• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

messing with an old laptop

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

twoeyes

Member
Joined
Sep 21, 2005
Well I had an old P3 850MHZ laptop laying in my room doing nothing and the case was messed up pretty bad (cracked in a lot of places, especially the casing around the LCD) so I thought i'd try to dismantle the entire thing and get it to run without the case. I took everythign out after much toil and unscrewing, testing periodically along the way to make sure things worked ok. I got it out all the way and for some reason it isnt working properly... I got it to work once (no idea why it worked that one time, I just tried an external monitor and hit the keyboard shortcut to change display divices a couple times) but since it hasnt worked correctly. When I hit the power button it starts up, CPU fan runs, hard drive is working, but the LCD does not display anything and i cant get anything to work. If I hit the function key the status LCD displays it, so that is at least working. I have noticed however these small metal pin like things that are pushed down and come into contact with another metal piece (its hard to explain, i'll try to get some pics hopefully) they're stationed around key parts as well. There are 4 around the GPU, and they're also dotted around the side. There are also a couple around the RAM on the underside of the board. Do these need to be pushed in somehow for it to boot?

Any ideas would be helpful... Specs:

Pentium III 850MHz socket 370
256MB SDR133 RAM (oddly enough only 1 stick of 128MB as i can see, but it appears underneith of the stick that 128MB is built in)
DVD-ROM drive
Firewire, 2x USB 1.1 ports
VGA, Svideo out
Floppy drive
18GB hard drive
integrated S3 Twister graphics (32MB)

The system is pretty old but still has a few nice features like firewire and DVD capabilities. Obviously this isnt a vital project just something fun I've been trying.
 
Back