👢 Came back after half an hour and (for no logical reason) tried again...and this time it booted up! (Only till BIOS, because no drives connected yet)

🔍 On inspecting the board, I see a burnt-up SMD called "C588", which I'm assuming is a capacitor

📖 No circuit diagram for my motherboard (#Thinkpad #X230T) but the diagram for a similar(ish) model (#X230, the non-tablet version) seems to say C588 is part of the voltage regulation circuit, in parallel with a couple of other capacitors

🧵 2/3

🤔 Either way, my theory is the capacitor was shorting, preventing anything else from powering. And when it finally burnt out, the other circuits started to work

❓ Question being, is that a valid hypothesis? Or should I check for other upstream problems?

🔩 Thinking of reconnecting and running sans that capacitor, atleast until I get a replacement cap. Internet tells me capacitors are for smoothing power and can be managed without (of course I'll seek a bit more expert advice first!)

🧵 3/3

@badrihippo I had a similar smoke issue like this too, not on the Thinkpad but my x86 tablet.

No power, no charging, no nothing.
Any smart charger would shut down once plugged in, but trying another charger (yes, I know, that's a dumb idea) seems to have burned out something & the tablet started to work again.

It's been a year now since the incident, everything still works except for the USB host part which was rarely used because there's two ports (one for charging and another for data-only).

@danct12 interesting! I didn't know (or wasn't fully aware) that smart/dumb charging was a thing. I did use two chargers so let me check what kind they were again 👀

Do you mean one USB port stopped working and the other one was fine?