This
section is dedicated to YOU, the ones who use these
eMachines day in and day out, who go and find the latest
drivers, look for the latest upgrades, who try to make
their machine perform at its best. The following posts
are comments, from end users, on what you have found out
that has worked for you. Since these posts are end user
contributions, use the info contained here at your own
risk.
Alaska3's Bite The Dust
02.03.06
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. 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 meager
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 recognize
it to do a repair install), returned it to the
customer....
B*gg*r me if another one didn't 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 crappy E-machines one. Unless
the boards all failed because of the crappy 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
Atodini
|
Unofficial eMachines Tech Info