U703 / U709 Rebuild

mrblur wrote:Iago when playing games on that laptop make sure you run your fans at full throttle. "...throttle up...."

on the NP9262 it was fn+f3(f1 or f2).

Thanks, but it has not been necessary even running a system hog like The Witcher 2. The unit throttles up the fans when it needs it, and back down again when it does not -- and it does so accurately, at least so far. The pause thing was the only time so far that it has ever started to heat up (and the fans kicked in automatically anyway.) Good platform.

East wrote:Interesting. Maybe I will make one of those my next project. Right now I am still working on the i222. I think I managed to secure a screen, Only a couple of more hours will say for sure.

These rugged style machine are more use to what I am use to working on, These are new to me, but they look like they are built to last and stand up to military drop specs.

Clevo makes some of the best designed laptops I have ever seen. Working on them is never a hassle and they usually stick to 2 screw lengths. The only downside is the earlier ones had a lot of design flaws. They seem to have finally gotten everything ironed out though because you almost never see d900c and later machines getting parted out.

The non-standard keyboard layouts seems to be the primary beef that most reviewers have with Clevo right now. I can deal with it.

the beef I had with the NP9262 was the location of the USB ports. They were at the right of the laptop so when gaming the mouse would hit all the USB cables every so often...

Overall I think you did well. Even if the T board turns out to be bad you got 2 video cards and a working K board plus a bunch of misc for $200.

Nothing left to do now except to geterdun.

To dissemble the D900 series.

Start by removing the battery
push the tabs up near the top of the keyboard. This will release the keyboard, disconnect it and set it aside
now remove the metal heat spreader plate then the hinge covers
next disconnect the lcd.
Look at the back of the laptop and remove the 2 silver screws by the hinges
flip the laptop upside down and remove the 2 hinge screws from the bottom
lift the lcd assembly off and set it aside
with the keyboard out you should see about 4 screws that hold the palm rest to the base plastic, remove them and set them aside
now look where the lcd use to sit. you will see approx 6 silver screws. remove and set those aside as well
now look at the ports. remove the 4 screws from around them as well
flip the laptop over and remove the hard drives. you will find 2 screws under their that need to be removed as well
now remove the cpu cover. remove the heatsink and the 2 silver screws hiding in their as well
now remove all of the remaining screws from the bottom of the laptop (including the 2 hiding under where the battery normally goes)
flip the base back over and disconnect the power button board, touch pad cable and both speaker wires.
you should now be able to lift off the palm rest and set it aside.
There are 2 screws by the front edge of the motherboard that hold it into the base plastics remove these
Remove the front lcd cable for the clock/audio dj board
now disconnect the other 2 speakers and media card reader cable.
now look on the upper left side of the laptop, under a piece of black tape you will find 2 more connectors that go to the usb daughter board that need to be disconnected
disconnect the fans and subwoofer and you should now be able to remove the motherboard from the base plastics.

From memory I don't think thats too bad

mrblur wrote:the beef I had with the NP9262 was the location of the USB ports. They were at the right of the laptop so when gaming the mouse would hit all the USB cables every so often...

One of the narrow drawbacks I can think of with placements on the x7200: the headphone jack is on the right hand side toward the front of the unit (as are the other audio jacks as well) -- right where I put my external mouse, so you have to be careful with the cords.

I got half of the computers I wanted to list on eBay finished and listed. So I think I will drop my new Robotech movie in while working on the voodoo tonight. I ordered two thermal pads off ebay. They don't look too bad and the seller answered me with in a day. http://myworld.ebay.com/daoshen0449 Is the seller I got them from. Full 4" x 4" got two different thermal ratings and thicknesses. I will let you guys know how it goes when I load a OS on them and test them out.

What are you building it as T or K? (Insert iMaxx sailor moon joke here)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130590525283&viewitem=&sspagename=ADME%3AB%3ASS%3AMOTORS%3A1123&autorefresh=true

voodoo f50 rage on ebay

And a fine example at that. Were you planning on bidding?

Nice case, but that is going to be a lot of work to modernize. Those heat pipes scared me away from one before.

I have first bid right now.

I was considering bidding on it but I am also thinking the same thing about the heat pipes.

Also I forgot last night. While it is technically correct to call it a rage f50 it is better known as what it was marketed for the majority of its life, The Voodoo Eden.

Oh and I asked:

Hi, Is the heatblock for the original video card included?

Thanks

And I received this response:

nope, we only have the heatblocks you can see in the picture.
Thanks

Despite the case being out of production a replacement heatblock may still be able to be ordered from zalman.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Zalman-ZM80D-HP-Heatsink-Cooling-Pipes-/260866435839?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cbcd9eaff

Something like that for the video card? I going to do some more research on it later today.

Nope, The original cooler utilized the case's frame and surface area to displace the heat.

This looks like it could be a good deal on a envy 133, Replace the hdd with a new ssd and its good to go:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Voodoo-Envy-133-SPARES-REPAIRS-ULTRA-RARE-/320778969535?pt=UK_Computing_Laptops_EH&hash=item4aafeaa1bf

I looked at that too, but most 133's I have seen once the bidding started the price went north quick. Got it book marked just in case. Once I get rid of this stack of toughbooks I will be able to do more. Then I will be back to the normal, cars and looking for voodoo's lol.

I just remembered. If you win the eden the motherboard it originally came with is very finicky about which ram is used so if you look to keep the original motherboard and upgrade the system you will likely run into problems.

Also that eden is missing the original casters... I will post a photo of what its suppose to look like.

I think I may got a little over 200 on this one since it seems to have so much missing, so if it goes higher than that I will just have to wait and see what turns up.

I was looking at it too, looks like a mess to work could be cool if you can get it to work I have motherboard for it too, I just cant remember where I put the memory oh well.

Btw this is what the vga block looks like



As you can see there appears to be another panel missing as well that goes around the io shield area.

It would be hard to build as anything other then a socket 939 system because the case originally came with different hardware for different sockets. I guess you could probably squeeze an am3 build out of it though, Although heat would be a concern. I guess if you didn't care about it being TNN you could just put a conventional cpu cooler and leave the stock vga cooler on it or just run a water loop. Being TNN there are not many places to put a radiator though.

Actually I was looking further into it and that case is missing more then I ever thought. Here is what its suspose to look like





No actually I take that back, on closer inspection the TNN-500A was made without any of those panels, The more expensive TNN-500AF came with them.

Oh yea east, need any parts for you idol? http://www.ebay.com/itm/250914701733?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

On I finally got a chance to play more with the T and K today. The T model will boot, does't see either of it's dvd drives installed even tried a live Ubuntu cd and won't see a harddrive installed. The lights flash and it spins up on the dvd drive but nothing else. I seen the option for USB CDD in bios and have it enabled in the ft, but it won't see it either. The K model will see it's one dvd drive and when I got it in I put a harddrive in it and it seen it, but now nothing. Time to dig in deeper on them, thank you East for your advice on this. I am hoping even if there is a bad raid controller on the K model I can get a harddrive adapter for the extra dvd drive slot and just boot from it, Will have to see if it can do that.

It sounds like you just have a bad hdd cable. Do you have a spare to try?

I also had a problem with my k seeing the raid controller when I first got it. Clearing then reflashing the bios fixed the issue for me.

Does the T see the raid controller? (there should be a promise raid interrupt screen, post screen -> promise raid -> post screen -> boot) (The K does not have this as its raid is integrated into the south bridge) If you are seeing this you can try swapping the optical drive daughter board with the one off of the cooked 5.2 and see if it detects the optical drives.

Also make sure your hard drive is plugged into the end of the cable not the middle. Depending on what drive configuration you are playing with if you are using ide a jumper will be necessary for the system to detect the 2nd drive on the channel as slave. Just refer to the labels on the drives.

Those sound like the infamous v6.1 problems though. If you are going to stick with intel get a v6.2s