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B310 Restoration:

A

Artisticleo

New Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2009
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9
Location
Sarasota, Florida.
Bondwell B310 portable computer.

System non-working, despite great condition. Looking for insight as to how to troubleshoot and possibly restore it, as well as what might be wrong with the symptoms described in further detail below.

Physical Description:
This is an old mid-80's laptop I presume, with a jet-black case with rather contemporary looking markings. Its lid is only half the surface area of the machine, flipping up with two tabs on either side of the case to release it. It contains a full traverse QWERTY keyboard with gray letter keys, all else black.
The screen appears to be monochromatic silver w/ slight greenish hue, typical contrast adjuster on bezel below the screen itself, sitting just over the indicator LEDs.

Hard drive of 20-40MBs speculated, as well as 512KB to 2MB Ram and 3.5" floppy.

Worked when it was put in the closet, non-working when it was taken out.
Powers on, hard disk spins up, the screen blips like an old LCD should, but the screen does not appear to recieve any signal, not even a frame of activity (turning up the contrast does not provide any difference).

No light/sound activity to any keypresses.

Despite rusted bottom-side screws, the actual physical condition of the thing is fantastic. If I could find a way to the circuitboard beneath the drives, I'm sure I'd find it in excellent condition.

Of course I'm fearful this thing is just plain DEAD, but I'm not about to just chuck it.
 
You need to find a way to access the circuit boards... if only to see if there's any physical damage from a leaking battery. If it has a NiCd battery in it for keeping a clock/calendar chip running then it could've leaked all over the board.

If that's the case the computer may be unrepairable. It depends on the damage.
 
Is the rechargeable battery installed(not the CMOS)? I have had laptops that would not power on with a bad battery connected. Once I removed the battery it powered up OK. You may try that.
 
channelmaniac said:
You need to find a way to access the circuit boards... if only to see if there's any physical damage from a leaking battery. If it has a NiCd battery in it for keeping a clock/calendar chip running then it could've leaked all over the board.

If that's the case the computer may be unrepairable. It depends on the damage.
Click to expand...

Found a way to lift the board out. There was no excessive damage that I could tell. Some very minor oxidization on the leads of a few of the components, but nothing a firm-bristled brush couldn't probably brush away. Powering it on now has given me the flash of the HDD activity light, and I can audibly hear the drive seeking for the first second or two of power on....but it just sits spinning after that. I wish I had a camera, I'd love to upload images of it.

The battery is removed, that was one of my first thoughts for sure. Another thing I noticed, each time I power the unit on, it gives me a different function light, either "Fn", Caps Lock, or both come on, or not at all. Possible fault related to the keyboard? Tied into the mainboard via what looks like a floppy ribbon cable.
 
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The blink and hard drive spinning means nothing more than the hard drive is working to a degree. It says nothing about system itself. I'd start by checking carefully for cold solder joints, reseat any components that are in sockets and then haul out the scope and start looking at signals.
 
Some portable systems use that as a diagnostic code to indicate what failed but that'd require the manual to figure out, or it could be a random crash of bad code or keyboard circuit.

One thing I've found since dos boots pretty quick if there's nothing else to do is press enter twice or so to get out of any date/time prompts and type "dir" and see if you get a hard drive light while it reads the drive. If so you might assume the unit is working but just a bad display. Although if this is the case you'd also be able to toggle your caps/num-lock lights which it sounds like your machine is really crashing.

- John
 
Appreciate your responses guys, I'm making a mental note of all this.

I've tenderly taken this thing all to pieces before me now, and unfortunately an Ocilloscope is a little out of my budget and my technical ability, but I didn't need one to find that one of the Texas Instruments chips, TACT82302PB, which has leads that tie directly to the Harris i286 processor, is terribly oxidized along one whole row of its leads. I only hope this can be remedied with a swabbing of alcohol. Or is this a sure sign that its likely shot?
 
Oxidized leads mean nothing. If they are badly rusted it won't affect things unless A) the lead is rusted in 2 or B) the rust travels up the leg into the body of the chip.

Check for loose cables, loose socketed chips, and chips getting very hot.
 
Actually yeah, since you have it apart as far as you do that's the basic first step. Reseat anything that's in a socket. Bad contacts are common over time (sounds like you know all that so I won't go into the bla explanation).
 
The 310 plus in that page looks almost completely identical to mine, I'm sure most of that information is relevant, I probably have less RAM or some such.

I did certainly try and see if anything needed reseating, but apart from two Award 286 Bios chips (v. 1.3), and a smaller white dip IC near the RAM and timing crystal, no other socketed chips were on it. Both of the ribbon cables also appear to be seated properly, and the hefty pins that connect the monitor seat well as well.

I dont have a tool to remove any of the chips, and they otherwise don't seem to budge by any force I can apply with my bare fingers (grabbing from the ends opposite the pins)
 
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