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Grid 1450sx laptop

R

Ron

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Aug 1, 2010
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I have a Grid 1450sx laptop found sitting in a relative's garage for a long time. My understanding is it was built around 1990. When I turn on the power switch, the Power and CPU leds light up, but nothing else happens. Can anyone tell me if there is a special way to start it up...or if it should start up automatically, perhaps it is dead? Thank you. Ron
 
Yes, it should start automatically. Can you hear the hard drive spin up? Those old Prairietek drives were quite audible. Does the screen backlight come on? If neither happens, your system has issues.

But dead? No, not for the right person. However, if you have no experience at electronics repair, a laptop (particularly a small one) is not where I'd begin learning.
 
Thanks for the reply, Chuck. There is no light on the screen and I can not hear any drive activity, just the POWER and CPU leds light up.
I am very adept at repairing and restoring newer Windows based PCs (laptops and desktops), but not to the level of tracing signals on a circuit board. I did figure out how to get inside this Grid, and there is no visible damage. However, I checked the voltage on the CMOS batteries and they show 1 volt. They should read 6 volts (2 3v coin batteries). Do you suppose this would cause it not to start up?
Again, thanks.
Ron
 
If you cannot hear ANY noise from the hard drive when you power it up, take a look for fuses and confirm that they are good (continuity across them OR voltage (of whatever value) on both sides). As long as the PWR/CPU lights are on, there SHOULD be some sort of activity on the HD... tho this is NOT necessary a 'given'...
As Chuck said, bad CMOS batteries usually result in a configuration error message...
 
Thanks, leeb. I can not hear any activity from the drive at all. I did find one fuse, but it checks out OK. I am now trying to locate a couple of 3v coin batteries and will see if that makes any difference.
 
OK. I replaced the CMOS batteries and now when I turn on the Power switch, I get the same LEDs (Power and CPU), but I also hear two faint clicks coming from the hard drive. (They could have been there before.)

So, I am now assuming the problem is likely due to the HD being dead? It's a Prairie 240 model. Any suggestions for testing it? If it has to be replaced, any suggestions on how I would reload the OS? I don't even know what OS is on it. Thanks. Ron
 
Still no backlight? Any beeps when the boot fails?

Have you checked the power supply voltages? It might be that you have enough to light up an LED but not to run anything.
 
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Just for comfort sake, the hard drive being dead won't keep it from powering on. If you're wanting to test that or remove that from the troubleshooting you could even just remove the drive for now. You should still get some initialization screen and then probably some error about a drive or operating system not being found.

You're a tech so I'm assuming you've played with any contrast/brightness settings already right? Does it have any keyboard lights (caps lock, num lock, etc) do those turn on and off?
 
- no backlight on screen. no beeps at power on....just the two faint clicks from the HD
- the power supply is rated at 16.25 volts and puts out 15.7 volts.
- there are 8 leds on the front panel, Power, Battery, FDD, HDD, CPU, Caps, Num, Scroll. Only the Power and CPU leds light, none of the others respond to keyboard activity. The Brightness and Contrast slides do not yield any result.
- I removed the HD, same results. While inside, I reseated all cables and plugs, same results.
- I inserted a Win98 (oldest I have) floppy disk in the floppy drive, no activity and same results.

One thing I just noticed....on the AC Adapter, it says "USED IN GRIDCASE 12XX, 13XX, 15XX, GRIDlite 10XX, AND 3403 DRIVE" This machine is a 1450sx model. Suppose it could be the wrong AC Adapter?

Again, thanks for the responses. I just hate to junk this old warhorse of early laptops.
Ron
 
The PSU should still be okay for this model. Before you do anything else, however, replace the 2 CMOS configuration RAM coin cells. Apparently, the 1450 depends on this more so than other machines.
 
I remember fixing a laptop once that acted the same way if the
primary battery was bad. I dont remember for sure if it was
a Grid but It is worth checking into.

Bruce
 
Again, thanks to everyone who responded to this thread. I found another Grid 1450sx on Ebay that had a bad hard drive and was finally able to get this one running, so am closing the thread. I can only assume the problem is somewhere in the power circuitry.

If anyone is interested in 2 Grid 1450sx laptop computers (1 that works, 1 that doesn't), please let me know.
Ron
 
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