Anonymous Freak
Well-known member
Well, my Portable is back to its old tricks: Power on, chime, die. Doesn't matter what I unplug from the logic board, I can't even get it to do what it did yesterday (power up, spin up HD, then sit with garbage on the screen until I unplug power.) One thing I did figure out in my messing around is that one of my PB100-series power bricks is dead. Hrm... I wonder...
So, I put it back, and decided to make one last go at the PB100. With another brick, it powers on! Powered on, took a *VERY* long time for the hard drive to even start to spin up, and sat with a blinking ? floppy. Crap. Hook up a floppy drive, and something seems wrong. When I put in a floppy, it sounds as if it is spinning too slowly, sits for a moment, then ejects the floppy.
So I hooked up another drive, same thing. Shoot. Next step: optical drive! I connected the SCSI to my PowerCD, then realized I have two PB100-series power bricks, but only one works. So I dug out my Portable power brick, and apparently it has enough juice to power up the PowerCD. But..... No dice. While it powers up, the PowerCD doesn't sound like it's spinning the disc fast enough, then it gives up.
I decide to try one last reboot to boot from the PowerCD. Yay! I see boot progress! But wait... I have a 7.5.3 CD in there, but it's booting to 7.1.. The hard drive has returned to life!
So I now have a functional PB100 again. Still has a dead battery, and the screen is still screwed up. But it powers up at least. Here are a couple pictures of the screen. Those pink dots are visible even when the system is powered off. It is not just ink on the screen, it is definitely "inside" the screen. But it also doesn't match up 1:1 with pixels (as you can see in the closeup,) so I'm not entirely sure what's going on. There is no obvious physical damage to the screen, but based on the pattern, I'm guessing somebody shot a BB gun at it or similar, and caused the underlying liquid crystal layer to break. (Sorry for the big pictures.)
So, I put it back, and decided to make one last go at the PB100. With another brick, it powers on! Powered on, took a *VERY* long time for the hard drive to even start to spin up, and sat with a blinking ? floppy. Crap. Hook up a floppy drive, and something seems wrong. When I put in a floppy, it sounds as if it is spinning too slowly, sits for a moment, then ejects the floppy.
So I hooked up another drive, same thing. Shoot. Next step: optical drive! I connected the SCSI to my PowerCD, then realized I have two PB100-series power bricks, but only one works. So I dug out my Portable power brick, and apparently it has enough juice to power up the PowerCD. But..... No dice. While it powers up, the PowerCD doesn't sound like it's spinning the disc fast enough, then it gives up.
I decide to try one last reboot to boot from the PowerCD. Yay! I see boot progress! But wait... I have a 7.5.3 CD in there, but it's booting to 7.1.. The hard drive has returned to life!
So I now have a functional PB100 again. Still has a dead battery, and the screen is still screwed up. But it powers up at least. Here are a couple pictures of the screen. Those pink dots are visible even when the system is powered off. It is not just ink on the screen, it is definitely "inside" the screen. But it also doesn't match up 1:1 with pixels (as you can see in the closeup,) so I'm not entirely sure what's going on. There is no obvious physical damage to the screen, but based on the pattern, I'm guessing somebody shot a BB gun at it or similar, and caused the underlying liquid crystal layer to break. (Sorry for the big pictures.)
Unless you feel adventurous and strip down the screen (if you have nothing to lose), I'd look out for a dead PB100 with good screen and do the switch one day.
