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My first IRQ conflict! Need some help.

3lectr1c said:
Thanks guys. And good news! We have a winner.

A big thank you goes out to everyone that gave advice here! Wouldn't have been able to do it without your help :)
And a special thanks to @Svenska for helping me tirelessly through driver hell, and to @compaqportableplus for giving the winning advice!
I'm very glad to have this one sorted.
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Very glad you got it fixed! I’m happy I was able to help.

The build quality of these is by far not THE worst I’ve seen, for a generic old laptop they aren’t terrible. But they were just disappointing to me. The internal plastic frame was thin and brittle, and the hinge support screw tower on the bottom chassis was starting to break on one of mine. I just had so many issues with them and that kind of spoiled my enthusiasm.

But either way I’m very glad to see yours is now working!
 
Svenska said:
Congratulations! And I have learned that bad solder joints are a thing to consider when dealing with resource conflicts. I'd never have guessed.
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Well, the IRQ conflict was just an IRQ conflict, LPT and the sound chip were both set to 7, once I changed that then the IRQ issue was gone. The solder joint issue was what kept it from working after that.
compaqportableplus said:
The build quality of these is by far not THE worst I’ve seen, for a generic old laptop they aren’t terrible. But they were just disappointing to me. The internal plastic frame was thin and brittle, and the hinge support screw tower on the bottom chassis was starting to break on one of mine. I just had so many issues with them and that kind of spoiled my enthusiasm.
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I ran into a few broken screw standoffs while taking mine apart, but I partially blame myself there as I wasn't entirely sure how to get it apart the first time around. I'm gonna make a guide now that I do know.
I have a hinge issue too, but mine's that the metal itself gave out on the left side, and then that ended up warping the plastic in that area. That's probably a pretty rare failure though. Overall, I've seen far less hinge failures on these than I have on any other WinBook laptop from the 90s, or most 90s laptops in general.
Did you have any other issues on these besides for the sound and plastics?
 
3lectr1c said:
Well, the IRQ conflict was just an IRQ conflict, LPT and the sound chip were both set to 7, once I changed that then the IRQ issue was gone. The solder joint issue was what kept it from working after that.

I ran into a few broken screw standoffs while taking mine apart, but I partially blame myself there as I wasn't entirely sure how to get it apart the first time around. I'm gonna make a guide now that I do know.
I have a hinge issue too, but mine's that the metal itself gave out on the left side, and then that ended up warping the plastic in that area. That's probably a pretty rare failure though. Overall, I've seen far less hinge failures on these than I have on any other WinBook laptop from the 90s, or most 90s laptops in general.
Did you have any other issues on these besides for the sound and plastics?
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I had some power issues, that were also caused by more poor soldering. There was actually a loose piece of solder that had worked its way in between two legs of the power IC! Once that was removed, the laptop behaved normally.

Speakers were blown in all of mine also, but I didn't consider that a huge issue, as they can be substituted.

I don't think I had any other major issues I can remember. The plastics were my biggest problem. That cheap plastic internal frame is VERY thin and quite brittle. It also provides some partial hinge mount support, which was broken on two of mine (this is what caused the hinge support standoff to crack on one). All attempts to repair that failed miserably.

A metal internal frame would have made all the difference on these laptops for sure.

I wish you luck with yours. I just didn't personally feel these machines would last very long under normal use, which is why I quickly resold them. I don't want to get all attached to a machine that's just going to turn to dust in a couple years. I had an NEC Versa 4080H I bought around the same time that I also quickly resold for the same reason. That thing was horribly designed and a nightmare to work on, despite being really nice looking on the outside.

I only keep the ones that prove solid and dependable.
 
compaqportableplus said:
I only keep the ones that prove solid and dependable.
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It would probably be smart to do that myself but I guess I'm not that smart because I keep buying low quality ones on purpose :biggrin:
I like this one so far though. I guess we'll see how it holds up.

I guess I'm drawn to the weird, obscure, and questionably built stuff. For instance, the laptop currently at the highest place in my want list has build quality that will result in this happening:
s-l1600.jpg

Given, said laptop also has options for a DX4-100, sound, TFT LCD, trackpad, a lexmark keyboard, and looks cool when not falling apart. It also has a VARTA battery right on the motherboard which is why I haven't found one yet.

If I get sick of poor quality, I do own an LTE Elite 4/75CX :)
 
The printer IRQ of 7 is rarely used by early software and in fact, is perfectly sharable; that is, a servicing routine can easily determine if the printer port hardware is the source of the interrupt. The same applies to serial ports. There's a defined "pass it on" procedure for interrupt handling.

Shame that Windows doesn't understand that.
 
3lectr1c said:
It would probably be smart to do that myself but I guess I'm not that smart because I keep buying low quality ones on purpose :biggrin:
I like this one so far though. I guess we'll see how it holds up.
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Hey, there’s nothing wrong with playing with them if enjoy it! If they make you happy then it’s worth it.

I actually used to love all of those weird and generic laptops too, but after owning a bunch I’ve just decided they aren’t worth it (to me).

3lectr1c said:
If I get sick of poor quality, I do own an LTE Elite 4/75CX
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YES! I have one of those and I absolutely love it. Extremely good build quality and reliability. Very modular and easy to service too.

I also have the CXL variant with a larger screen and a prototype 4/100CX (unreleased model). The LTE Elite series are fantastic. They are pricey on eBay, but for a good reason. Only real issue is the finicky belt driven floppies, but they are so good otherwise, I’m happy to look over that.

One generic laptop I do actually love is the Epson ActionNote 486SLC laptops like the 500C and 4SLC/33. I have several of those and they are amazing. The motherboards are reliable, the plastic isn’t brittle, and they just have a great, simple appearance. Very good laptops in my book. All of the age-related issues they have are very easy to fix. Highly recommend them!
 
Ah yes, I've seen the video you made on your prototype LTE. Where did you find it? Extremely lucky. To have an LTE Elite with a sound card...

I've also seen your videos on the ActionNote 500C where you had the cap issues with the screen, that's no big issue for me. Seems the ones on eBay right now are all in crappy shape - and does it lack a pointing device? Painted case? Maybe if there's an active matrix version.
 
3lectr1c said:
Ah yes, I've seen the video you made on your prototype LTE. Where did you find it? Extremely lucky. To have an LTE Elite with a sound card...

I've also seen your videos on the ActionNote 500C where you had the cap issues with the screen, that's no big issue for me. Seems the ones on eBay right now are all in crappy shape - and does it lack a pointing device? Painted case? Maybe if there's an active matrix version.
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I found it one eBay! It was listed as a 4/75CXL, but something looked different about it. Funny because everything I speculated about it ended up being true when I received it! I was almost 100% certain it had sound as it appeared to have a microphone, and I strongly suspected it might have a 100MHz CPU, which it also did!


About the ActionNotes, yeah, the cap issue on the screen is nothing major. Simple recaps are easy enough.

No, they do not have a built-in pointing device. They were sold bundled with a Logitech Trackman trackball.

The case is painted, so sometimes they can look like hell if they are extremely worn. It’s actually a very nice finish though when it’s in good shape. Feels really nice to the touch.

These were lower end laptops, so no active matrix screens. There’s dual-scan monochrome and single-scan color (on the 500C).

The case is very rugged though (the plastic more so than the paint), and the motherboards are reliable, which makes them a solid machine in my book. They also use a Dallas chip (socketed thankfully), so there’s no Varta battery to leak everywhere.
 
Is it one that needs a working Dallas battery to actually boot? If you could get me photos of yours I’ll add them to my website and document them. Same with your prototype.

And dang is that lucky on the 100CX. I paid about $100 for my 4/75CX.
 
3lectr1c said:
Is it one that needs a working Dallas battery to actually boot? If you could get me photos of yours I’ll add them to my website and document them. Same with your prototype.

And dang is that lucky on the 100CX. I paid about $100 for my 4/75CX.
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Yep, it does need a working clock to boot!

There’s some photos of my ActionNote 500C and 4SLC/33 on this Vogons thread. You can also read some of my history with this laptop and one of the reasons it’s very special to me (aside from just being a great little laptop overall).

Epson ActionNote 500C \ VOGONS

www.vogons.org www.vogons.org

I’ll PM you some photos of the LTE if you’d like.
 
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Ah so the trackball clips on. Is it the same port that other laptops of the time used? And yeah, any photos of the proto-LTE would also be great!
 
IMG_5406.jpg
I thought that FCC tag there looked a bit familiar. This laptop was made by ASE - funny enough, same company that made the WinBook XP that I posted above with the busted hinges.
 
3lectr1c said:
Ah so the trackball clips on. Is it the same port that other laptops of the time used? And yeah, any photos of the proto-LTE would also be great!
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It just clips onto the keyboard frame and has a cable that plugs into the PS/2 port.

I’ll send you some photos of the LTE.

3lectr1c said:
View attachment 1268809
I thought that FCC tag there looked a bit familiar. This laptop was made by ASE - funny enough, same company that made the WinBook XP that I posted above with the busted hinges.
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Yes, ASE is the maker, I knew that a while ago but I actually forgot!

I guess their quality was hit or miss. The hinges on these laptops are solid. And what’s great is they have a nut to adjust them, so I always loosen them slightly just to take as much stress as possible off of the mounts.

The plastic on the ActionNote is really good though. I took some really worn out case parts once and flexed them as hard as I could as an experiment, and I could NOT make it crack!
 
@compaqportableplus - Yeah I'm starting to see what you mean.
I took apart my FX again today, because while the sound did work, it would cut out and go back into the failure mode from before again after a while. I figured that I hadn't gotten it reflowed quite well enough yet.
After getting it together again, the sound still works so I at the very least didn't make it worse. Too early to tell whether it's gonna cut out again though.

Getting it back together though....
It was uneventful until I got the LCD fitted and spot-tested it before fully reassembling. It started right up but the LCD was going nuts, clear signs of a loose connection. After completely ruling the bottom half of the laptop out, I took the LCD assembly apart. Nearly every plastic clip broke, and there are no screws up top so the bezel is just a bit loose now. Said front bezel also snapped near the right hinge during removal, and then formed more cracks as I was screwing it back up!
So much for this thing being in near mint shape...
And the LCD issue? As best I can tell, the cable going into the screen somehow came imperceptively loose. I didn't feel anything when I pressed in on it, but it worked right after that...
At least I got the issue solved. Man oh man though!
IMG_6140.jpegIMG_6141.jpegIMG_6142.jpeg
 
3lectr1c said:
@compaqportableplus - Yeah I'm starting to see what you mean.
I took apart my FX again today, because while the sound did work, it would cut out and go back into the failure mode from before again after a while. I figured that I hadn't gotten it reflowed quite well enough yet.
After getting it together again, the sound still works so I at the very least didn't make it worse. Too early to tell whether it's gonna cut out again though.

Getting it back together though....
It was uneventful until I got the LCD fitted and spot-tested it before fully reassembling. It started right up but the LCD was going nuts, clear signs of a loose connection. After completely ruling the bottom half of the laptop out, I took the LCD assembly apart. Nearly every plastic clip broke, and there are no screws up top so the bezel is just a bit loose now. Said front bezel also snapped near the right hinge during removal, and then formed more cracks as I was screwing it back up!
So much for this thing being in near mint shape...
And the LCD issue? As best I can tell, the cable going into the screen somehow came imperceptively loose. I didn't feel anything when I pressed in on it, but it worked right after that...
At least I got the issue solved. Man oh man though!
View attachment 1269795View attachment 1269796View attachment 1269797
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Yeah, they seem solid at first, but their poor build quality becomes more apparent the more you work with them. That's why I dropped my three AST Ascentia P Series laptops like a hot potato.
 
compaqportableplus said:
Yep, it does need a working clock to boot!

There’s some photos of my ActionNote 500C and 4SLC/33 on this Vogons thread. You can also read some of my history with this laptop and one of the reasons it’s very special to me (aside from just being a great little laptop overall).

Epson ActionNote 500C \ VOGONS

www.vogons.org www.vogons.org

I’ll PM you some photos of the LTE if you’d like.
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would you happen to know if the 4slc/33 will work with a ds12887 instead of a ds1287?
 
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