New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

I picked up one from the dump, and it works intermittently, I think it's the power daughter board, as it doesn't run off A/C but it does run off battery if I wire in my lab power supply. And if I put pressure on the board it fixes it sometimes.

I kinda wonder whether my problem is old capacitors.

I'm not a pro for laptop repair, but if pressing the board fixes it sometimes then that'd indicate cracked SMD joins to me.
I fixed a Toshiba TE2200 (which were chronic for it) a few months back with the 'press here and it might work' issue, just ran a soldering iron down the suspect joins.
On these it was the connector between the motherboard and the power duaghterboard.

I'm not sure on your location, but did you get it from Trash palace? I spotted a few Thinkpads down there.

Ah, never heard of trash palace, must go there in the weekend.
It seems the fault is independant of load, and it's gonna be a b*tch to resolder.
I guess I could get out the rework gun, but more than likely I'll just blow the smds off the board.

Popped down to trash palace today and got a VTech PreComputer 1000 for $4...
Unfortunately their laptops are over priced at $25 each, given their age, lack of boxes, accessories, and no guarantee of working.
I would think more like $5...

From what I can tell they're not old leftovers but "we couldn't fix it" machines. So yeah $5 would be much better.
I purchased two, waste of time. I was just wondering if your Thinkpad had come from there, or if they had some left with good parts.

Yeh, didn't see any thinkpads.
Mine came from the Wellington Recycling Centre, which seems to have higher quality stuff at more reasonable prices.
e.g. their toys still have battery doors on them and aren't rusted out.
They had 3 desktops there last week which seemed to be mid to late nineties era for 5-10$ each.
Their computers seem to come in drips and drabs though, maybe because the computer recycling thing hoovers them up every year.

Yes indeed... I think one is best to establish a working relationship with the local "recyclers"...

I've got a dead 360CSE I've been trying to get going, without any joy so far

How did you try powering it?

Someone gave it to me with no power adapter. It had an unusual 4-pin trapezoidal socket and I couldn't source the correct plug from anywhere. Some peculiar IBM thing, I suppose.

However, this trapezoidal socket was mounted on its own little standalone daughter board, so I made a replacement for it out of veroboard using a standard 3.5mm DC socket. I power it using a 'universal' power adapter which supports the common plug type.

The battery itself is kaput.

On mine the power socket doesn't work for some reason, so I wired the lab PSU directly to the battery socket. Maybe you could try that?

I'm pretty sure power isn't the problem with mine. The status LEDs all indicate as they should and the main battery does actually charge. It just doesn't hold it for long. I've also replaced the standby and backup batteries.

I don't know if the power daughter board is different in the 380 but mine only had three SMD caps (RF bypass) in addition to the DC socket, so not really much to go wrong there.