Comment by lavela
1 day ago
On virtually all t480's I've seen having a broken USB-C port it was only the left one (some people don't even realize there are two!) so you can charge using the second one and since it has thunderbolt you could connect a dock and both charge and have e.g. a monitor on one port(obviously?).
On my current t480 I also succeeded in slightly bending the port shell tighter and using a USB-C cable with tighter tolerances to get the port to be usable for charging again, but it's a not guaranteed trial and error solution.
what a small world! i did the port bend thing after the issues first popped up, but eventually that stopped working as well.
interestingly, when i try to charge from right / thunderbolt port, it doesn't seem to work / the led doesn't turn on, and I saw another post with a thunderbolt flash guide that i might look into. thanks to you and everyone else who commented, i think i have a new sidequest to end the weekend with : )
There was an old version of firmware that would brick the thunderbolt port. Something about every connect/disconnect cycle would write tons to the port's eeprom eventually bricking it.
I don't think there is a fix, it's more a case of if your T480 still works, get a newer firmware installed asap.