Minor Victory

I turned on an old Inspiron 6400 and it came up dark. I figured to add it to
my list of expired machines and parts sources.

Just on chance I looked up replacing the coincell battery.

Only two steps! Remove hinge cover and remove keyboard and there's the
coincell underneath.

How unlike the Vostro 1520, where everything has to be taken out, heat sink,
cpu, motherboard, etc etc, and you'll never get it back together working.

So I removed the hinge cover, flipped back the keyboard (no need to remove
cable), snapped out the old coin cell and put in a new one.

Amazingly, it came up snappily. The clock needed setting.

The OS loaded, but had no wifi.

Turned it off, went into BIOS wireless, disabled and reenabled it, and this
time it worked.

So somebody designed a machine that wasn't crazy. Though the coincell ought
to have its own door, it seems to me.

The old one measured 2.94v, under whatever load the voltmeter puts on
batteries in the battery test position (which might be nil) so ought to have
been good, but I guess not.

A rare instance of a repair gone well. Normally devastation follows.

Hint for avoiding static electricity: do the work on the basement floor.
If your basement is like mine, there's no static electricity possible.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

On Fri, 02 Jan 2015 18:21:47 -0500, Ron Hardin
wrote:

I turned on an old Inspiron 6400 and it came up dark. I figured to add it to
my list of expired machines and parts sources.

Just on chance I looked up replacing the coincell battery.

Only two steps! Remove hinge cover and remove keyboard and there's the
coincell underneath.

How unlike the Vostro 1520, where everything has to be taken out, heat sink,
cpu, motherboard, etc etc, and you'll never get it back together working.

(snip)

(Slightly O/T wrt your machine, but ...)

Interesting experience. I always expected that a failing CMOS battery
would result in losing settings, including timekeeping, and until then
it wouldn't upset anything.

In the recent thread about my Vostro 1400 ("Vostro 1400 battery light
flash code: meaning?") I have no symptoms other than a battery that
Oliver-Sudden won't charge and the O-O-O-O-B flashing charge light.
After an hour on the phone with Dell support running through all sorts
of diagnostics, the CSR checked with a superior and was advised that
this pattern indicated "not charging - battery overtemp". Battery was
cool as. Their suggestions? Try another battery OR another V1400 to
see which is faulty. Fair enough, but I don't have access to either.

For my money, the possible candidates are a U/S battery thermistor,
U/S battery, U/S charge controller on mobo, and (if there is a
discrete one as I have been led to believe) the charging interface
board.

Not wanting to throw a new battery at an old machine unless necessary,
I've done some deep googling on this problem. I found the story of an
Inspiron 1525 which had the O-O-O-O-B charge light pattern
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1646354
and he did the DC-in-jack-failure-board-replacement only to find that
until he replaced the CMOS battery it still wouldn't charge.

The teardown on the Vostro 1400 (or Inspiron 1420) is like the reverse
of Dell building it, almost down to a zillion separate parts. I don't
want to go there unnecessarily - as you said, chances of getting it
all back and working aren't good. That's why I'm left wondering about
whether the CMOS battery could be part of the charge failure on my
1400.

On Friday, January 2, 2015 6:21:31 PM UTC-5, Ron Hardin wrote:
I turned on an old Inspiron 6400 and it came up dark. I figured to add it to
my list of expired machines and parts sources.

Just on chance I looked up replacing the coincell battery.

Only two steps! Remove hinge cover and remove keyboard and there's the
coincell underneath.

How unlike the Vostro 1520, where everything has to be taken out, heat sink,
cpu, motherboard, etc etc, and you'll never get it back together working.

So I removed the hinge cover, flipped back the keyboard (no need to remove
cable), snapped out the old coin cell and put in a new one.

Amazingly, it came up snappily. The clock needed setting.

The OS loaded, but had no wifi.

Turned it off, went into BIOS wireless, disabled and reenabled it, and this
time it worked.

So somebody designed a machine that wasn't crazy. Though the coincell ought
to have its own door, it seems to me.

The old one measured 2.94v, under whatever load the voltmeter puts on
batteries in the battery test position (which might be nil) so ought to have
been good, but I guess not.

A rare instance of a repair gone well. Normally devastation follows.

Hint for avoiding static electricity: do the work on the basement floor.
If your basement is like mine, there's no static electricity possible.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

The first thing I do when a system refuses to boot at all is remove the big battery then press the on-off switch for 30 seconds to discharge whatever is left of the CMOS settings. Often, this has the same result as you experienced and the system suddenly comes alive.

But sometimes the system needs more prodding, removal of all parts except what is needed to boot, then restoring them one by one, as long as the system boots.

.... Ben Myers