First post, by 386_serlaptop
Hey guys!
I'm not sure what to check here. I bought a Libretto 50ct for cheap, and upon booting it up early on, it displayed a black screen. When I pressed the power button, I got the beeping that happens when these machines have that black screen problem. This seems somewhat normal from what I read. Pressing F12 got it into the BIOS reset menu, albeit with a dim screen. Here is where the issues start.
I turned it off from there and never got it to display anything again. Pressing f12 now, it appears to have some life, as it beeps when I press the keyboard. It's as if it's responding to the "press any key" screen that's displayed when it's in this recovery mode. However, on an external display and the internal, I get nothing.
The hard drive that's in it is dead; however, with another hard drive or a CF card I tried, I still got nothing. Taking it apart revealed some slight battery leakage, which I cleaned up. Unfortunately, no luck this time. It has no CMOS battery attached currently. It's also worth noting that it still does the beeping when pressing the power button when its on.
The question I have is, what should I check now? I heard that once they have leakage, they are pretty much toast, but why? Could it be capacitors that failed? Can I replace the damaged chips? Would it just need a BIOS update? I don't have a drive with me at the moment to check. Pressing space and booting up seems to have no effect.
Thank you very much for reading and in advance for any help!