First post, by Lukeno94
So, some of you may know that I bought a pair of Advent 7094 laptops from eBay for £15.50. They both worked, but needed various parts. Most of the project won't be done for a month and a half due to impending exams, but I have done a few bits and pieces already.
The Advent 7094 was a PC World/Dixons/Currys own-brand rebadge of the ECS 321, and used a Celeron M 370 CPU with a SIS 661GX chipset. Both of mine were built in mid-2006, so they were very much budget machines and behind-the-times for that year. They left the factory with 256 MB of RAM, a 40 GB hard drive and a DVD-RW drive.
The tops of both laptops - the one I intend to save is on the left. The one on the right is in rough shape - it has a lot more cosmetic issues with the top, for example, and you can clearly see the broken hinge. Both are missing screws, although ironically it is the nicer one that misses the most. The top casing of the screen is genuinely metal.
The base of the two machines. Both are fairly similar in condition, although the rougher example had more panels and the dead battery fitted - I've transferred those across, and also fitted the missing RAM cover. (I did crack this by fitting a too-big screw, oops) Neither machine has a hard drive, and only the nicer one has any memory - a 256 MB DDR stick that I fitted.
Here is the one I've opted to save. I've fixed the keyboard - it had a missing key (which I pilfered from the other machine), and half of the two-part key support mechanism was missing - I rebuilt that using the missing bit from the other system. That was a very fiddly job, but it works perfectly, and you'd never know which key was missing unless you saw the eBay advert photos! The keys don't show much wear and tear, nor does the trackpad - I don't know if this works yet.
Here is the parts machine. It has a lot more sticker residue, is missing a lot of keys and parts of the key support mechanism. There's also a small crack in the top part of the internal area - not that you can see it on these photos.
The better machine needs a new CMOS battery, but as you can see, it powers up fine and shows the DVD-RW drive (which works perfectly, from what I can tell). The screen is in perfect condition.
And here is the BIOS setup screen.
Stay tuned for some more pictures when I actually begin to get serious with this project - and an Apple Powerbook G3 project thread as well! Sorry for the lighting, that's the disadvantage of this Uni flat.