VOGONS


First post, by aureal

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Hi guys, got a problem with my satellite pro 440 cdx/cdt which im hoping yous can help me with

When I press the power button the ON light comes on but the fan doesn't spin and nothing comes up on the screen. The hard drive doesnt seem to spin up either. The lights for power and the battery come on however (even before I press the power button).

I have tried discharging the machine by pressing the power button for a few mins with both the acadaptor and battery pulled out and also tried plugging in a external monitor in case the built in screen is dead.

When the hdd is removed am I still supposed to be able to see the Toshiba logo on screen and get into the bios?

Could a dead bios/rtc battery prevent it from booting?

The fan dont switch on but I dont know if its dead or disconnected because the latop has been opened before not by me.

Is the laptop supposed make any noises when it switches on like a beep cause mine never beep even with the volume rocker on maximum

Does anyone have the operating manual for this laptop (not the service manual). What button am I supposed to be pressing to get into the bios? the internet is telling me to press everything from esc to f4

Unforunately I dont have another laptop that has the same small ide connector to test the hard drive.

Reply 1 of 15, by chiveicrook

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Hi,
Unfortunately I do not have my 440cdt on hand but I'll try to help with things that I remember 😀

1. Toshiba still keeps downloads for these models, a bit mixed with more modern stuff but usable: https://support.dynabook.com/support/modelHom … 70&osId=3333621
Unfortunately the user guide is packed in an exe which is hard to run on modern machines (and 7zip can't unpack it).
2. To get into bios keep ESC pressed while turning the machine on, after a while it should beep and display something similar to "Press F1 to enter bios"
3. I remember having problems booting with the internal rtc battery dead and main battery removed.
4. If there are problems with HDD it might also not boot (some msata->ide adapters caused mine to hard-freeze with black screen) but it should boot with hdd removed. Best to remove HDD and CD drive or floppy drive in such case to test. Some combinations of HDDs refused to boot with CD drive in place for me.

Reply 2 of 15, by BitWrangler

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Did you try booting from AC only no battery? If that works, try leaving it for a long time turned off with AC connected and battery in to see if battery recovers enough. Sometimes they seem to get over discharged such that they suck too much current to let the PC boot... or have developed an irreversible fault which does the same.

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 3 of 15, by dekkit

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I have a 440cdx that experiencing this exact same issue.

My situation
- have video of it booting fine (before i bought it)
- as soon as i took it home, ripped out main
Large battery, removed Rtc.battery and sub-battery.
- Cleaned up tiny amount of corrosion on internal battery socket , (inside condition looked very clean)
- Very minor handling of system, just moved keyboard to get to pins.

Now i get no boot, no beeps, no post, no memory check.

Whats concerning is this was working fine!

Things ive tried:
- printer port loop back plug thing (used on other toshibas to remove passwords) = no work ...didnt do anything to rekick bios.
- unplugged all hdds /cd rom = no difference
- try mashing or holdimg the reset button while powering on = nup no joy.
- random mashing of FUNCTION keys while swearing obscenities (hold esc, or f1 or f2 etc) = nothing
- evem restoring the batteries (all 3) = nothing.

This is all i see:

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Is there another way reset any bios eeproms or anything that will factory reset this.

I suspect there may be a hardware profile in some eeprom somewhere that maybe causing a conflict...but i really dont know (or ive popped a fuse somewhere)

Its only occurred after removing batteries. Other vintage toshibas just ask you hit f1, after doing the same - which is why this one has me stumped.

Reply 4 of 15, by chiveicrook

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A quick test I came up with during my problems with 440cdt: Does function key light turn on when you press the fn button?
If it does -> software, bios or display issue, try plugging in external monitor
If it doesn't -> hardware lockup, won't be easy to diagnose. Check for shorts on hdd connector.

And a silly question but necessary to ask 😀 are you sure there are no beeps? the volume knob controls their volume as well

Reply 5 of 15, by dekkit

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chiveicrook wrote on 2022-03-27, 11:16:
A quick test I came up with during my problems with 440cdt: Does function key light turn on when you press the fn button? If it […]
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A quick test I came up with during my problems with 440cdt: Does function key light turn on when you press the fn button?
If it does -> software, bios or display issue, try plugging in external monitor
If it doesn't -> hardware lockup, won't be easy to diagnose. Check for shorts on hdd connector.

And a silly question but necessary to ask 😀 are you sure there are no beeps? the volume knob controls their volume as well

- no key light turns on when pressing the fn button (or any keyboard leds for that matter, when powered on - even checked the keyboard ribbon connector and gave it a scrub with iso)
- have tried an external vga monitor to see if i could at least see something (anything actually!) - i might add that trick worked for another different model vintage toshiba laptop but unfortunately not this one 🙁
-I've previously tried completely removing the hdd (but will need to have another closer look at the socket to see if there anything shorting it).
- and good silly question, yeah i've pumped that sucker up high but nothing i can audibly hear - system appears to have halted almost straight away.

I think the next step is to strip it right down and rebuild, but hoping to avoid that with some magical button sequences.

Thanks for the insights, hopefully one day it will play on.

UPDATE
- while pulling out the keyboard again, scanned around for any loose cables and had a look at the pcb ribbon cable- i noticed quite a bit of corrosion build up on the ribbon edges (quite dark on some pins) - cleaning the keyboard / tracker button ribbons with rubbing alcohol (iso) cleaned a fair bit of contact corrosion off on the cotton tip.

Suspect the other ribbon cables to be just as bad. Im hoping its just a case that i may have unsettled one or two when removing batteries and just need to find and clean any i find.

Reply 6 of 15, by dekkit

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Also if I've fried something (i.e. when pulling the RTC and sub-batteries out) would anyone have any suggestions on what PCB components typically go on this era of Toshiba laptop (fuses, moffsets, etc.)?

Keen to only strip it down once, so making a checklist of things to test before I start.

Reply 7 of 15, by Zack_H

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dekkit wrote on 2022-03-30, 11:50:

Also if I've fried something (i.e. when pulling the RTC and sub-batteries out) would anyone have any suggestions on what PCB components typically go on this era of Toshiba laptop (fuses, moffsets, etc.)?

Keen to only strip it down once, so making a checklist of things to test before I start.

Sorry to revive an old topic, but did you ever get it running again? Just curious to see if it turned out to be an easy fix to see if it’s worth buying one on the cheap with this issue.

Starting Windows 95. . .

Reply 8 of 15, by Thermalwrong

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In my experience that particular series have the standby and RTC battery in a position where they can leak over some really important components. Like the embedded controller and the northbridge - see this 490CDT of mine that's quite similar: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

A few months later I decided to use the board for hot air station practise and found this underneath the northbridge:

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Fixable if you have a spare mainboard. They're fairly modular so those are probably available. When working the Satellite 440 to 480 (Pentium MMX) and 490 (PII) are nice laptops with real OPL3 and good video compatibility.

Reply 9 of 15, by dekkit

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Zack_H wrote on 2022-10-14, 14:03:

Sorry to revive an old topic, but did you ever get it running again? Just curious to see if it turned out to be an easy fix to see if it’s worth buying one on the cheap with this issue.

Not yet! it's still in my backlog of things to fix up but I'm keen to strip it down and take a better look at the power circuitry and take a few photos to get a closer look at the pcb (im also monitoring this thread for an easy fix 😉 - ive been focused on getting a SBC 486 up and running in the interim)

I will post pics and an update when I do.
From what I could see, the battery corrosion wasn't too bad around the cable connector so i still have a glimmer of hope (as ive seen a lot worse from others ive pulled apart).

The underside of that corroded CPU pictured above does haunt me a little, so fingers crossed its not another one like that!

Reply 11 of 15, by gilly76

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I have a 440CDT, when I got it I pulled the two batteries from under the KB because they were flat (and looked like they were leaking a tad). I never ended up replacing them because I couldnt find good enough replacements. Recently I pulled the laptop battery (I store it quite a bit between uses and was worried it would leak) and was able to boot with AC power.

As for fans, there's a single fan on the backside, I thought there was an issue with mine cause it doesn't turn on when the laptop is first turned on, but it will turnon after the computer gets warm.

It should make beeps when you turn it on. Mine beeps with a bios error sincce the battery was removed. Perhaps you have a bigger issue here

Reply 12 of 15, by Metalliferous

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I'm having the exact same issues with the same model. I did not notice any corrision on the board, except on the battery connection itself. The batteries themselves look fine and no other signs of leakage anywhere else on the chassis.

Did replacing the batteries work for any of you (except gilly76)? I'm a bit hesitant to order replacement batteries if it's not a clear fix.

Reply 14 of 15, by dekkit

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Pulled apart the 440CDX, and couldn't see anything obviously wrong with it.

The fuse near the power socket (top left) was still in tact, nothing looked cooked or bridged.

Pulled apart the lcd panel to make sure no loose connections - and all good there it seems.

Put it all back together and still no joy.

Note: the rtc and sub battery sockets are to the bottom left in the pic below.

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Reply 15 of 15, by AnnoyingPentium

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Apologies for the 'holy thread revival' but I've had two machines now that are doing the same thing, but intermittently. I sold the first, a Tecra 510CDT, which started intermittently then died completely with only the power LED coming on. And now my Satellite Pro 430CDT has followed, the CD drive spins up and works, and the power LED comes on, but beyond that nothing. It was running intermittently, but went the same way. Both had RTC batteries that bombed themselves, with the 430CDT being much worse to the point where the keyboard is a bit dysfunctional. My Satellite 310CDS seems to be running okay for now, even with the batteries inside.

Don't have an answer as to sorting these out beyond replacing the mainboard for a known good one, which is a bit of a nuisance. Shame, nevertheless.

Ryan B. Sent from my nuclear reactor.

Too many computers. But my ICL DRS M75 is rather cool.
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