Where's My eMachine M68xx peeps!!!

cheers ...

I have a very good eMachines M6809.
I have a three year warranty. Almost from Day one My DVD-RW door would not open. I used a paper clip to open it.
My hard drive started latching and my LCD hinges cracked.
So I sent in to be repaired.
When my warranty is up in May, I will put a 1 gig chip in the mother board.
So far this Laptop is a good as any of the new ones execpt those with dual cores.
Might even think of doing that to it.

I had my m6809 for more than 2 and a half years now.

Upgrades:
2GB RAM (2x1GB)
60GB 7200 RPM Hitachi hard drive
Applied Arctic Silver 5

Problems
2x Hinge Crack (Covered by warranty)
DVD Drive sometimes won't open (Need to use clip)

Ya know I'm still here . I don't post as much as I once did,but still get by every day, usually 2-3 times.

Hi guys. I have a 6805 that all I have done is upgrade the ram to 1.25 gig. It runs all kinds of things it really shouldn't (like BF2).
I have had the Hinge fixed once as did the previous owner. I am about to take it in again for it before my warranty expires. It needs work on the DVD drive since it has a very hard time reading DVDs. No problem with CDs tho. Screen flicker is getting annoying and the hinge needs tightening badly.
If they decide they can't fix it, it is possible that I may get to trade it in for another (third fix on hinge). I can't find one at Best Buy I think will do better and anywhere near the price this was.
Pretty amazing that a laptop can hold it's own this long.

If it doesn't get replaced I will upgrade the internal ram and may do the CPU. I was looking for a mobile 4000, but they seem to be hard to find. I may have to go w/ a 3700. Anyone done a mobile yet?

3700+ is the most i would go, but can be unstable sometimes.
4000+ - there is tweaked bios that would allow you to go that high
i am settling with 3400+ - totally stable

cheers ...

Alive and kicking

I will represent :

I have a m6811 and a 7422GX that are pressed into service every day.

Eunix

I have a m6805, only thing I have done so far is put in a 7200 60GB drive. I am looking to put ina 3400+ DTR and possibly go to 2GB ram. Do you guys know a good place to get a 3400+? I have been looking... I see a few on ebay... thats about it though. Also can this thing do 3200 Speed memory? Or is 2700 the max. Also what RAM do you guys recommend?

This Laptop is still kicking strong though. I hook it up to my 37" LCD HDTV to play movies and games on. Had it for about 2 1/2 years!

great step in the right direction

i got mine over eBay, just make sure to ask loads of question before commit to buy

this forum has THE great sticky over ram,




cheers ...

After 2 1/2 years still doing duty every day running Autocad. Thought about replacing it a while back but unless you want to spend over 2k you would have to sacrifice power in the graphics department. Bone stock other than adding a 1 gig chip. Funny thing is that I have never upgraded ANY of the drivers..... If it's not broke.....

Added a 22" widescreen lcd today..... Wow!

im here, going 2 years on my machine now... not doing much with it right now, but its still working fine

was gonna do some DS/GBA homebrew dev on it most recently, but i moved on to different projects

The only problem that I have is that they sometimes forget they have a DVD in them. ..." Hey where is my CD/DVD drive...I'll be gosh darnit! "

Eunix

Well...Im still here, but lately things havent been so good.....My trusty M6809 keeps randomly shutting down! Brought it to BB and they sent it out for repair. They re sat the heat sync with compound. Worked okay for two weeks and started doing it again! Back to best buy. I hope they can fix it this time!

Hyestar

If it's not shutting down due to heat issues, sorry to say it's probably hardware issues and the mobo will need to be replaced.

My m6805 will be 3 years old in March. I had the cracked hinge 2 years ago, sent it in and eMachines repaired it. It has stayed repaired! I have had the auto shutdown annoyance, cleaned the heatsink and put new AS5 on it. That "repair" lasted a few months, but the problem returned. Several months ago, I cleaned the heatsink again, and put a copper shim in there, and new AS5. So far, so good. Time will have to pass before I can say it is permanently fixed. I am still aggravated that this problem is not being addressed by eMachines, but I have to say that this laptop is very fast, stable, and reliable (as long as you have the ability to deal with this issue).

Other upgrades include slot-load DVD/CD-RW, 1.25 GB RAM, and a 5400 rpm Seagate hard drive. Seagate says that it uses no more power than the 4200 rpm drive, so a little faster but not harder on the battery. My other upgrade (or downgrade) is Windows Vista 32 bit RC 1 build 5536. Hibernation, nor standby work right, ATI's drivers crash Vista (remember the blue screen?) But I bought another hard drive caddy from Spinitch, so I still have my perfectly working XP Home/OpenSuse 10.2 install.

Oh yeah, and I have painted the lcd lid with a textured black paint (Rustoleum Hammered finish black spray paint) after sanding, and filling the eMachines logo and that crack between the black and silver part with Bondo. It looks pretty good.

pic, pic - the size of the shim?

vista & ati have resolved this issue

pic, pic,pic

cheers ...

I have no pictures of the copper shim, but it is made from a piece of copper that is cut into a rectangle (maybe 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch) about 1/16 of an inch larger than the center die on the cpu. I bent the edges down to cup over the center die, and used a piece of plastic wrap to smear a very thin coat of AS5 on both sides. It is very thin copper which can be cut with scissors. I bought it at a hobby store, and it is also sold online here:

http://www.makingmemories.com/produc...etalsheets.cfm

I've attached pics of the lcd lid. (Sorry, I'm not a great photographer)

The ATI drivers I tried that did so badly were downloaded less than a week ago. I just reverted back to the default ones that came with Vista. Are the ones that worked well for you older or newer than that. 7.1 is the version that gave me problems. Maybe I installed them wrong. ATI gave no install instructions that I could find. I just double-clicked the executable. This is the one I used:

https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206..._enu_41241.exe

I don't do high end games with my laptop, so these drivers are not crucial for me.