Hi all,

As mentioned in the 'Bought these (retro) hardware today' thread I got a Toshiba T2130CS laptop off eBay recently where the seller said the screen was faulty. Turns out it wasn't and the machine worked fine for about 20 mins or so then started crashing a lot, so much so that it often failed to boot.

I noticed I could run the laptop if I sat it in front of my air con unit so thought heat could be to blame. So I stripped it down hoping to see a heatsink what needed new paste or something but it doesn't have a traditional heatsink or paste inside - it had this pink and black thermal pad instead.

In the end it looks like something had possibly been spilt (or even a bug died?) and somehow corroded a few of the CPU pins.

I cleaned it all up and it's been working absolutely perfectly since!

After a few charges/discharges even the battery seems to be working! Currently up to 50 mins running 😀

A video of my endeavours is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKSRXGYhNp8 (HD will come along when YouTube finishes processing)

Cheers,
Steve