Posts by whipaway

Does anyone make a multiformat DVD drive ( DVD+/-R, +/-RW) for laptops?
The ones that I have seen are mostly only for -R/RW media. I am looking for an internal drive as opposed the the external USB/Firewire models that are available on the market.
Ant help will be appreciated!
Whipaway

try the user forums on Dell's website, the guys there can cross-reference the part#s to which models they fit.

Here's hoping everyone has a happy, healthy and safe New Year!

sounds like there is no red and blue output from the card. You can try to scope the pins to see if the signals are there or not.

What has happened is either the knurls on the shaft that go into the cast Al frame of the LCD screen have worn the mating hole smooth or the holes themselves have split. If your laptop is one of the Compaq models with the removable hinge caps, take them off and you will see what is happening. A solution is to epoxy the shaft into the frame.

What kind of sounds? A sequence of beeps? Long and short beeps? If so, this will help to diagnose the problem.

Maybe you have dust on the optics of the drive. A blast of compressed air may be the solution to your problem. If not, there are many brands of drives available that will suit your needs.

Well, you have eliminated the KB as the problem, this leads me to believe that the problem is on the MB. Did you get extended warranty?

Happy Birthday Dani!

>>and i found a raptor 10,000 rpm scsi hard drive<<
He stated in his post that it was a scsi drive,so I replied based on that info.

But I think such an error would show up BEFORE the printer would bother to pick up the paper, also it should have found that problem upon powerup when cleaning the jets

Do you get the same error without any paper in the tray?
I have a feeling that the printer is not detecting that it has picked up the paper. You said that ink was leaking out all over the connectors. Maybe ink is clogging up the paper detect sensor, preventing it from working correctly?

You will need a scsi interface card for your mb.
Adaptec and others have such an interface card that will suit your needs.

Maybe your version of ecdc does not support DVDs if you have 5, then you need 6
look here:
http://www.roxio.com/en/products/ecdc/why_upgrade.jhtml;jsessionid=GN40DH3S11LU5LAQAMHCM4VMCACAYIV0

In Tokyo, Japan's space agency announced the Kodama communications satellite malfunctioned after being affected by the flare. The agency said it was temporarily shut down and would be reactivated after the solar storm subsided.

Using the Square Law formula, and the dissipation that would occur renders this flare as just a mere annoyance, rather than anything serious.

maybe the tactile pushbutton switch has become inoperative. You can probably snatch one of those out of an old VCR and solder it up into the monitor.

Its a solar flare, not an EMP.
There is nothing in the article warning about the ability of the storm to fry computers.
The charged particles at most will only disturb electromagnetic fields.

Infrared LEDS and sensors might be a less costly alternative that modifying an existing product

DVD REGION KILLER would have allowed you to view all of the various region DVDs without you having to reflash your drive.
http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/3/7/3-7-18.shtml

Does the imprint repeat itself? If so, you might have a scratch on the drum or debris on one of the rollers. If you have a sheet with two such marks, roll up the paper until the marks meet, and that is the diameter of the roller ( or drum ) that is giving the problem. Usually the diameters of the varoius rollers are different, and this will tell you which roller needs cleaning. If it is the drum, that you need a new cartridge, which will give you a new drum.
As far as the crease: if the paper cants as it goes in, you might get a crease. make sure the paper feeds evenly into the printer, and that one side is not being pulled in 'faster' than the other side. There are products on the market called 'rubber rejuvinator' or some such name that will restore the friction to rollers so that they feed the paper properly.

I think that's a good deal, even with the circle. Maybe you shold search eBay for a parts unit with a good LCD of the same model laptop. that way you will have spares of other parts as well.

If you are brave enough, you can open up the monitor and try reseating the PC board that is on the neck of the CRT (Be careful) Sometimes corrosion can build up on the pins of the CRT and you will get funny colours on the display. Reseating the PCB will 'wipe' the contacts a wee bit, restore contact and hopefully the proper colours will return.

Usually you would reseat the PCB by moving it back and forth / up and down whilst it is seated on the CRT. For this, wear rubber gloves. I would not try to reseat using a screwdriver.
For those who are not brave: wear the gloves and give it a whirl. If it works, then GREAT! You have saved the cost of a new monitor or a trip to the repair shop. If not, then nothing lost.

Who is the mfr. of the replacement drive? Could it be that if the drive is not Toshiba, the bios reports an error?

I have seen this problem before, and my opinion is that it is the video card. The memory on the card is starting to go bad.

If you are brave enough, you can open up the monitor and try reseating the PC board that is on the neck of the CRT (Be careful) Sometimes corrosion can build up on the pins of the CRT and you will get funny colours on the display. Reseating the PCB will 'wipe' the contacts a wee bit, restore contact and hopefully the proper colours will return.

If degauss cures it, then a magnetic field is present somewhere in the vicinity. Did you get new speakers, or moved them around recently? Sometimes the magnetic field generated by the speaker's magnet cause the problems you describe.

I feel that the power supply is trying to start up, detects the short, and then shuts down. This cycle will be repeated forever, thus you see the blinking LED. Try disconnecting one thing at a time from the power supply: HD, CD-ROM drive, floppy, and see if there is any change.

You will need to open up the power supply. There might be an internal fuse inside the power supply. The green light probably means that the supply is receiving AC input, but there might be a fuse further down the path that is open, thus the supply does nothing.

Are you using the correct type of media for the drive? For example, are you trying to use DVD+R media whilst the drive only accepts DVD-R media?

There might be an internal fuse, but chances are that as soon as you replace it, it will blow again. This is your opportunity to get one of those new flat screen monitors :-)

Can't you use System.out.println somehow?

I have seen reports that certain brands of fabric softener will help to rapidly dissipate the static charge on the CRT. Maybe those sprays that eliminate clothing static will work, too?

So now the computer is at least booting up with the drive connected? The CD being in the drive would make no difference. The fact that the computer acts as if there is no HD means that the jumpers on the drive for master/slave are probably misconfigured. I usually have the HD as master on IDE1 and the CD as master on IDE2. Try this and see what happens.

Need more info: What does the flashing amber lite signify?

If you are comfortable working around this type of stuff, see if the spindle and stepper motors are turning freely and not binding.

I have seen this happen in older homes where there is a refrigerator on the same line as the computer. As the refrigerator's compressor cycles on and off, the CRT screen will shrink and then pop back to the correct size. If this has just started to happen, and you do find out that the refrig is on the same line, it might mean the fridge compressor is going bad.

It appears that there is a short on the PCB somewhere. If you have a variable DC power supply, you could inject the 12 or 5 v to the appropriate pins and see which one is giving the trouble, and then troubleshoot from there. Unless you are able to troubleshoot down to the component level, I would say throw it in the garbage and buy a new one.

Connect just the power cable to the drive, and not the IDE cable, and see if the computer boots. If not, then there is a short on either the +5v or the +12v lines in the drive. The computer power supply sees this short and will not power up the system.

Check out http://home.comcast.net/~stonent/screenfix.htm

for info on how to replace the backlight yourself.

Sounds like a short: the power supply is trying to start up, it then detects an overload and then shuts down. This cycle will then repeat. I would open up the computer and check to see if the ribbon cables that interconnect the floppy, hd, keyboard, touchpad, etc are fully seated or maybe installed backwards.
Could also be the other way around: The power supply is not detecting enough of a load and shutting down then recycling.

Thanks for the info & the links.

YUP, I was gonna same the same thing: Get WinXP.
BTW, what kind of error messages are you getting?

Fdisk, then format your HD, then you should be able to put a fresh install of Win 98 onto the HD

Maybe you did not 'close' the DVD after you were finished making it?
DVD-Rs play fine in my Dell laptop. I don't know what kind of Dell you have, but I have an old Powerspec with a DVD drive, that I bought back in 1999, and that plays DVD-Rs fine as well. Hopefully if your computer is newer than this, it *should play the DVD-R.

REM those statements out because the computer is still looking for the old Matsushita drive that used to be there. WIN will find the new drive fine without those statements.

REM out all references to the CD ROM drive in config.sys and autoexec.bat, and try rebooting

You might be able to run Win3.1... I ran it on a PS/2 30-286 w/ 1M of ram & 20M HD, and was be to do some simple tasks using this configuration.

Who is the MFR of the computer? Let us know so that we all don't go out and buy that brand... if all the MRF can say is that it is not anything IN the computer...Then what OUTSIDE of the computer could cause this to happen?

Maybe the problem is in the phone line. Maybe the impedance is too low, or there is noise on the line. You should call the phone company and have them test the line for you.

I had the same problem with a BestData modem, One day I came home and I could not get it to work no matter what. It also said 'no dialtone'. I repaced it with another of the same exact model and everything worked fine. Somehow the modem suddenly became defective. Modems are cheap.. You can get a new one on Ebay quite cheap..Maybe you can borrow another modem to try in your system and see what happens?