[TriLUG] Advice Please

[Jeffery Painter via TriLUG]

I have been enjoying the increased TriLUG traffic the past 2 days :-) I 
thought I might add to Dwain's story my own experience as of late...

My Lenovo L14 Gen 1 served me well for four years—I bought it new and 
just finished grad school with it. I recently wiped Windows and 
installed Ubuntu, and everything was running smoothly until I noticed 
the BIOS was outdated. I attempted to update it using some questionable 
online instructions, only to learn the hard way that ThinkPads really 
prefer Windows for BIOS updates.

Although the update appeared to complete successfully, the reboot gave 
me a series of beeps and a black screen. Using the ThinkPad beep 
diagnostic app, I found it was an internal system bus error—essentially, 
a death sentence for the machine. There seems to be no way to recover 
it, so like you, I now have a good-looking paperweight.

I ended up finding a new, old-stock L14 Gen 3 on eBay, which came with 
twice the memory (16GB) and twice the storage. It looked unused and only 
cost around $300 shipped. It’s working great! My only gripe is that the 
Gen 3 uses a half-length NVMe drive, so swapping my old drive will not work.

I’ll likely list the Gen 1 on eBay for parts, but if anyone local could 
use it or wants to try reviving it, let me know!

Best,
Jeff



On 2/21/25 11:51, Dwain Sims via TriLUG wrote:
> I had thought about that too.  A really good idea.
>
> Dwain
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 21, 2025 at 11:34 AM John Mitchell <john280z at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dwain,
>>
>> If it was me, I'd look into a used one of your model with a cracked screen
>> on ebay.
>> john mitchell
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 21, 2025 at 11:16 AM Dwain Sims via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Generally have I had good luck with Thinkpads over the years.  Reading
>>> more, this particular model with an AMD processor, which probably has
>>> nothing to do with this failure, has been prone to GPU death and when it
>>> does it takes the entire MB with it.  There appears to be no repair.  It
>>> is
>>> a very clean system with no real signs of wear.  It looks like it just
>>> came
>>> out of the shipping box.  I hate to see it dead.  A new MB is probably
>>> 250-300 which makes it borderline unrepairable.
>>>
>>> Thanks for all of the tips!
>>>
>>> Dwain
>>>
>>> On Fri, Feb 21, 2025 at 10:21 AM Joseph Mack NA3T <jmack at trilug.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Dwain Sims via TriLUG wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I left it on over night and I am recharging it today.  Still nothing.
>>>> Just
>>>>> a paper weight.
>>>> Sorry to hear it.
>>>>
>>>> I guess you're now amenable to advice on what to replace it with.
>>>>
>>>> o I had Thinkpads for 20 years and liked them a lot. I understand that
>>>> when they went full Lenovo the quality dropped. This may be what's
>>>> happened to you.
>>>>
>>>> o I have a Dell laptop now. It's OK, but I dont need a wide screen (1440
>>>> pixels) on a laptop and I'd rather have the smaller format of the
>>> Thinkpad
>>>> (1024*768) and the smaller size of the laptop. As well the large
>>> built-in
>>>> Dell mousepad, in the center of the keyboard area, is under my hands
>>> when
>>>> I type and I have to manually turn it off (which I can only do after
>>>> bootup) and use an external mouse, which negates the point of having a
>>>> built-in mousepad. The only way you can type with the Dell mousepad on,
>>> is
>>>> to hold your hands in the air. The Thinkpads had a small nubbin in the
>>>> middle of the keyboard, for the mouse, which didn't get activated when
>>> you
>>>> typed.
>>>>
>>>> Joe
>>>> --
>>>> Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
>>>> Don't upgrade a working machine - it won't work any
>>>> better - it could work worse; it may not work at all.
>>>> Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!
>>>>
>>>>
>>> --
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>>