The E-Machines version of Groundhog Day?
I've had a surreal last 10 days.......
10 days ago, customer brought in an E-machine, no boot. P4 2.8mhz, 256mb RAM, XP Home and just 3 months out of warranty. Probably just the power supply I thought (as I tend to get at least a couple of these every month).
Popped it on the bench & jump started it from my test supply, booted immediately, easy one I thought, - NOT!!! When I shut it down to install a new psu, it did not shut down at all correctly, pulsing on & off about twice a second!
Pulled the power to avoid blowing up my test supply, then carried out all the usual tests, jump started it again with a brand new (Antec) supply (to test my test supply), swapped out RAM, cpu, cleared BIOS, changed BIOS battery. No BIOS flash available (or anything else come to that) on the useless E-machines site, neither was any available on either the Trigem or "unnofficial" E-machines sites or I would have done that as well, all to no avail. Decided to replace the motherboard.
Of course this was not an easy option. I wouldn't begin to guess where to source an original board (Trigem Alaska3), plus the case being very much on the small side and micro ATX socket 478 boards not being that easy to find these days, also the moulded plugs that E-macines use for audio, usb etc. but I did find in my meagre stock of mobos an Asrock P4VM800 which would fit so I fitted it, along with a decent psu. Luckily the moulded plugs all fitted as they should despite the board being completely different!
A quick repair install later (Asrock = VIA chipset; Trigem = Intel) and all was well and customer satisfied, albeit £90 poorer (motherboard, 400w psu + labour). I ordered a replacement board.
Customer reports that it runs better now than it ever has!
Two days later an almost identical machine arrives, this time a 2.7 Celeron with 512mb RAM. Also only a few months out of warranty. The same Trigem Alaska3 board was fitted to this one. The machine exhibited exactly the same fault under test except that this one would not load Windows, rebooting at the splash screen.
When the replacement Asrock board arrived I repaired this one as above, ordered another 2 Asrocks, and after fdisking and a full reinstall of Windows (as the file system was so corrupted the XP disc would not recognise it to do a repair install), returned it to the customer....
B*gg*r me if another one did'nt arrive yesterday, you guessed it, exactly the same. (slightly older, Celeron 2.2 128mb RAM). This one too has the Trigem Alaska3 and fortunately did boot correctly (albeit slowly) on test. Customer has asked me to up the RAM to 512 whilst it's here.
The on / off pulsing on all these machines was so severe that I would not expect even a quality power supply to last for long, let alone a c*appy E-machines one. Unless the boards all failed because of the c*appy power supply. All 3 boards look fine, no bulging or leaking caps or burns anywhere.
What came first? the chicken or the egg? - your guess is as good as mine!:devil:
Anyone else seen this?
Getting the hang of these now..... When the new boards arrive Monday I'll repair this one.
I'm beginning to feel a little like Bill Murray!!!
John:confused:
