First post, by BlackVega
- Rank
- Newbie
So I obtained a Toshiba 430CDT a while ago as untested. Unfortunately I wasn't very lucky because it did not turn on at all... The ON LED turned on but that was about it. I could hear the HDD spinning up but the LCD screen did not display anything, not even an external monitor. Oh well, at least the internal LCD looks clean but I still don't have any idea if it works.
So I took the notebook apart and checked the voltage on the output of AC to DC converter and it was steady 15V. I reconnected all boards and didn't see any signs of cap leakage or bulging. Unfortunately, this didn't help at all
After all of that, I found a working Toshiba 430CDS so I bought it. It booted up just fine and while I was using Windows 95 on it for a while it completely froze, just completely. The cursor didn't even move and the HDD LED did not show any activity so I disconnected power. After that... nothing. It doesn't boot up at all and it's just as dead as dodo. Now that was great... how long did I use it for, 5 minutes????? So now I blew out around 160EUR on 2 dead Toshibas and this is where I'm at... just great quality notebooks...
OK, so in all seriousness it got me thinking they are dead in the exact same way then maybe, just maybe there is some sort of a common issue with them. So I search the web and found out I can build an LPT LED tester and can help me diagnose the motherboard. So at first, I diagnosed 430CDS and sometimes all LEDs are lit up and sometimes none of them and sometimes I got those LED codes. However none of them make any sense because they are non existent in the Toshiba 430CDS/T service manual:
10h
7Ah
HOWEVER, after a few reboots I got THIS screen saying the BIOS is damaged and I need to insert some sort of diagnostic floppy (unfortunately I didn't have one so I turned the computer off):
So after that, this is unfortunately the last sign of life I got out of this thing. Now all I get is LED code FFh every time I boot it up, the HDD still spins but nothing else happens. So after that I diagnosed 430CDT and I got an LED code of DDh which makes even less sense and after that, same result as 430CDS. Every time I boot it up, the LEDs give FFh and the HDD spins up and nothing else happens. Please help because this is starting to drive me crazy... Thanks in advance