Chris H
master of boobies
Someone brought me this laptop, it had been sat not working for years, it was going to the bin and I was asked if I wanted it. So I said yes.
It had no battery or memory but the screen was undamaged and a charger was included.
A hard drive was there tested it and it was knackered wouldn't even test, sounded like a hammer drill.
So I found a spare hard drive and some memory and it started up, ran very hot and slow.
So I pulled it apart. I suspected as usual the thing wasn't assembled correctly. For whatever reason most laptops I repair seem to have never had the cooling pads foil/clear plastic removed thus is never actually works properly and over heats.
This is the motherboard out of the laptop
Heatsink assembly removed
Heatsink itself and what a surprise both the GPU and CPU contact pads still have the foil on them. Ridiculous.
This is the foil peeled back, this should have been pulled off before the heatsink assembly was fitted at the factory
So clean the heatsink off and get some decent paste at the ready, note the heatsink fins are in the fan shroud as usual these were almost clogged solid with dust/hair/whatever
The GPU and CPU cleaned off then Arctic Silver 5 applied to them.
I then reassembled the laptop and tested it out. Much better temps much lower and completely stable over 36 hours.
So brought back from the dead. For nothing essentially.
I then upped the ram to 1.5 GB's (it was what I had/cheap) and I also replaced the processor from an archaic Celeron M 410 (1.46 GHz with a 533 MHz FSB 1mb cache) to a Pentium Dual Core T2080 (1.73 GHz 533MHz FSB 1mb cache).
This upped the performance considerably. I wasn't sure if the dual core would work so I got the cheapest processor on ebay to test it, of course now I wish I spent more on a faster one.
Anyway a free laptop, and less than £10 spent on upgrading it has provided a fully functional laptop, yeah a battery would be nice and I'll hold out for a cheap on then probably hack the battery pack.
I am tempted to actually try a Core 2 Duo in it to see if that works, if so great. If not I will look for a faster Pentium Dual Core.
Its only used for net surfing and looking at some documents if needed so its running Linux Mint 12.
So if you get offered cheap pc's/laptops take them in and chances are its an easy fix.
It had no battery or memory but the screen was undamaged and a charger was included.
A hard drive was there tested it and it was knackered wouldn't even test, sounded like a hammer drill.
So I found a spare hard drive and some memory and it started up, ran very hot and slow.
So I pulled it apart. I suspected as usual the thing wasn't assembled correctly. For whatever reason most laptops I repair seem to have never had the cooling pads foil/clear plastic removed thus is never actually works properly and over heats.
This is the motherboard out of the laptop
Heatsink assembly removed
Heatsink itself and what a surprise both the GPU and CPU contact pads still have the foil on them. Ridiculous.
This is the foil peeled back, this should have been pulled off before the heatsink assembly was fitted at the factory
So clean the heatsink off and get some decent paste at the ready, note the heatsink fins are in the fan shroud as usual these were almost clogged solid with dust/hair/whatever
The GPU and CPU cleaned off then Arctic Silver 5 applied to them.
I then reassembled the laptop and tested it out. Much better temps much lower and completely stable over 36 hours.
So brought back from the dead. For nothing essentially.
I then upped the ram to 1.5 GB's (it was what I had/cheap) and I also replaced the processor from an archaic Celeron M 410 (1.46 GHz with a 533 MHz FSB 1mb cache) to a Pentium Dual Core T2080 (1.73 GHz 533MHz FSB 1mb cache).
This upped the performance considerably. I wasn't sure if the dual core would work so I got the cheapest processor on ebay to test it, of course now I wish I spent more on a faster one.
Anyway a free laptop, and less than £10 spent on upgrading it has provided a fully functional laptop, yeah a battery would be nice and I'll hold out for a cheap on then probably hack the battery pack.
I am tempted to actually try a Core 2 Duo in it to see if that works, if so great. If not I will look for a faster Pentium Dual Core.
Its only used for net surfing and looking at some documents if needed so its running Linux Mint 12.
So if you get offered cheap pc's/laptops take them in and chances are its an easy fix.
