is turned-on. The display corruption (seemingly) stops after WinXP loads the display driver (the Windows GUI looks OK), BUT full-motion video (overlays, et al) is severely distorted (flashing horizontal lines), AND instead of 32MB video memory (onboard), only 16MB video ram is detected by the driver, the other 16MB of VRAM is missing! This can be verified in WinXP by bringing up the Display Properties (right-click on desktop), Settings, Advanced, Adapter tab; the detected Memory Size *should = 32MB*, but it shows only 16MB, where did the other 16MB go???

obviously, there is a hardware problem.

details - On the A30p mainboard, there are 2x16MB Samsung memory modules located near the ATi M6 GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), which as we know is NOT heat-sinked (big mistake) and gets very hot (because it is located underneath the CPU's heatsink); this design flaw leads me to conclude that heat and/or mechanical stress has caused the GPU to form a cold solder joint, which is BGA-mounted (ball grid array) to the mainboard, or perhaps micro-cracks formed in the mainboard itself. Whatever the actual source of the problem, it results in an electo-mechanical failure; if the A30p chassis is moved or flexed slightly (during POST), the distortion pattern on the screen (blue lines, garbled text, etc) also changes and sometimes the video corruption will temporarily stop. In my case, this is the second time it's happened, the motherboard in my A30p was already replaced once, for the exact same problem (blue lines, garbled text during POST, missing 16MB VRAM).

I suspect that the display corruption problem stems from moving the ThinkPad when it's still warm. That is, after the A30p has been in operation for a while, the mainboard and GPU heat-up considerably, then, if the machine is packed-up and in-transit (in your backpack, laptop bag), expansion/contraction of the internal components (GPU, mainboard, et al) and mechanical stress (from normal usage) on the delicate chassis causes electrical connection problems to develop; certain components (GPU or VRAM) become disconnected or the mainboard itself develops micro-cracks (broken circuit traces).

IMO, there are design/manufacturing defects with the ThinkPad A30 series, but will IBM will acknowledge this? Unfortunately for their customers, probably not.

Incidentally, I've also had the LCD display panel replaced in my machine twice, because the backlighting dies; there's a problem with the fluorescent tubes, they prematurely fail. Has your backlighting gone dim, acquired a pinkish hue, particularly during a cold start? That means they're gonna die soon. The backlighting in my A30p died not long after I bought the machine. The backlighting issue is unrelated to the overheating GPU (display corruption) issue, however.

Whatever the sources of these well-known display issues, the simple facts are:

A30p ThinkPads are prone to LCD and GPU/VRAM (heat-related) failures and the chassis is much too delicate for portable use.

I firmly believe that IBM should make amends and offer to extend the warranty on these defective A30s, the machine is prone to serious display problems, making it unreliable and costly to own (repair costs, downtime, frustration, etc). It's shameful that IBM won't acknowledge and take responsibilty for what is obviously a manufacturing and/or design defect. My otherwise great experience with the A30p has been tainted by its persistent display problems. The reason I bought the A30p was because of its high-quality UXGA display, ironically, it's the one thing that's been an unending source of frustration and expense. And this machine was not cheap either, with a base price of several thousand dollars (cdn), plus hard drive and memory upgrades, etc, it set me back almost $5,000! I expected to get at least 5 years of trouble-free operation out of it, but it was less than a year before all the problems began.

Anyone got ideas??? Can we, as a group, petition someone at IBM to replace our (defective) motherboards, free of charge... hell, I'll even put the board in myself if necessary, I've already replaced the LCD panel myself (the second time it went dead). The A30p has a beautiful display - when it works that is - but the machine is too delicate and sensitive to heat. Someone at IBM knows this, but they're not talking... or listening either.

If someone at IBM/Lenovo is reading this, please FIX what is YOUR mistake, and do right by your customers. Replace our *defective* motherboards at no charge or at least offer us an upgrade to the A31 series perhaps, for a nominal fee, if any. Restore our faith in IBM... and what WAS a good brand of portable computers.

btw, my A30p is the third ThinkPad I've owned over the years... the other two are still working great, even though they are older models. too bad the same can't be said for the A30p.

other common issues effecting the ThinkPad A30p include well-known problems with the IEEE1394 bus controller and Philips S-video decoder (PHILDECN.sys). Essentially, the firewire bus is unreliable (resets itself intermittently, causing data loss) and the PHILDECN.SYS driver causes intermittent blue screens in XP). i've had to disable the Philips WDM Video Decoder via the Windows device manager just so the machine remains stable. Thankfully, I don't need to use the S-Video ports, and I was forced to buy a PCMCIA firewire card, but shame on IBM for not dealing with these obvious defects.

January 2, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix?
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/726/diy-obsolete-ibook-logic-board-repair
http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/210232/diy-ibook-dual-usb-logic/
These guys had a similar problem, the heat gun/fire seemed to fix it. I have also read that a piece of metal or plastic between the chip and the case will provide sufficient pressure on the contacts. I am going to try the plastic later and if that doesn't fix it, I will try to reflow it with the heat gun.
--[[User:DammitCoetzee|DammitCoetzee]] 03:18, 3 January 2007 (CET)

'''July 12, 2007 - Toasty GPU fix results?'''
DammitCoetzee: Have you or has anyone else tried the reflowing fix? What about the shim? What thickness should the shim be? I have an A30 which is showing the dreaded symptoms, and it's getting annoying. THeo

'''August 26, 2007, Markus Wollgarten'''
Here is what I did with my TP A31p, though I could not solve the problem completely. But I think it got better. However, whatver you do, you do it at your own risk. I am not an computer engineer. I just repeated what others did already. I hope it is okay putting some images here (I have no private web space).

*Part I
** Bought a heat gun, Cu-sheet (0.5 mm thick), metal shears and heat conducting paste
** Open up the the computer (followed the pretty detailed IBM manual, chapter "changing the CPU", Fig. 1)
** "glue" an empty Al-container of a tea light by using some heat conducting paste on the ATI-chip. I thought this is useful for not blowing away the Al-container with the heat gun and for making a good heat contact to the ATI-chip. Take care that the container stands free (Fig. 3). Stress might shift the ATI-chip during resoldering (?).
** Cover the rest by Al-foil from the kitchen. Used some metal teaspoons to fix the foil (Fig. 4). I notice that some very fine metal particles came out of the heat gun when testing it (remember it got a new one) and probably this conducting particles could damage the circuits of the mainboard...
** Put a small piece of solder (1 mm diametre) into the Al-pot as an temperature indicator.
** I tested this assembly before, outside the computer (Fig. 5) to get a feeling for distance and time. With my heat gun (rated temperature 375°C), it took about 30 s to melt the solder while holding the gun about 10 cm away.
** Then the really exciting part: melt the solder in the Al-container on the ATI-chip. I gradually decreased the distance to the Al-pot. On the computer I had to come closer (distance about 5 cm) to melt the solder, indacting that I had some heat contact to the ATI-chip.

* Part II, getting the heat away from the GPU
** cut out some Cu-sheet that we can have a bridge between the GPU an the Cu-block of the fan assembly (Fig. 6)
** fix it to the assembly by some selfmade clamps (I used the steel band from a binder). In a first version I bent the Cu-sheet around the fan-assembly, but the side wings became to high on top of the assembly to that the original fixating metall sheet pushed my Cu-sheet do, probably loosing it from the fan-assembly.
** put heat conducting paste between the Cu-block and the Cu-sheet as well as between the ATI-chip and then Cu-sheet before.
** I also covered the CPU as well as the motherboard with some adhesive tape as electrical insulation (Fig. 7).

The blue lines are not gone completely. Therefore I probably will repeat the procedure. However, the black lines in glxgears (I am using linux on my thinkpad) and in videos displayed by kaffein and simiar players did not come back so far. :-)

== VESA Driver ==

February 2007

After 4,5 years using my Thinkpad almost on a daily basis I experience(d) the same problem with the garbled screen (A30p, 2653-66U). However there are two software things which fix the effect: 1) use a framebuffer device for the text console under Linux (appendline: vga=0x<hexnumber>) b) for Xorg: Choose the VESA instead of the Radeon driver (cp -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled; sed 's/radeon/vesa/g' < /etc/X11/xorg.conf.garbled >/etc/X11/xorg.conf; /etc/init.d/xdm restart). Note that "fbdev" shows the same problem as "radeon".

Problem: You will loose 3D acceleration. Moreover I discovered that Xorg 7.2pre (the one used in OpenSUSE 10.2)
scrolls the contents of all windows way slower than their predecessor using the vesa driver and it seems to use the CPU for copying of screen regions rather then the Radeon chip. Until this is fixed you might be happier w/
distributions which use Xorg 7.1 and below. To unset the option AIGLX in xorg.conf helps a little bit, too.

It should be possible to have the Mobo replaced by a A31p with a FireGL card which is not prone to this problem. However you have to swap the CPU and memory, too then.

Addendum: The external VGA output died a couple of months before. Not sure whether there's a correlation.
-- [[User:dirkw|Dirk Wetter]]

== ThinkPad A30 display problems - open letter to IBM ==

It's been more than a week since i've heard back from anyone at IBM regarding the defective mainboard (GPU/VRAM) issue effecting my ThinkPad A30p (model 2653-65U), which causes severe display corruption (garbled text, blue lines, distorted video), and 16MB of video memory to disappear (only 16 of the 32MB onboard vram is detected).

There are numerous ongoing discussions in various public forums on usenet and the web detailing the exact same problem with other owners'
A30p ThinkPads. Obviously, this defect is prone to directly causing premature failure of system board, which can't easily be repaired. In fact, IBM's established procedure for fixing this commonly reported problem with the A30 is to replace the entire motherboard (with a slight modifation, see below). The mainboard in my A30p has already been replaced, for the exact same display issue (above), and at considerable inconvenience, considering the machine was barely a year old, if that.

I'm aware that the warranty period on my ThinkPad has expired, but I am resolute about one thing; if this commonly known defect hadn't existed to begin with, or if IBM had taken steps to correct it, perhaps when my laptop was sent in for service the first time for the same problem, I would not now have to deal with another major inconvenience and impending expenses... and also no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, for a third time! Despite my best efforts, having taken exceptional care of the A30p, my two older generation ThinkPads have outlasted this newer one. So much for ThinkPad quality and reliability, or did I simply end-up with a lemon... along with all the other unhappy A30p owners whose ThinkPads are plagued with similar display problems.

If nothing more than a goodwill gesture, I would like IBM/Lenovo to actively seek to HELP its customers, by offering to replace these defective system boards for any ThinkPad owner whose machine is effected by this common issue. Through online research, I've come to discover there is a workaround fix that should have been done to my machine (but was not) when the board was replaced the first time; the insertion of a thermal transfer pad mounted atop the over-heating GPU and the underside of the CPU's heatsink assembly. That *important* step, of coupling the GPU to the heat sink with a thermal pad, was overlooked when my A30p was initially sent in for service, thus I'm once again faced with this persistent and annoying issue... premature failure of the mainboard, and through NO fault of my own either.

I need a reliable portable computer, how would IBM/Lenovo suggest I proceed; should I repair my ThinkPad, and hope for the best, that this debacle won't happen again... and who knows at what more cost and inconvenience???

OR should I simply count my losses... and move on to an alternate brand of portable? I was considering a system upgrade in the near future anyway, but my confidence in the venerable ThinkPad has been shaken.

Please advise... thanku
--
francis