Reply 20 of 53, by megatron-uk
Now, next question: is there an alternative, 2.4v, ~15mAh rechargeable lithium cell available?
I don't want to re-fit a ni-mh/ni-cd part!
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net
Now, next question: is there an alternative, 2.4v, ~15mAh rechargeable lithium cell available?
I don't want to re-fit a ni-mh/ni-cd part!
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net
These batteries do leak, absolutely. They are probably all leaking to some extent at this age, depending on the quality of environment they've lived in.
About the power board, that was what I was wondering about my dead power board as well. A tiny bit of corrosion but not enough that I thought it should have died. I wondered if it was something else on the board.
Kahenraz wrote on 2025-01-13, 19:38:I have a different problem with this series of laptop that I would like to try and confirm with someone. When I turn mine on, there is a high pitched noise that comes out of the laptop. It's extremely high pitched so you might not hear it if you can't detect this frequency. I tracked it down to the little circuit board that connects to the LCD. It stops making this sound after about a minute or so after powering on.
I thought that maybe this board was defective, so I replaced it with one from a donor laptop but it does the same thing.
Has anyone experienced this before? Try turning your laptop on an hold your what above where the speaker area is and see if you can hear it.
That's the backlight inverter board you're describing I think? Firstly make sure you're running at 19 to 19.5v power input, I've found that lower voltages like 18v will allow the laptop to run but the inverter / something else will whine.
I have a dodgy PCG-F807K that I made up from parts which will go into a fault mode if run from more than 18.4v so I have to run it at that low voltage, which means the inverter squeals a bit. I found that putting the CPU into the battery optimised speedstep mode mostly gets rid of the sound. You should also try that I think, it might make a good difference.
megatron-uk wrote on 2025-01-15, 13:54:Now, next question: is there an alternative, 2.4v, ~15mAh rechargeable lithium cell available?
I don't want to re-fit a ni-mh/ni-cd part!
There isn't one I'm aware of. On the ones I've fixed up I've run wires off of the bios battery connector all the way up to the hdd cage / speaker grill areas , with two 1n4148 diodes coming off of the battery, then I connect a CR2032 coin cell to that. It definitely works, routing the wires can be tricky but there is room to run them through the casing without getting pinched on anything.
Very odd that you have two bad power boards, I wonder what the cause could be? The PCB looks pretty simple so the vias should be okay. All mine have worked with maybe some cleaning and maybe a patched trace somewhere? It's been too long and I didn't take pictures
I suspect the coin cell and diode option is going to be the least hassle in that case!
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net
You can also hide the battery in the HDD bay if it's easily accessible. Here is that's I did on a Toshiba laptop where the battery was normally buried deep inside the case.
The battery cells are held in place with double-sided tape.
megatron-uk wrote on 2025-01-16, 07:37:I suspect the coin cell and diode option is going to be the least hassle in that case!
Which one diode I need?
Doom is what you want (c) MAZter
Kahenraz wrote on 2025-01-13, 19:38:I have a different problem with this series of laptop that I would like to try and confirm with someone. When I turn mine on, there is a high pitched noise that comes out of the laptop. It's extremely high pitched so you might not hear it if you can't detect this frequency. I tracked it down to the little circuit board that connects to the LCD. It stops making this sound after about a minute or so after powering on.
I thought that maybe this board was defective, so I replaced it with one from a donor laptop but it does the same thing.
Has anyone experienced this before? Try turning your laptop on an hold your what above where the speaker area is and see if you can hear it.
I finally re-assembled my PCG-809K and am at the point of starting to put the various IO devices through their paces. I re-applied new thermal paste to the heatsink/fan assembly and am now able to keep the machine on, rather than just quick power on testing.
As a result I can confirm that I don't hear any noise from the screen or inverter. I can hear the FDD motor spin when accessed, the DVD-ROM drive seek at power-on and the cpu fan spin up after a few 10-20 seconds of being powered on (it cuts in and out while the machine is running).
But no noise from screen. Do your models have the 15" 1400x1050 screen? It not, then it's entirely possible that the inverter/controller in my 809K model is a different part without the singing ability...
Also, I replaced the internal 2.5" IDE drive (a 30GB IBM Travelstar) with a 128GB mSATA unit... looks like the BIOS only supports up to 64GB devices, so this one will be getting EZ-Drive ddo installed like the earlier machines.
One other thing... is it possible that the CMOS battery in these later machines only for the RTC? I changed some BIOS settings in mine (without a replacement battery yet installed), and whilst the RTC resets each time (I can live with that), it seemed to retain the changes I had made (disabled devices, changed boot order etc).
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net
I don't remember the screen resolution on mine but it definitely wasn't that high a resolution. It was probably 1024 or 1280. If you're inside the machine again at some point, I'd appreciate it if you photographed the inverter from several angles, so I can see if this the same part as in mine. I think it's at the bottom of the screen assembly, though, and not easily accessible.
I'm uncertain about the CMOS battery retaining configuration. A lot of BIOS retain that data in NVRAM. Maybe that's how this configured here.
Sure, I can do that.
I can state that the 807k and 809k definitely have different screen assemblies, and not just the panels though.
The main back plastic shell (the 'top' of the laptop) is markedly different on the 15" 1400x1050 panel ( i.e thicker) and the bezel around the screen is attached by a different clip and screw arrangement to the smaller screen (6 screws in the side for the 1400 screen, compared to 4 screws under rubber covers for the 1024 screen).
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net
Anyone found a DOS PCMCIA driver for the Ricoh RL5C478 cardbus controller in these models? I'm not having any luck with either ssricoh.exe or sscbri.sys from Cardsoft 5.
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net
I haven't tried to use the PCMCIA slots in my laptop yet.
Try here:
The onboard Ricoh PCMCIA chipset seems to work with SS365SL.exe as found in Cardsoft (via some generic back-compatability mode I suspect).... but it will only work in non-Cardbus mode.
I've not been able to find a working driver for the R5C478 in native Cardbus mode, which means I'm stuck with slower 'Fast Ethernet' devices, rather than full speed. But non-Cardbus devices *do* appear to work just fine.
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net
megatron-uk wrote on 2025-01-23, 12:32:I've not been able to find a working driver for the R5C478 in native Cardbus mode, which means I'm stuck with slower 'Fast Ethernet' devices, rather than full speed. But non-Cardbus devices *do* appear to work just fine.
Try Cardware from https://tssc.de/
lolo799 wrote on 2025-01-23, 13:04:megatron-uk wrote on 2025-01-23, 12:32:I've not been able to find a working driver for the R5C478 in native Cardbus mode, which means I'm stuck with slower 'Fast Ethernet' devices, rather than full speed. But non-Cardbus devices *do* appear to work just fine.
Try Cardware from https://tssc.de/
I did; the most recent one - it locked up after the 'trial' notice and the timer.
Actually... the laptop just died. I was ftp-ing the Win98SE install folder over and the machine just switched itself off. I'm now getting *nothing* from it; just as I did when it first arrived and the 'faulty' power board wouldn't allow it to power on.
It's quite warm... I'll leave it to cool for half an hour and then try again.
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net
I think I have just witnessed a failure of one of these power boards in real time.
Because with the power supply connected and the mains power switched on.....
... it is now completely dead again. Not even the mains standby indicator illuminated.
If this is indeed the case, then I'm not sure I can recommend the use of the VAIO F-xxx series models to anyone if the power board can fail as spontaneously as this - I had about 8 hours of use on this machine since restoring it and putting the replacement power board in. This has got to be conclusive evidence that it is not directly related to battery leakage; there was virtually no corrosion at all on this replacement board.
Wow. That has been quite a journey to get to this point. What a damn shame - it had the potential to be a great DOS/W98 gaming device. I can't justify trying to acquire yet more - possibly broken - power control boards.
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net
Mine died spontaneously as well on my second laptop. I couldn't figure out what was wrong either, but I only checked the passive components and traces at the time. Maybe it's one of the ICs. I thought that it was a fluke at the time. Now it'd like to try replacing some components to try and get to the bottom of it.
There's only so much the can go wrong on a tiny board like that.
Kahenraz wrote on 2025-01-23, 15:12:Mine died spontaneously as well on my second laptop. I couldn't figure out what was wrong either, but I only checked the passive components and traces at the time. Maybe it's one of the ICs. I thought that it was a fluke at the time. Now it'd like to try replacing some components to try and get to the bottom of it.
There's only so much the can go wrong on a tiny board like that.
Could someone with a bench psu see if the laptop starts responding when powered with 18 volts instead of 19.5 volts? Perhaps my oddball PCG-F807K has already failed in the way that yours have. I'd hope we can figure out what's going on with these?
Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-01-23, 18:04:Kahenraz wrote on 2025-01-23, 15:12:Mine died spontaneously as well on my second laptop. I couldn't figure out what was wrong either, but I only checked the passive components and traces at the time. Maybe it's one of the ICs. I thought that it was a fluke at the time. Now it'd like to try replacing some components to try and get to the bottom of it.
There's only so much the can go wrong on a tiny board like that.
Could someone with a bench psu see if the laptop starts responding when powered with 18 volts instead of 19.5 volts? Perhaps my oddball PCG-F807K has already failed in the way that yours have. I'd hope we can figure out what's going on with these?
Unfortunately I don't have a bench/adjustable PSU at present. It's something that is on the wish-list.
Does your F807K show *any* sign of life (any indicators on the lid) with a standard power supply/voltage?
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net
megatron-uk wrote on 2025-01-23, 18:42:Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-01-23, 18:04:Kahenraz wrote on 2025-01-23, 15:12:Mine died spontaneously as well on my second laptop. I couldn't figure out what was wrong either, but I only checked the passive components and traces at the time. Maybe it's one of the ICs. I thought that it was a fluke at the time. Now it'd like to try replacing some components to try and get to the bottom of it.
There's only so much the can go wrong on a tiny board like that.
Could someone with a bench psu see if the laptop starts responding when powered with 18 volts instead of 19.5 volts? Perhaps my oddball PCG-F807K has already failed in the way that yours have. I'd hope we can figure out what's going on with these?
Unfortunately I don't have a bench/adjustable PSU at present. It's something that is on the wish-list.
Does your F807K show *any* sign of life (any indicators on the lid) with a standard power supply/voltage?
Watching the bench psu when I put this one up to 19v, the power LEDs on the laptop do not light and it does not respond to the power button. Very low current consumption.
If a CMOS battery is fitted it will remember this power fault state until the CMOS battery is removed, so this laptop no longer has any RTC battery since the fault state is easy to trigger and pulling out the battery every time is a nuisance.
The laptop is completely non-functional when used with its original power brick.
Strangely I found that when I reduced the voltage to 18.4v the laptop would not go into that power fault state and would run.
Yeah, that sounds very much like what I observe (at least the power LED functionality and that of the power button).
I actually have a CR2032 holder, diode and fresh jst plug on the bench, ready to build up a CMOS battery for this thing, but once I figured out that it only seemed to be the RTC which required the battery, and not general BIOS settings, I didn't bother refitting one.
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net