X86 wrote on 2021-12-24, 01:43:

Todays retro activity case mod like its Y2k ! Lan party grab handles, blow hole with obnoxious case fans, cold cathode lighting, led temp displays, fan toggle switches and custom paint job. Pc case was in really bad shape! I wouldn't cause any harm to a clean beige tower.

Bravo! Looking superb. 😀

janih wrote on 2021-12-02, 08:14:

Byrd wrote on 2021-12-02, 01:05:

janih wrote on 2021-11-29, 22:08:

Changed the display panel of my Libretto 100CT.
The panel for this 100CT is Sharp LQ71Y03

Would you please share where you got a replacement panel from? I've a 100CT with flickering vertical lines on the left side, a common spot, I could clamp it all down and hope for better but a replacement panel would be rather good.

I bought the panel from a Chinese online store called "abctay.com". Paid 50$ (+shipping, taxes, customs..) so not cheap, but I was unable to find these from European sellers or locally.

It was bit of a gamble to buy from some random shop, but the panel is working and seems to be new old stock. I was searching for the lowest price for LQ71Y03 that I could find. There are also several sellers in AliExpress that also have this panel for sale.

Received my Sharp LQ71Y03 for my Libretto 100CT (110CT actually just realised) from abctay.com; jury is out - it was not NOS, it has no lines on the screen, but the contrast is too high giving the panel a washed out appearance and very fine "scanlines" up close. Windows looks OK but DOS games appear very pale. I quickly switched the old LCD back in, contrast good, LCD backlighting not as consistent as the replacement panel. There aren't any interchangeable parts on the LCDs, and the Toshiba DOS utility to adjust brightness doesn't improve contrast.

So jury is out; I appreciate they can't test their LCDs and they've been sitting on a shelf. I'll keep playing around with things to see if I can adjust contrast, gamma another way. They posted it quickly and even called me in Australia to double check my address which is a first.

Doing some testing with the MediaVision AudioPort sound cards.

They work in WFW 3.11 using the Control Panel > Drivers> Add > Other > C:\AUDP method and they work in the OS itself, however, DOS isn't recognizing it and the INSTALL.EXE file says the Multimedia Extensions are required to run first.

Byrd wrote on 2021-12-24, 05:40:

janih wrote on 2021-12-02, 08:14:

Byrd wrote on 2021-12-02, 01:05:

Would you please share where you got a replacement panel from? I've a 100CT with flickering vertical lines on the left side, a common spot, I could clamp it all down and hope for better but a replacement panel would be rather good.

I bought the panel from a Chinese online store called "abctay.com". Paid 50$ (+shipping, taxes, customs..) so not cheap, but I was unable to find these from European sellers or locally.

It was bit of a gamble to buy from some random shop, but the panel is working and seems to be new old stock. I was searching for the lowest price for LQ71Y03 that I could find. There are also several sellers in AliExpress that also have this panel for sale.

Received my Sharp LQ71Y03 for my Libretto 100CT (110CT actually just realised) from abctay.com; jury is out - it was not NOS, it has no lines on the screen, but the contrast is too high giving the panel a washed out appearance and very fine "scanlines" up close. Windows looks OK but DOS games appear very pale. I quickly switched the old LCD back in, contrast good, LCD backlighting not as consistent as the replacement panel. There aren't any interchangeable parts on the LCDs, and the Toshiba DOS utility to adjust brightness doesn't improve contrast.

So jury is out; I appreciate they can't test their LCDs and they've been sitting on a shelf. I'll keep playing around with things to see if I can adjust contrast, gamma another way. They posted it quickly and even called me in Australia to double check my address which is a first.

I imported two parted LCDs from the UK for a very obscure laptop I've been trying to refurbish for years. Just my luck that each of them had a single dead pixel on them. Finding a good replacement part can be both tedious and expensive.

I had one of these laptops in my youth but had given it to a relative whose house flooded and it was destroyed. Terribly luck. 🙁

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-12-24, 07:25:

Doing some testing with the MediaVision AudioPort sound cards.

They work in WFW 3.11 using the Control Panel > Drivers> Add > Other > C:\AUDP method and they work in the OS itself, however, DOS isn't recognizing it and the INSTALL.EXE file says the Multimedia Extensions are required to run first.

There are Windows 3.x versions on the internet that include Multimedia Extensions. Maybe it's worth trying?

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-24, 07:47:

I imported two parted LCDs from the UK for a very obscure laptop I've been trying to refurbish for years. Just my luck that each of them had a single dead pixel on them. Finding a good replacement part can be both tedious and expensive.

I had one of these laptops in my youth but had given it to a relative whose house flooded and it was destroyed. Terribly luck. 🙁

Thanks - the panel I received here is definitely off, like it was a "warranty return" panel years ago and sat on a shelf. Let's see if the seller understands/is willing to replace or renew.

Here is another related horror.

I bought a screen once that was otherwise in good condition but the seller didn't take care to place the inverter connector behind the panel. Either in storage or in shipping, the connector had scraped and scratched against the surface of the screen and damaged it severely.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-24, 08:45:

Here is another related horror.

I bought a screen once that was otherwise in good condition but the seller didn't take care to place the inverter connector behind the panel. Either in storage or in shipping, the connector had scraped and scratched against the surface of the screen and damaged it severely.

IMG_20211224_034229_resize_72.jpg

Careless. A piece of tape would have done it...

Welp, following my post about that AIW Radeon 9000.

Found it. Resoldered the joints on some suspect caps, made sure there are no bridges.

This is what I get.

Looks like that AIW connected you to the Matrix.

PcBytes wrote on 2021-12-24, 10:03:

Welp, following my post about that AIW Radeon 9000. […]
Show full quote

Welp, following my post about that AIW Radeon 9000.

Found it. Resoldered the joints on some suspect caps, made sure there are no bridges.

This is what I get.

I assume that it worked at some point? Besides capacitors, the most common point of failure I've seen is a broken or cracked SMD component on the rear. The second most common is a weakened solder joint due to a defect or thermal stress. Both of these are best found with a microscope.

Worst case it could be a cracked solder ball under the GPU.

The fact that there is video at all is very promising. It doesn't strike me as an issue with the memory, despite the impressive output.

Could very well be the GPU chipset that's dud.

Oh well, time to crank out my old heatgun and some solder paste and see if I can get it working.
I still think there's bad RAM BGA though, or at least the chips' leveling look sketchy to me.

PcBytes wrote on 2021-12-24, 15:22:

Oh well, time to crank out my old heatgun and some solder paste and see if I can get it working.

The way you casually say that makes it sound terrifying.

Well, it's an automotive heatgun 🤣, of course it sounds a bit terrifying.

Though, it managed to bring a HP Pavilion DV6700 back to life and it's been running for 4 years without a crash already, so I guess that's something. Intel + Geforce 8400M GS though, not the AMD counterpart.

All of the GeForce 8 series mobile GPUs have a manufacturing defect that caused early failures. The exact cause I think was unclear but there was a class action lawsuit and a moratorium by manufacturers for years on NVIDIA mobile GPUs.

I had the opinion that this was early in the ROHS transition and the formula used in the solder balls or flux was defective. That's just my opinion though.

Honestly, getting 4+ years out of it after a reflow and considering it's still kicking alive, that's really impressive.
At this point, if it's still gonna hold this good after so much time, it's a miracle.

Back onto the 9000 - I haven't yet tried reflowing (it's Christmas) as I'm going to work on another project but I'll keep in mind to first try and reflow the GPU, and if anything fails, aim for the BGA SGRAM.

I happened to really like this era of laptops. A low TDP Core 2 Duo with dedicated GeForce 8 series is a powerful combination. I had a great HP laptop with this combination around this time.

I asked a professional repair service if it was worthwhile getting one of these GPUs reballed and professionally reconditioned but was told that the business had a very low success rate and that there was some other underlying cause for the failure. This is everything I know.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-25, 15:10:

All of the GeForce 8 series mobile GPUs have a manufacturing defect that caused early failures. The exact cause I think was unclear but there was a class action lawsuit and a moratorium by manufacturers for years on NVIDIA mobile GPUs.

I had the opinion that this was early in the ROHS transition and the formula used in the solder balls or flux was defective. That's just my opinion though.

Defect was the gpu ran super hot and with the horse shit sodder they used it would crack under the heat/cooling cycle. I have a late 2012 MacBook Pro with a 8000 series gpu with this exact issue. Had to pay to get the gpu bga reballed to fix it, can’t remember if they swapped the gpu die with a new one.

Took the HDD caddy and battery out on the NCR 5130/0350 laptop to eliminate possible suspects for the laptop since it doesn't power on at all. I hear blips from the PC speaker, which sound soft, which indicates low power somewhere, possible corrosion, and other items.

Haven't opened it up yet due to my 12.5 hour work schedule and I have company that's here for a week, got a kitchen to finish the flooring, and planned car maintenance.

Opened the system and no corrosion anywhere. I think the display needs a look at since it doesn't show anything and I haven't tested the VGA port to see if there's life yet.

Turns out the OEM PSU is a bit on the weaker side, so I used my test dummy PSU set to 15VDC center negative and it doesn't make a lot of blips like before, except it's a bit weak still.

Installed windows 95 from Compaq restore disk and set up DOS boot menu and drivers on my Compaq armada 1750. I was disappointed by the lack of bloat. 🙁

The sticker on the computer said windows 98 but I haven't found such a restore disk.