i-Buddie 4 Desknote Review

[muntai]

Thanks a lot awoolf.
I'd be interested in knowing how do you modify the "Toshiba" jack to make it fit on the ECS board. Any pics?
Or do you think www.notebookmechanix.com would be willing to sell me a modified TS71525 jack ready to be soldered on the ECS board? (I'm not in the States but I can have someone in the States buy it, receive it and send it to me later on)
Thanks

 

[peejayess]

So, my four-year old A928 has been starting to randomly reboot on me, and I was wondering if this was a symptom of the common power plug extravaganza or possibly something unrelated.

I've eliminated Windows as an issue, and it isn't heat either, since it's running 10C cooler now that I've opened up the case and cleaned it out. The plug isn't even getting too hot, merely a little warm, and the system has always been stable until now. I was doing something very CPU-intensive at the time, so I suspect I may have done something bad to the CPU, it got up to 65C for quite a long time, but it's probably gotten just as hot before just playing games so it's puzzling that it would have to happen now.

It will run for up to six hours without re-booting, and at other times it will give up while it's booting Windows. High-CPU usage tasks might accelerate the problem but it's rather inconsistant.

Anybody experience anything like this? Are these the first signs of power trouble?

 

[albroswift]

So, my four-year old A928 has been starting to randomly reboot on me, and I was wondering if this was a symptom of the common power plug extravaganza or possibly something unrelated.

I've eliminated Windows as an issue, and it isn't heat either, since it's running 10C cooler now that I've opened up the case and cleaned it out. The plug isn't even getting too hot, merely a little warm, and the system has always been stable until now. I was doing something very CPU-intensive at the time, so I suspect I may have done something bad to the CPU, it got up to 65C for quite a long time, but it's probably gotten just as hot before just playing games so it's puzzling that it would have to happen now.

It will run for up to six hours without re-booting, and at other times it will give up while it's booting Windows. High-CPU usage tasks might accelerate the problem but it's rather inconsistant.

Anybody experience anything like this? Are these the first signs of power trouble?

Probably the jack, but one other thing to check is the battery. if your battery is really low or starting go bad, it can be enough of a draw that when the fan, CPU, HDD are all in high gear, you can run short of power enough to kick a re-boot. I had this happen with a bad battery other day. Of course, if you are not using a battery, forget I said anything... (it is the first sign of the P.O.S. jack)

 

[peejayess]

Ah. Crap.

 

[albroswift]

Ah. Crap.

Inexpensive fix for David, or fix yourself if you are handy with that sort of thing.

 

[jph4088]

SIS upgrade

Does anyone know if it is posible to upgrade the graphics chipset?

 

[awoolf]

Does anyone know if it is posible to upgrade the graphics chipset?

Short answer: No, it's not feasible to replace/upgrade the onboard graphics.

awoolf

 

[ericdeford]

I had put together an ibuddie for my dad. It kept dumping and crashing. I sent it to canada to get fixed and some preventive stuff was corrected, although no problems found. The asian gentleman that fixed it was courteous and prompt on repairs.


What the problem was I had placed the wrong ram type in the computer. I cannot remember which one, but it was a difference between low and high density i think. I switched it out an viola! it ran smooth and no blue screens ever. It runs fine, in fact runs on all day alot, and no melt downs ever. It is about four years old I think now.

 

[ttp]

I received a message that the CMOS battery has to be changed. I removed all the screws from the bottom of the Deskbook, but I could not remove the bottom of the unit. Is there something else that has to be removed to get to the CMOS battery?
TTP

 

[doddel]

see entry # 369 in this thread

 

[ttp]

Thanks for the info.. I think that I'll have the battery changed by a professional and at the same time have a new power plug and jack retrofitted.

 

[doddel]

well, retrofitting the power socket and plug will not be solving anything; them melting are a symptom, but they are not the cause. The cause is the power supply circuit on the motherboard drawing too much current because of poor quality electrolytic capacitors having been used in the power circuitry. The capacitors loose their value after a number of years and the circuit gets unstable. See my earlier posts on how to tackle this.

 

[mullany528]

Need contact info for David Cai for A928 repair.

My A928 had the same problem identified with the burning melting cord. Thanks to this forum and David Cai it is now working the way it should instead of being the door stop that I thought I had ended up with.[/QUOTE=Mullany528] Another sole with an A928 that has heat and video problems. Can you tell me how to contact this David Cai that everyone is impressed with. Me thinks I need his help.

 

[rdtennnent]

David Cai

Mullany asks how to reach him Send him e-mail at (e-mail address removed). He's just repaired and upgraded my A928 (shutdown issues). He's efficient and seems to know how to fix A928 problems.

Bob T.

 

[GLEE]

Another Recommendation for David Cai

I found this forum and emailed David Cai. He responded, immediately. I followed his instructions on sending my desknote to him for repair (which I had never used). He was efficient and professional in handling my queries and sent my desknote back to me repaired within a week's time.

I am a happy camper!

 

[jyjeong]

David is the man!

Hi, I'd like to again recommend very highly of David Cai. Not only he fixed my A928 perfectly, but also he's a good and prompt communicator! I'm 100% recommend him to anyone having problems with desknotes.

JY in Boston

 

[doddel]

LAN interface with all zero mac address

Wanted to share following problem and solution:
When the A928' BIOS ROM is flashed to latest version the SiS900 LAN controller looses its mac address of the LAN interface. You may never notice this as a problem as long as the A928' mac address with all zeroes is the only one on a LAN, but e.g. communication between two A928 i-Buddies with the same problem is not possible via LAN as the 00-00-00-00-00-00 mac addresses then conflict.

The solution:
use the ee.exe program and ee data file as distributed by ECS as part of the fix of the same problem for the k7s5a motherboard. Download the k7s5a_id.exe file, extract it, and follow the directions on how to edit the EE file that gets programmed into EEPROM. The proper mac address (the original one) can be found on a sticker that sits on the top side of the A928 motherboard. This means disassembly I am afraid as the sticker is otherwise not visible.
Perhaps also an address would work in roughly the proper range; I havn't tried that. The mac addresses of A928s I have seen all start with 00-50-EB-xx-xx-xx.
Next hurdle: EE.EXE is a DOS application and the A928 has no floppy drive that could boot into DOS. I solved that by making a bootable CDR on basis of the 'ubcd' package http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/.
Extract the files from the .iso image using e.g. 7-zip and add to the directory dosapps a directory ee that has ee.exe, ee, and startup.bat, the latter can be copied from another dos application directory and adapted.
In the menus section add in the 'others' menu something like ECS-mac-address that points to a others3.cfg menu, which points to the ee directory.
Recreate the .iso image, boot from CDR, execute 'ee.exe ee' and back came the LAN mac address !

 

[albroswift]

And now for somthing completly different...
What the largest monitor anyone has hooked up?
looking at a 22" with 1680X1050 res.
I want to use as extension of 928 screen, not mirror.
Thanks in advance

 

[a928cro]

Hi, first of all this forum is awsome i found out i got soulmates with my a928 troubles. Helped me a lot!

Passed all melting and soldering advanture .. solved that.. thanks to you guys.

Well i have
a928 sis650 pentium 2.4 ghz
amibios released 04/11/2002 s
ref no a928-020411-ot-01-00-ff-ff

when i tried to switch my processor to celeron 2.8
a928 didnt want to boot.. nothing on screen..

i was wondering since in specifications is said support 2.8
how can i get it to work with celeron 2.8?

 

[albroswift]

Hi, first of all this forum is awsome i found out i got soulmates with my a928 troubles. Helped me a lot!

Passed all melting and soldering advanture .. solved that.. thanks to you guys.

Well i have
a928 sis650 pentium 2.4 ghz
amibios released 04/11/2002 s
ref no a928-020411-ot-01-00-ff-ff

when i tried to switch my processor to celeron 2.8
a928 didnt want to boot.. nothing on screen..

i was wondering since in specifications is said support 2.8
how can i get it to work with celeron 2.8?

What is the part# of the 2.8 Celeron?
I am running a 2.8 SL7EY P4 no problems, even clocked up to 3.0 GHz