I’m back to trying to bring my ThinkPad 701C (the one with the “butterfly” keyboard) back to life. The only thing that is still vexing me is the display backlight inverter board. I just replaced the blown fuse on it, and when I went to power it on, the magic smoke came out of *something* on it. All the parts on the inverter are available, so I might just do a full rebuild.

I’m taking parts off the board to test them. I’m using a trick I saw on @BigBadBiologist’s streams to use utility knife blades as easily repositionable heat shields. Much faster than cutting and sticking aluminum tape!

Found the smoke producer - a shorted tantalum cap!

Replacement capacitors came in today! And the backlight now works! (And so does the original hard drive which apparently has Windows 95 installed)