[tweedhome]

I'm tryig to revive a Toshiba PAV1470PMC laptop after a water spill rendered it unbootable.

after a few days of drying time there were a few attempts to start it in the usual fashion. Which only resulted in no monitor activity at all, no beeps to indicate bios activity only some fan noise. Then after a few more attemps, the fan noise ceased as well.
I have some experience pulling computers. I did some research on the net, where I've found about 30 different key-stroke combinations to induce BIOS setup only two of these worked, allowing the power to return in as far as the LED display and fan will operate.

I have pulled this machine completely apart, everything that could be disconnected and removed has been. All cleaned and reassembled.Cmos battery, power supply, and power to periferals(HDD CDROM KB) were tested with volt meter. all check ok.

I've tried to induce start failure by turning on power w/o keyboard, again w/o HDD, yet no progress. Still only power to the LED screen and Fan. The LED shows the A/C plug indicator, the Power On icon(mini laptop) and the "Welcome to DYNA BOOK" logo.

ANY IDEAS WHERE TO GO FROM HERE.

[Trigger_Happ]

do u still have the warrenty on it?... you may be able to turn it in.

[tweedhome]

I live in Japan and the machine was also bought in Japan. In Japan there is only one kind of warrenty, "The no-heart Warrenty"

ie. if you didn't have the heart to take care of it, We haven't got the heart to help you fix it.

not a chance of getting anything off of warrenty. sorrry

tweedhome

[tweedhome]

I really need to find some way to find out what is left of the bios. It seems ther is just no communication between any of the parts although each part seems to have power.

I bought an adapter to hook up the 2.5 hdd to my desk top, and that booted up fine.

gotta find some bios tricks.

[tweedhome]

Have successfully revived the toshiba, but as I feared the display is no longer useful. Three wire leads from one of the control chips, built into the display panel have been melted away by some sort of short-circuit.

How does the external display get turned on???

This is my next challenge. I have installed win2k and don't have the original recovery cd-rom. when windows is in-staled the external tv out port will work, HOWEVER when the Cyber-Blade XP drivers are installed and the machine reboots, the external tv port no longer seems to work.

I know the Fn +F5 key combination should turn it on, but this combination of keys stops working when the Cyber-blade drivers go in.

Does anyone know any other hotkeys?

[Macario]

tell us how you revive your laptop computer, where was the problem, and how you resolve it

[tweedhome]

Let me keep this short at first and then if you need more details let me know.

1. test peripherals to see if they are receiving voltage.
Remove the top half of case to get clear access to the motherboard. With the power plugged in, hold down the F12 key as you turn on the machine. This sets the computer into some kind of basic power mode. I got tis short-cut key info off the net.Use a volt meter to check for voltage on the connectors for each peripheral ie cdrom hdd usb display. I found 3v and 5v across all these peripherals and assumed the power supply was working properly

2. next assumption is that if everything is getting power then there must be a communication problem between the motherboard and the peripherals. IE bios problem.

All the methods for resetting the bios that I could find on the net, I tried, but to no avail. Remove the battery for an extended period; try to turn on the machine with no power connected to drain any residual electric charge from capacitors; tried shorting the battery connection posts to ground, I thought that might mimic the cmos reset jumper that you find on most desktops. There is no jumper for clearing or programing cmos on this motherboard. I assume it is done by keyboard shortcut when turning on the power.

I found from a toshiba homepage that the Chinese character conversion key which is located next to the ESC key on the Japanese keyboard is the key to use to flash the bios from the usb floppy. you hold it down while powering on the machine. All messages from the flash program are shown on the mini LCD display just above the keyboard. Its a real simple process except that I have no movement in my peripherals even though there is power.

#. how can I reset the bios if all normal methods fail.

I assumed that the cmos jumpers found on most motherboards must be connected directly to the bios chip in order for the simple closing of an electrical circuit to erase the memory. Take that idea to its simplest, most likely circuit layout and you can assume that by shorting the bios chip leads to a ground connector might do just the same thing. So I used two pair of needle nose pliers to hold either end of a twisted around paper-clip and grounded each pin starting from the number 1 pin and then just for good measure I shorted all other pins on the bios chip with the no. 1 pin.

After reassembling the computer I found that i had power and movement in all peripherals. Communication was restored.

I then used the USB flash program to re program the bios and then reinstalled w2000. That was also fun as i have no working display.

[tweedhome]

I need some screen shots of the TOSHIBA bios setup so I can set the bios to turn on the external display first. my display is shot and i can't afford a new one. If I have some screen shots I can probably do it blind by counting TABs.

Can anyone help???

[tokyocalbear]

Dear Tweedhome (and others who are frustrated by Toshiba's Dynabooks),

After a number of tries and browsing all the Japanese manuals that come with the Dynabook, this morning I woke up went to the computer and did it.

The key sequence to alter the boot sequence is:

1) Hold down the F5 key and at the same time hit the power button.

2) While still holding down the F5 key, wait for the first boot screen to appear which is the 4 icons for boot priority: HDD/CD/FDD/Net (i.e. Hard Disk, CD, Floppy Disk (via the USB port), and Networked Drive).

3) Use the "Left" and "Right" arrow keys to select the current First Priority Boot Device. The grey bar under each icon will change to orange for the currently selected boot device. (The Japanese manual states to change the BIOS boot priority you need to go Control Panel from the Windoz Start button, but if you can't get Windoz to boot in the first place, which was my problem, then Toshiba's manual is basically of no value.

The above proceedure will only set the boot priority that one time. Apparently it is not possible to actually change the BIOS for every boot without going through Windoz control panel on the Dynabook. However, using the above steps I was able to boot to a Linux LiveCD from the CD and then recover my data. Now I can begin the process of installing the Windoz OS again, or perhaps I'll just make this a Linux box.

Hope this helps others who have wasted hours trying to find out what Toshiba should have informed their customers in their manuals.

TCB