- May 11, 2013
- 7
- 0
- 10,510
OK, I know this computer is ancient, and not worth too much cash investment, before anyone tells me it is much cheaper to buy a refurb one, please hear me out!
I have a young friend (14) who is passionate about taking to pieces (badly) and fixing (OK-ish) old laptops that people give him, so he can use them for old Linux distros, puppy, DSL, FreeBSD, etc, as trial machines.
He was recently given a *very* old Vaio pcg-f707 (no battery) that had been working for his grandad. However, my friend and I couldn't fix it for him. We bought a replacement Mobo for a few pounds, and do actually get a green power light, plus battery status ones (Not sure about those, since there is no battery) but no HDD/fan sounds.
I haven't found anything online to suggest this laptop won't work without it's battery - if anyone knows different, I'd be happy to know.
We tested the psu - it seems fine. There is one slightly crushed ribbon cable to the power button, but, if held in place before power-up, we still get the lights - but no progress towards any post/HDD/fan sound. All power buttons switch off before any beep, a Google suggests that the Vaio never beeped anyway...
There was an install of Linux on the HDD - would a (potentially) different BIOS on the new Mobo cause this behaviour? And, if the CPU is on the blink, would we still get lights on power up?
If so, I know what the CPU I need is, and it is cheap, but the Sony Vaio ones seem to be embedded/"nailed" or "punched in" to a card - would anyone know how to remove and change the CPU on this CPU-"card"? Like I said, I know it is a loss-making venture, but this kid is keen on OSs, and a FreeBSD email server or something would be cool for him to have (within some financial limits, obviously!)
Thanks for reading this far, any (fairly cheap!) ways of getting it to do basic tasks/vaguely educational, entertaining projects for the summer hols gratefully received.
I have a young friend (14) who is passionate about taking to pieces (badly) and fixing (OK-ish) old laptops that people give him, so he can use them for old Linux distros, puppy, DSL, FreeBSD, etc, as trial machines.
He was recently given a *very* old Vaio pcg-f707 (no battery) that had been working for his grandad. However, my friend and I couldn't fix it for him. We bought a replacement Mobo for a few pounds, and do actually get a green power light, plus battery status ones (Not sure about those, since there is no battery) but no HDD/fan sounds.
I haven't found anything online to suggest this laptop won't work without it's battery - if anyone knows different, I'd be happy to know.
We tested the psu - it seems fine. There is one slightly crushed ribbon cable to the power button, but, if held in place before power-up, we still get the lights - but no progress towards any post/HDD/fan sound. All power buttons switch off before any beep, a Google suggests that the Vaio never beeped anyway...
There was an install of Linux on the HDD - would a (potentially) different BIOS on the new Mobo cause this behaviour? And, if the CPU is on the blink, would we still get lights on power up?
If so, I know what the CPU I need is, and it is cheap, but the Sony Vaio ones seem to be embedded/"nailed" or "punched in" to a card - would anyone know how to remove and change the CPU on this CPU-"card"? Like I said, I know it is a loss-making venture, but this kid is keen on OSs, and a FreeBSD email server or something would be cool for him to have (within some financial limits, obviously!)
Thanks for reading this far, any (fairly cheap!) ways of getting it to do basic tasks/vaguely educational, entertaining projects for the summer hols gratefully received.
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