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Compaq armada 1750

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Reply 60 of 178, by Joakim

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After trying the computer for a while I must say it is a very good retro computer. The sound card is very compatible and in my case everything works, floppy, cd and even the battery.

There are a few downsides, the thickness and weight is one I guess but it's fine. The screen could have been lower native Res maybe. I doubt this computer will run any action game in native 1024x768 so everything will get scaled. Scaling looks good to me though and you can ofc run an external monitor.

In my sample, the computer has a major problem with static. It is extremely loud when I connect my Sennheiser headphones but also clearly noticeable with inbuilt speakers. All laptops I have used have this issue but this is quite extreme. I'm not sure if this is normal or if it is something wrong with it.

Edit repeated myself.

Reply 62 of 178, by Joakim

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Yeah I did that. Thing is that the noise starts as soon as I power on the system. I can hear static from when the fan powers on, hdd, floppy searches etc. Something is not grounded correctly I guess.

Reply 63 of 178, by BitWrangler

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Mine hasn't had that problem (Yet?) so nothing much to suggest. My headphone socket was crackly until I cleaned it with IPA but didn't come through speakers. However, the jack sockets all have switches in, if the contacts on those got badly oxidised it might cause crackles through the system. Otherwise, maybe an internal hookup cable got mis-routed at some point, or a capacitor is dying.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 64 of 178, by Joakim

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I'm not aware of IPA, is it some cleaning solution? I know it as a kind beer (and I'm all out).

Not sure how it could be the connectors because I can clearly hear static from all other electric parts in the computer. But it would not hurt to clean them.

Personally I believe this is a capacitor problem.
Problem is mostly that I don't want to open it because of the risk of plastic breaking (it did when I changed the cmos). And time and effort of course.

Reply 65 of 178, by BitWrangler

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Ah sorry, thought it was a well known abbreviation for isopropyl alcohol, isopropanol, also sometimes known as rubbing alcohol, but things sold as rubbing alcohol can also have oils and fragrances like wintergreen in.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 67 of 178, by Joakim

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When cleaning it with a q tip the metal shielding part of the headphone jack came off.

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Maybe a worn down jack is the cause of the problem. I don't think it's worth it to try to repair this jack. Better to replace it I guess.

Reply 68 of 178, by Jupiter5700

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Hi! I have Armada 1750. I can't create bios partition on HDD. What utility i must to download? I have SP8975.EXE and i can enter bios setup by FDD created from SP8975.EXE. But how create bios setup partition on hdd? FDD setup utility can't write setup to hdd dou to partition absent.

Reply 69 of 178, by Joakim

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Should be possible to run fdisk with a DOS boot disk as normal? In my case I think I ran the OEM windows 95 installation and it fixed me up with the correct partition for me. When I decided to install windows 98 I just let the bios partition be.

Reply 71 of 178, by Joakim

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Yeah should be possible somehow.. sorry can't help you out. I think the windows installation was quite fast.. I don't think my serial worked so it might not be the exact right version for me, I have a Swedish version of the laptop so that might be it.

Would be awesome to have an OEM 98 installation if one exists. I think my laptop's sticker sais 98/nt4 but I'm not sure. I'd be happy with 95 but I wasn't able to install usb storage drivers, probably because the drivers should be installed on a clean installation and an OEM installation, is not.

Reply 73 of 178, by Joakim

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Yeah it was probably that one I tried out. I made several attempts and read the readme but I just didn't install correctly. But window 98 is fine, every drivers installed, just lack the Compaq bloat..

Reply 74 of 178, by Joakim

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So I have taken my Armada apart to try to investigate the source of the noise.

First to explain what kind of noise it is, I can hear noise when any component is working. For instance it becomes quite large when the fan starts spinning and I can hear the mouse and the hard drive working. When I record sound without a mic I capture the noise so it is on both input and output to the 3.5" but also to the speakers. It happens both on battery and when I connect the electrical wire.

I can see nothing obvious on the PCBs, all caps look good, no leakage etc. and it was generally very clean. I attempted to remove motherboard, eletrical conversion pcb and the pcb with the sound connectors on from the rest of the components and hook up the battery, and I can still hear the noise in question, but it was of course less because there were so few components connected.

Is it plausible that the caps on the electrical conversion pcb can cause this? Otherwise, it might be a faulty pcb and I guess I need to get some replacements and sure a board for 10 bucks is motivated but I dont want to end up spendning too much on this or I might as well get an other laptop.

Reply 75 of 178, by BitWrangler

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Best thing I can think of right now would be to get two sets of headphone, plug one in and just have it on one ear, then with the other one on the other ear, ground the sleeve and poke around with the tip and see if you can find the same noise but louder.... maybe a 1 kilohm or so resistor in series wouldn't be a bad idea though so that you're not rebooting it every time you ground something sensitive.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 76 of 178, by Joakim

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Hmm interesting.. like a stetoscope.... I might try this actually.

I was also thinking if I could do something similar but reading the signal with my arduino through the analog input.. I like finding a reason to pull it out.

Reply 77 of 178, by BitWrangler

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heh, maybe something like this? https://blog.yavilevich.com/2016/08/arduino-s … ctrum-analyzer/ massaged for high frequency or spike detection??? There's probably some simple oscilloscope projects around too. I think if using one you would wanna have input decoupled through a small capacitor.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 78 of 178, by Joakim

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I like those kind of projects and dive into nerdy stuff. On the topic of Arduino I used it to measure the capacitance of a cap with decent accuracy. It was one of those tiny ones without markings (that I can read anyway). Who needs an oscilloscope?

Reply 79 of 178, by pixelatedscraps

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I just picked up one of these (14” with s-video out) off eBay for $60 to add to my growing collection of Pentium laptops. Naturally, it’s missing it’s caddy and power ‘supply’ but I assume its only missing the cable 😉

My ultimate dual 440LX / Voodoo2 SLI build