[ltp] What to do if I suspect I've got a lemon T60?

[Whil Hentzen]

Aaron Mulder wrote:
> On 8/6/06, Whil Hentzen <linuxnews@hentzenwerke.com> wrote:
>> I did a custom install so everything is gone. It's terribly disingenious
>> of the mfgr to refuse to provide any sort of off-disk repair facility,
>> but they can get away with it, so they do.
> 
> Well, you can usually get a set of install CDs if you call and ask (or
> more likely, call and tell them you put in a new hard drive that
> doesn't have the hidden partition and you'd like to install Windows on
> it pretty please).

I may be jumping the gun, I guess. I'm just getting frustrated. :) PC 
Connection has always been good to me, I'm just tired....

>> It fries me to think that they won't diagnose/fix the box regardless of
>> whether there's an OS on it or not, much less the OS that came with.
>> Sort of like a car mfgr saying that they will only repair the car if you
>> buy your gas from Exxon.
> 
> This hasn't been our experience.  A lot of our folks run Linux only on
> their ThinkPads and we haven't had problems getting hardware support
> from IBM.

This has been (I think) my sixth TP (so you can tell I like them a lot, 
and have had great luck with them.) I'm just nervous about the brick 
wall that I'm banging my head on.

> It's more likely to be a problem if you return it to PC Connection,
> but perhaps if it's defective they'll just ship it back to IBM anyway.
> Before you give up, you might as well call them and say you've
> customized the machine but it's not working and can you just return it
> for a replacement with the state of the hard drive as-is.  If that
> doesn't work, you still have the basic warranty from IBM, so you can
> call their support, you may just have to ship the machine to a depot
> to get it fixed.

I'm starting to think that it's the second GB of memory that PCC 
installed for me. memtest barfed on me (hard lock of the machine) after 
running for 11 hours.

I can boot Knoppix and run it fine (so far, knock knock), but when I 
tried to get Knoppix to dump the CD into a GB ramdisk, it locked up 
every time. I may end up pulling the second SDRAMM  out of the box and 
trying to reinstall with just the first GB. If that's successful, then
it looks like it's the memory.

Hey, Crucial sells a 2 GB SDRAMM for the T60.

Sixteen hundred bucks. :)

Of course, I remember spending $1400 for a 30 MEGabyte drive a while 
back. And that seemed like a deal at the time.

Well, news at 11.

Whil