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Help with troubleshooting a California Access 2700T (Possibly Clevo 2700T)

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First post, by xDarkBonEx

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Hello!

It's my first post on this forum so please excuse me for any mistakes 😀.

I recently bought a laptop mentioned in the topic. I've installed Windows 98SE on it and then I started cleaning it.

After I was done I assembled it and then the issues started. After probably 5-10 minutes after cold start, the screen blinks for a second or two and then it starts showing artifacts, starts showing gibberish.

I thought the chipset itself starts overheating, so I added small heatsink to check if it is true. Indeed the notebook works longer but the issue is still the same.

Could it be that during cleaning I may have flexed the board in a wrong way and possibly one of the solder balls broke underneath the chipset?

Here's the full specs for better understanding:
Chipset: SiS630ST
CPU: Celeron 933mhz
RAM: 2 sticks of 128mb PC133

I hope someone had this kind of issue 😀

Reply 1 of 5, by EduBat

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Could be, but it could also be the RAM. Try to clean the contacts and re-install it.

Reply 2 of 5, by rasz_pl

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Picture of those artifacts? have you checked if same artefacts are on VGA output or only LCD?

https://github.com/raszpl/sigrok-disk FM/MFM/RLL decoder
https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module (AT&T Globalyst)
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 ram board
https://github.com/raszpl/440BX Reference Design adapted to Kicad

Reply 3 of 5, by xDarkBonEx

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EduBat wrote on 2026-04-16, 21:12:

Could be, but it could also be the RAM. Try to clean the contacts and re-install it.

I've cleaned the contacts and tried putting one and turning on the computer, and the same with second. One of the sticks showed 58mb at first but after reseating it showed 128mb. I also tried running memtest but it started artifacting again and froze.

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-04-17, 01:15:

Picture of those artifacts? have you checked if same artefacts are on VGA output or only LCD?

Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of it and I've taken out the motherboard to inspect it, I'll try putting it together later today to check if the issue is still there.
As for external display, I've checked it it does not show artifacts but after 5 minutes or so the screen blanks, comes up and everything freezes.

Reply 4 of 5, by xDarkBonEx

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Unfortunately for those interested the laptop doesn't turn on after assembly, I don't know what is going on so I think I will just trash it.

Reply 5 of 5, by xDarkBonEx

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Update: I've straightened the CPU pins and those in the socket and laptop turned on, now however only one RAM module is visible.

Even with two modules inserted and only one visible I've decided to test if it still will crash and to my surprise it didn't, I've played Doom 2 for about 30 minutes and everything was fine.

Could it be a bad contact in one of the Ram slots? Or is something still not contacting properly on the CPU side?

I will try to run memtest and try to test whether one module died or something.

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