FrankenLaptop

4 replies [Last post]
Wed, 09/23/2009 - 18:30
sonicviz
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Joined: 09/09/2009

I have a dead Asus Z71V http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2346

I'm sure the onboard Nvidia GeForce Go 6600 graphics card is fried which is why I had to replace it. It's 6 months out of the extended 3 year warranty I had, so was not worth trying to get it fixed. I burnt the original graphics card after one year, but the service peeps at prime pc in aki ended up just moving the hard drive to a new barebones and gave it back to me. Maybe that's why they stopped selling asus;-)

I also removed the hard drive so I can use it in an external 2.5 case for portable storage.

Apart from that...it was not a bad machine!

Can we rebuild it? Stronger? Faster? Better?

or maybe just to working condition and ths can use it as a spare house laptop? Web server or presentation machine, linux hackbox, web browser, or whatever...

Worthwhile project? I guess working second hand computers are a dime a dozen, but it might make an interesting learning project on laptop innards?

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Fri, 09/25/2009 - 22:24
#1
MRE
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Joined: 07/20/2009

raising a laptop from the dead is no easy task... soo... tell us more about what it does/doesnt do...
boot (even if video is out)?
Post test?
no power up whatsoever?

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Mon, 09/28/2009 - 10:58
#2
sonicviz
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Joined: 09/09/2009

Yes, I'm guessing it's a project geared towards the higher end of the skillz spectrum;-)

Win xp has vga safe mode so even if the graphics is fried you can boot into good ole block color low res mode to do some things. At least that's what I found out the first time and remember doing to backup some critical data before I shipped it off. This time it's out of warranty and it was time for machine upgrade anyway. Obviously VGA safe mode really limits what you can do, and I'm not sure what linix offers in this regard.

But I've pulled the hard drive so no OS atm. Everything else afaik worked fine until the graphics kaput.

I have a real suspicion that you will see a lot of the new unibody macbook pro's have graphics chip burnout issues after a solid year or two of use, especially for power users doing a lot of 3d app work and not cooling their machines as much as possible. I'm on my 3rd cooling pad test now.

Have two slightly used laptop cooling pads going for good discount if anybody interested:
Elecom SX-CLO7SV http://tinyurl.com/ya8a62r new 3564yen sell for 3000yen
Zalman ZM-NC2000 http://tinyurl.com/yecu7xx new 7800yen sell for 5500K yen

Both good coolers for general laptop use, just that the unibody MBP's have a very specific heatspot that needs quite directed cooling flow. Maybe I should post these somewhere...

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Mon, 09/28/2009 - 22:37
#3
MRE
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Joined: 07/20/2009

maybe you should hack/re-engineer the laptop. ;)

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Tue, 09/29/2009 - 08:32
#4
sonicviz
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Joined: 09/09/2009

it's ok, gomi guy is happy to take it.

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