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The Black Death
Nearly-DOA IA-1

New MessageThe Black Death (modified 0 times) Eric_T
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I've screwed the pooch somewhere.

I found an IA-1 at Wal-Mart for an unmentionably low price, new-in-box. Got it home, cracked the case, grounded the BIOS, life was good. Started up, got into the BIOS on the first try.

Then something happened. The screen died. No picture, no (apparent) backlight, nada. If I pull the power, upon reseating the connector, I get a brief blink of the LEDs from left to right after about a second. Hitting the power key on the keyboard doesn't do (visible) squat. Does anyone have any ideas on what to try next? (Note that I've checked both the smaller and larger connectors going from the board to the panel and neither are loose).

Eric

04-06-2002 10:02:52

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) erroneus
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I've never been an advocate for shorting the CMOS out in the way described by others. When I did mine, I took it all the way apart... well, I left the screen intact, but otherwise all the way apart and moved the jumper. Poof! I was ready to go. No complications. That whole "shorting things" gives me the creeps.

My condolenses to you but WalMart is stupid enough to take it back... so go get another one. :)

04-06-2002 13:08:58

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) Eric_T
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Wow. That's odd. I plugged it in this afternoon and it booted fine. Nevermind. </Litella?

Eric

04-06-2002 18:01:45

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) petejengkol
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one guess: bad connection of pins somewhere....
04-06-2002 19:19:49

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) qDot
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Just curious, how many more did your wal-mart have, and at what price? Might be a good place to direct people that want one.

Kyle

04-07-2002 03:50:38

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) Eric_T
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$60 at the one in Bremerton, WA (near Seattle). Unfortunately, it was the only one there, and I've been looking from time to time - it's the first time I've seen one at any price at that particular store. I've never seen one at two of the other Seattle-area stores (it's not that I'm hanging out at Wal-Mart, it's that I'm looking for these devices specifically).

Actually, though, the Black Death has returned...sorta.

Once I'm in the BIOS, even with an El-Torito'ed CF in the slot (made with Disk Probe per the instructions at http://thinker.falcons2000.com/ia1/w2k-inst.html ), the option of booting from anything other than Floppy Drive A is not available. Maybe I'm just extra-crispy dense, but nothing will change the "Boot From Drive A Floppy: First" line to anything else. The CF looks reasonable (there's files on it according to Windows Explorer, and they look like enough stuff to boot linux), but it just doesn't show.

So, in frustration, I left the BIOS to boot per normal. It complained about invalid CMOS settings, restarted itself, and started loading the MSN stuff. I pulled the power. Now it won't boot again. Shorting the jumper to ground doesn't help - waiting several hours does. So, what appears to be Black Death is just more like a coma.

This leaves me scratching my head; what's the best way to verify that a boot CF is "valid" - ie, should make other options come up in the BIOS and let the IA-1 boot from the CF?

04-07-2002 04:05:24

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) erroneus
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In the past, I have served as a technical support analyst. And it is only because of my experience that I ask this question:

Is there power in your home?

Is there power in your room?

Is there power from the outlet?

Is there ...

04-07-2002 04:44:06

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) Eric_T
Profile
Yes, there's power.

Okay, having continued to dork around with this, and having enabled the other two boot devices by changing a BIOS option to do a full POST) it's like there's a distinct condition where after power is removed, there's a period of time (at least a half hour) where the system will not boot under any circumstances. As an example, having flashed the internal SanDisk with the El Torito image and shutdown (with shutdown -h now), after pulling the power and replacing the external El Torito image with the Midori image, the box refuses to restart. *grumble*. Is this consistent with what other people are experiencing?

Eric, Who Hates Soft-Power-On With A Passion Right Now

04-07-2002 16:06:48

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) keith721
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just a wild-arsed guess, but have you tried replacing the on-board CMOS battery? if it's been sitting in the box at Wally-Mart that long, it might be a problem.
04-08-2002 14:45:30

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) radarman
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My unit did this for a while, and it seemed to be related to CPU temp. Particularly, I would run the tetris emulator for a while, and the system would black screen (with the green light on). I would try to restart, and it wouldn't come alive at all. If I left it unplugged for a few minutes, it would typically come back up. I added a HCF and changed the bus speed back to 66MHz, and it hasn't done it since.

Perhaps if you left the heat sink off, you are experiencing a similar problem? If not, then I haven't the foggiest clue what could be causing it, other than a manufacturing defect.

04-08-2002 18:11:59

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) zxhwk
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As i am new to this tonight since i found one at the flea market for 10 dollars i found that it was already hacked and the original image was removed. this was a bummer as i didnt know what to do so i called compaq and they sent me another one because these have a normal 3 year warranty and learning more as i am now i played with the original one i got at fleamarket and lo and behold i was able to get to the bios without taking it apart and was able to flash it with Midori_3.img and it works fine so i tried the new one the same as the old one and the same thing i was able to get into the bios without taking it apart without having to clear the cmos seems to wotrk good as of this listing but am new to the linix world so learning more as i go so if anyone out there has an image of CE 2.0 or 3.0 pro i would like to have it and load it on this thing.
PS: by the way when compaq sent me this replacement one they didnt ask for any info like credit card or nothing just who i was nothing else so i guess if someone was dishonest they could find a bad one and call compaq tech support and tell them i dont work anymore they will send you another one at no charge and usuially ships next day to you this is new to me of sending stuffs from a company without getting creditcard info as coladeral or something i guess its just good luck then.
10-17-2002 22:54:18

New MessageRE:The Black Death (modified 0 times) radarman
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I have noticed that the IA-1's don't like having their bus speeds modified. I attempted to clock the FSB to 100MHz, given that the memory chips were rated for PC100 operation. Not a chance. The system was terribly unstable at that speed, and often just "hung". I backed it off to 66MHz, and changed the multiplier to get the CPU speed back up. Now, I have a system that runs quite well at 66*6 (~400MHz). In the process, I determined that the temperature is only part of the picture. I had a system that failed with a core temp of ~61degC at 100MHz FSB, but ran happily at ~70degC at 66MHz. I was using a K6-III+ mobile processor with a heatsink/fan combo at the time.

I was afraid it would overheat, and had been using a heatsink/fan - but I got tired of the noise. (I use the IA-1 in my bedroom as a terminal) I measured the temperature with the fan shut down, and discovered that it was well within tolerance for the part, so I replaced the original hardware. Of course, I only use it as an X terminal, so I'm not really stressing the system. Nevertheless, has run 24/7 for months with no problems.

11-11-2002 10:43:57

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