kiwa

kiwa, 5 days ago

@Legion495 we do it once a year, it's maintenance to our systems, i don't mind because it's good extra money

kiwa, 5 days ago

Mine is sleeping 😴

kiwa, 5 days ago

That's better

kiwa, 5 days ago

I'm still having data corruption sometimes but I noticed a damaged resistor network I'll try to replace that

kiwa, 5 days ago

i say it because it's the second one i see with very very brittle

kiwa, 5 days ago

@paulrickards ok so I opened it and it has two caps inside, looks like I replaced one, probably was leaking.

It powered just fine with the external power supply (I used a 5v source, center positive)

I don't want to fully remove the motherboard but I don't think there are caps on the other side.

Oh, there are two screws hidden under the pencil holder, and you need to be very careful because that LSI chip looks very fragile

If you need some measurements or something just ask me 👌

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kiwa, 5 days ago

@paulrickards oh and there are several "solid" caps around the board, not on this specific device but i have seem them short and do weird stuff.

and the device boots without the battery cover/battery holder on the "replace Main" position

i think that's all i can't think about

kiwa, 5 days ago

@paulrickards weird, does it change at all? if you try to do a reset or something?

kiwa, 5 days ago

maybe you will need to remove the mobo and check the lcd connection, i think it's probably under this metal piece. maybe some capacitor goo leaked there or maybe it's just dirty

kiwa, 5 days ago

@paulrickards let me check i still have mine disassembled

kiwa, 5 days ago

@paulrickards

What I did was remove all the screws, then move these tabs that hold the battery springs, just carefully lift from there and from the PCMCIA eject button side, the board should lift easily

As you can see it separates the "core" from the top case so if you need you can remove the screen

The screen is connected with a ribbon cable, check there.

There is also a small 3.3 35v cap, on mine looks fine but I would replace it at some point

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kiwa, 5 days ago

@paulrickards ouch, but it still looks connected, can you check if they are shorted to each other, maybe it's ok? Otherwise I know everything is very small and fragile but I would try to bend them back with a very sharp thin tool

kiwa, 5 days ago

@paulrickards ah that's disappointing, but it's good that they are not shorted, at least in the photo it looks like they are properly connected so that's good.

i'm still wondering were the issue could be then, maybe there is a trace damaged somewhere

kiwa, 4 days ago (edited 4 days ago)

@paulrickards ah but seeing it like that, yeah it looks like it was the screen, I was suspecting some sort of contrast regulation issue but maybe the panel itself seems to be damaged, but it's a really weird failure pattern

kiwa, 4 days ago

@paulrickards yeah but it's software, there is a small potentiometer I think on the motherboard but I'm not sure what it does