Thursday 3 November 2011

old Compaq nx9005 - RIP

I was working on my nx9005 last night, taking some study notes... when there was the sound of a small tick and then a smell of burning electronics. I unplugged it from the life support system (power supply) and removed the battery.

The fan had been overworking for many a year.  I had performed surgery on the laptop several times to unclog the arteries within the fan unit from dust... but this was not enough... the multiple surgeries on the machine led to several further side effects due to aging of joints, such as limb failure (TouchPad) and front panel failure (power/wifi/BT indicator leds).

I pronounced my nx9005 dead at 5:30am 2nd Nov 2011 at the ripe old age of 8 1/2 years.



RIP.

The hard disk, WiFi card, optical reader and power supply were offered for donor parts.  All other parts are scrap.



The nx9005 had received a fair old innings as a development machine, media machine, word processing and spreadsheets, remote desktop support ... but spent its last year or two retired for general lap warming and as a TV guide / general browser duties...


[Edit 14:25 - old habits die hard:


Here's a photo after a few minutes of post-mortem... There's a good HD, Fan Unit, DVD Writer, Floppy, HD Caddy, AMD Processor, RAM PC2100 2x 512MB and a set of screws for the nx9005 (less one that is stuck in the casing)




[Edit 03:33 - I've had a Eureka moment...


A long time ago when I was (probably) cleaning the fan, I remember a small component fell off.. but I could not place it.  The PC worked so I simply ignored it.


As I was taping all the screws into a nice ordered file, ready for salvaging for spare parts... The other grey square component fell off - again I didn't notice where it came from.. But I have just realised I could download a photo of the motherboard from Google, and compare mine with a new one... The circled area is missing a component!  (Now it is missing both - so I could have simply compared it with this picture I took earlier.)  And the smell of burning is strongest around this area... I wonder what these components are for.. Could I attach a couple of new ones and get the old laptop working again?   I would, of course, have to fish the battery, and other bits and pieces out of the bin... nah... I don't think I can be bothered...   


For anyone who want a service manual, I found this:
        http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00246219.pdf
It covers nx9005, nx9000, nx9008, nx9010 and the ze series, and a few Presarios...


There's a handy list of POST Codes and Beep codes too... and diagrams of how to take your nx9005 to pieces... 


Having looked around eBay there are plenty of people selling old parts... even faulty motherboards... I think I might have a go to see how much money I can make from scrap ... than I could selling it as a faulty whole... 



4 comments:

  1. The missing components are marked PL1 and PL2 .. these are Power L(inductors).

    http://www.vishay.com/inductors/power-inductors/

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductor

    Odd how the laptop continued to work without one for about a year...

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  2. The parts are going on eBay - user 'zorgf'... I've not sold much on eBay, so they are selling slowly... I've made £12 and £1.50 to the Alzheimers Society so far. :-) lol

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  3. I'm afraid that after trying to sell another spare part on eBay I gave up... I ended up having to re-list the item over and over.. perhaps one day someone would want one.. it wasn't worth my time to keep doing it.. and in the end the rest of the laptop went to our local Household Waste Recycling centre...

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  4. In the meantime however.. my Lenovo also gave up the ghost due to a lack of recharging.. I don't think it was the battery either.. could have been the recharging circuit.. Since then I've bought an Acer Z100.. and that's about to give up.. the fan has started stuttering and whirring despite a cleaning.. think I'll invest in an actual desktop this time...

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