manimal347
Member
I'm having some issues with my Libretto 70ct, and I figure I should get some advice before I venture too far. Basically, the first issue is with the LCD. Often, I'll see faint ghosted lines of a window, continuing past the window. For example, if I minimize a window, I may see a faint ghost of the Win 9x tooltips and grey vertical lines used for resizing. Also, I usually see faint rolling lines on a blank and solid background such as the standard green Win 95 desktop. They look rather much like what one might see if they used a cheap VCR as a TV tuner or were watching TV while a game console were hooked up via RF but not tuned in.
Second issue: system instability. While pretty solid under 95 and Debian Sarge, the computer is very flakey under Win 3.x and MS-DOS. I've observed the following and more: Magnaram causing many crashes under 95, all browsers but Netscape 3.04 crashing wildy under 3.x, QEMM 97 causing myriad crashes under MS-Dos 6.22, protected mode programs hanging the system when closed under EMM386 - and particularly disturbingly, system hangs at the dos shell or under EDIT with autoexec + config.sys bypassed. QEMM tended to alert me of what I believe are CPU errors. It would throw up hex registers when it trapped a program (freq. Links 2 browser). I know Windows 3.x was never a stable OS, but if most people found 3.11 for Workgroups *this* unstable, I think we'd have had poor office productivity and a rash of employees going postal on IT staff. Seriously.
Now, the real cause for alarm. I ran memtest86+. Twice. My CPU halted. Twice. Memtest86 4.0 reported an interrupt fault and stated that CPU 0 halted both times, complete with the same hex. Different hex than Qemm threw up, though. Memtest86 did not report memory errors, and made it through 75% and 92% respectively, both aborting in the first pass.
I've seen nudie shots of the Libretto's motherboard, and it's a land of SMD components. Thus, I'm hoping it's a power issue - either the brick, or the internal regulator. Given what I'm experiencing, is dirty ripple-laden power the most likely cause? Even probable?
Second issue: system instability. While pretty solid under 95 and Debian Sarge, the computer is very flakey under Win 3.x and MS-DOS. I've observed the following and more: Magnaram causing many crashes under 95, all browsers but Netscape 3.04 crashing wildy under 3.x, QEMM 97 causing myriad crashes under MS-Dos 6.22, protected mode programs hanging the system when closed under EMM386 - and particularly disturbingly, system hangs at the dos shell or under EDIT with autoexec + config.sys bypassed. QEMM tended to alert me of what I believe are CPU errors. It would throw up hex registers when it trapped a program (freq. Links 2 browser). I know Windows 3.x was never a stable OS, but if most people found 3.11 for Workgroups *this* unstable, I think we'd have had poor office productivity and a rash of employees going postal on IT staff. Seriously.
Now, the real cause for alarm. I ran memtest86+. Twice. My CPU halted. Twice. Memtest86 4.0 reported an interrupt fault and stated that CPU 0 halted both times, complete with the same hex. Different hex than Qemm threw up, though. Memtest86 did not report memory errors, and made it through 75% and 92% respectively, both aborting in the first pass.
I've seen nudie shots of the Libretto's motherboard, and it's a land of SMD components. Thus, I'm hoping it's a power issue - either the brick, or the internal regulator. Given what I'm experiencing, is dirty ripple-laden power the most likely cause? Even probable?
