T61p black screen

[oxygen14]

6458-CT0 does not boot anymore, a few weeks after a Middleton BIOS & CPU upgrade (T7500 to a T7700 pulled from another T61p T7700 to T9300 upgrade). After the fan spin up pulse, the power LED stays on without any further sign of activity. In an unheated room, the CPU corner feels warm after a few minutes. If the 2 2GB memory sticks are removed, there are the missing RAM diagnostic beeps, but not if any or both sticks are installed. It can't be a power issue, as another power supply and battery have been tried too. External VGA monitor shows "no signal".
Never had any memory error/warning on boot screen before, while it was still booting. It started to freeze randomly sometimes after blinking under Win10, then had dots/patterns on the boot screen after a forced shutdown, but seemed stable after warmup. The last "new" thing that was connected is an ExpressCard/34 to PCI adapter (to use an M-Audio PCI soundcard).
Could something have been bent and cracked around the CPU/GPU after heatsink/fan module reassembly ?
Or is it likely an aging VRM failure that eventually happened after running more often ?

[TPFanatic]

id guess gpu failure for any of the following reasons:
• age, the laptop is 17-18 years old
• nvidiagate, every t61p dies faster than average, altho yours has lasted awhile more than the average, so i guess anything is possible

a replacement board should be easy to source. Theres even a way to cram an r61 board in altho it takes drilling at least one hole in the chassis and breaking stuff at the front left corner. i did it once .

[oxygen14]

So what replacement board to source, that won't have nvidiagate undead GPU, but a more reliable one ?

[TPFanatic]

I would try to find a t61 motherboard with intel gma graphics.

there are 3 different sizes of t61p
14” wide
14” square
15” wide

Each has its own motherboard so make sure to get the correct one

[axur-delmeria]

6458-CT0

Machine Type 6458 --> T61 / T61p 15.4" widescreen

It's CTO (letter O) not CT0 (number zero). It means "Configure To Order".

If you have other DDR2-equipped laptops, test those RAM sticks as well. Bad RAM can cause all sorts of weird behavior.