VOGONS

1996 laptop not POSTing

Topic actions

First post, by geos

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Hello,

I was messing with my 1996 laptop - a Pentium 100mhz olidata green751. I was trying to copy some files over from my main pc to the CF card i use as this PC's HDD (with a CF to IDE adapter) but when I got everything ready, it wouldn't turn on. The laptop has a little display under the screen (like a calculator display) which tells battery percentage, if it's plugged in or not, floppy/hdd activity and caps/num lock. Now when i turn the laptop on it displays only the battery icon which looks always empty even though the battery works, or the "plugged in" icon. The LCD doesn't turn on, no beeps are hears, no floppy activity. if i put into the machine a mechanical hard drive it spins to life but still nothing.

What can i try? The computer is almost unknown (google gives little to no info about it) so i'm at a loss. What do i do?

Thanks in advance

Reply 1 of 2, by adalbert

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

It's possible that this laptop has a small Ni-Mh battery for clock backup, and if so, it may have leaked and destroyed some traces on the motherboard. Did you disassemble it and checked if everything looks fine?

Repair/electronic stuff videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/adalbertfix
ISA Wi-fi + USB in T3200SXC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX30t3lYezs
GUI programming for Windows 3.11 (the easy way): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L272OApVg

Reply 2 of 2, by Thermalwrong

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Pull it apart, more than one laptop from that era that I have, has had the NiMH battery - either the main battery or the CMOS battery, or a standby battery - leak out and damage components.
The ones where the main battery leaked ended up as a pretty horrific mess of green corrosion and ruined traces. Sometimes the ones where just the CMOS battery were save-able, but often not. The worst is when it's a rare brand that was fly-by-night back in the day.

I had an 'All New Green Note' laptop that was a pretty nice, modular Pentium MMX system, but the CMOS battery had leaked and ruined traces. Couldn't save it, I'm trying to use the parts elsewhere but sometimes I wish I could undo purchases, that one didn't work out. (and is why I stick so much to Toshiba, parts are available, documentation exists!)

Go to top of page Go to top of page
Back to General Old Hardware
Close window
Close window