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Old School 5600 BACK FROM THE DEAD!!!

post #1 of 7
12/10/06 at 7:56am
Thread Starter 
Do you all remember those 5600 Sager laptops from way back in the day (early 2003ish)? They had desktop pentium 4's in them and ATI Mobility Radeon 9000's. Well... I still have mine, but it broke about 2 years ago.

What was the problem, you ask (probably not, but I'll tell you anyway)? Well... I'd press the power button and the led's would flash, cd drive would spin up, hd would click... but no post, no beep and no screen. Just a dark and lifeless lappy. Sometimes the fans would kick on though... just to keep me hangin on to that last bit of hope... it was all a very sad experience (as I recall).

Well... I remember searching the forums and calling Sager only to find out that this was a much more common problem than I first expected. Everyone I talked to and every post I read seemed to point a finger at the motherboard as the culprit. Cost to fix was in the $400's... cost to upgrade was in the $6-700's... I just said forget all that nonsense. I shoved it in the closet and figured I would just let it rest in peace.

Well... Tonight, almost a year and a half later, I decided I was going to get rid of it once and for all. I was going to post it on ebay and see if I could give it away. I cleaned it all up and snapped some pictures and thought... what the hell... I'll plug it in and press the power button just for the sake of nostalgia.

The dang thing started up like it did the day I bought it. It told me that it couldn't find the OS, but that's only because I'd taken the hard drive out ages ago.

Anyway... I was kinda stunned and shocked... so I figured... lets just see what Ubuntu can do with this thing. So I burned a copy of Ubuntu 6.10 and booted it up. Here I sit 9 hours or so later... typing up this post on the very same 5600 that has been dead and buried so long ago... with just a touch of irony, because now, it doesn't even have a hard drive in it LOL!!

So... here is my question. Are there any ex/current 5600 owner's out there who care to give me their take on this (perplexing) resurrection?

I'm a bit more than confused by it all... and it will probably be dead by morning... but it's working right now... and I felt it was post worthy.

Mark Caswell
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post #2 of 7
12/10/06 at 7:19pm
u said HD clicking? well isnt that a sign of a bad hard drive? so maybe you had a bad HD, try putting another one in there and seeing if that works.
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post #3 of 7
12/11/06 at 4:04am
Thread Starter 
Hmmm... I posted a long reply to this, but it didn't go through... Basically what I said was... the hard drive wasn't failing... I have it in an external enclosure that I still use today. Instead of clicking I should have written that you could hear the hard drive mechanism activating.

Anyway... My biggest problem now is deciding how I'm going to set up the description for the eBay add. I mean... it's still on right now... and I've rebooted it like 20 times today. Left it on all day at work and it's still going. Anyway... I will do some more stress testing on it and see if it will crack, but right now it's holding strong. I even took a video of it booting into Ubuntu without a hard drive.

Here's the link if you are interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f1ykq2Azug

Mark
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post #4 of 7
12/11/06 at 11:47am
If I were to hazard a guess I would say it is the dc/dc board. This componant is responsible for switching the power from battery to brick (or back again) and the charging of the battery. When a dc dc board goes, it can be rather sporadic--I would not be surprised if the problem recurs after numerous on off cycles.
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post #5 of 7
12/11/06 at 3:48pm
Thread Starter 
I'm with you on assuming the problem will come back. I'm sure that it didn't just go and heal itself over time. I just wish I could understand why it's working now at all... What would make it "appear" stable just from leaving it alone for a year or so? You would think with electronics, once it goes faulty... then it's fried, but for it to boot up when it wouldn't make it past the post is very very strange.

If it is in fact the dc/dc board... Does anyone know of a way to fix or repair this permanently, or would it still be a motherboard replacement, like originally suggested?

Thanks for your opinions...

Mark
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post #6 of 7
12/11/06 at 5:22pm
It depends on the model--sometimes, the DC DC board is a daughter card that sits on the motherboard, sometimes it is integrated.

Why it works now, and not before could be any number of reasons....it may be the board is simply loose and when you tossed it in the closet it came into better contact. Could be a minior short that heat caused to expand or move out of alignment, then a prolonged cooling period caused it to come into alignment.

I've had power supplies that did not work, that when they were put on a shelf for 3 months somehow magically come back to life...they usually do not last for long, though
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post #7 of 7
12/11/06 at 8:20pm
Thread Starter 
Hmmm... It must be some sort of "connection" thing. At this point I'm actually going to try and make it break again. I have had it on now for over 24 hours with multiple boots from yesterday... Still going strong... I'm going to do some sort of stress test on it to see if it will crack.

I will look into the possibility that there is a seperate daughter board or something that can be tightened or repositioned for better connectivity. It's still kinda nice to have it back for the time being.
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