anyone have a toshiba 5105 'spare' geforce4 440 video card? - Page 6

micsol don't have 'em. anywhere else you can suggest?

J

I have seen them on eBay, but they are expensive. Also, they don't always tell you whether it is 32MB or 64MB. When I was looking for a 32MB card, the guy sent me a 64MB card, which I returned, because it didn't work for me. I never knew if the card was bad It is possible that either card will work in your machine, but I don't know. The same BIOS is used for the S701 (64MB) and the S501 (32MB). My machine (S607) has a separate BIOS that only works in a S607 and S608 (both 32MB).

I found one on ebay. if i get it this'll be my first unsupervised attempt at laptop disassembly. any suggestions?

J

Before talking about disassembly, I just looked at eBay and I don't see one. I just see one for a 5005 (GForce2), which will certainly not work. Which item are you looking at?

it just closed. i didn't win it.
maybe another one will show up.....

i sent my laptop in for repair over 3 months ago and toshiba cant get ahold of the part, so they gave me $100 toshiba credit after the days and weeks i have been harrasing them, so tomorrow i plan on calling back telling them to credit my credit card that $100 because the repair was almost $400, anyways i'll keep every updated.

So after getting my T43 and watching this board for months, I give up.

Even though I don't want to, (and believe me it pains me to see it go) I'm parting out my laptop, every single component. Before I go eBay crazy, I want to give the folks on this forum first crack at the parts since this was the best place to go for info.

My laptop was/is a 5105-S501. LCD Panel is in perfect shape, same goes for the entire sound system. P4-M cpu @ 1.7 GHz. Intel 2200BG 802.11 b/g mini-pci card, 512 MB DDR RAM, DVD/CD-RW drive, system board, everything except the video-card (which was toast anyway). Also, various components, plastic pieces, screws, etc.

Email astern [at] sfsu [dot] edu with any questions. I plan on posting to eBay on the 15th.

Andrew

here's a 32MB one
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...Name=WDVW&rd=1

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...Name=WDVW&rd=1

Jeff

I got an Acer Travelmate 8104 to replace it with. I'm still trying to find a replacement vid card for the 5105 tho, as my girlfriend likes/wants that laptop.

TM8104's performance is awesome but I miss some features of my 5105:
-hardware volume control -> not FnKey combo
-clock on front of machine
-cPad for taking quick notes and putting photos on it.

This was a really well designed laptop - except for the doomed vid card. It's a pity Toshiba aren't making any 'Game-Worthy" lappy's ATM

J

so after months of waiting for toshiba to fix my laptop (4months) it is finally fixed, they had to replace my whole MOBO they said, (which i think is bullshit) well anyways it got shipped to my parents house since i was tired of waiting and bought a computer, so i assume the thing works great.

I DO not reccomend sending it to toshiba, the customer service/support is very poor, and they have no refund policy. but i did get a $100 toshiba gift certificate out of it.

Another one bites the dust.

Add one more to the sad, long list. My Toshiba Satellite 5105-S607 died just a few days ago and I just completed all the various hoop jumping everyone else has explained in this forum. Fortunately I've avoided losing any money to the whole fiasco.

Please *DO* keep this post alive, I'll keep this POS laptop in a closet and maybe one day there will be a class action suit and we can fling it back at Toshiba for a trade in.

First and LAST Toshiba I'll buy. It's back to Dell for me.

I honestly do feel a little bit better at least finding so many others with the same problem. It sucks for all of us but at least we know we haven't done something to cause the problems. Other than buying from a company who's warranty reflects their own personal belief on how long their hardware's gonna last!

Another one down

*sigh* My 5105-S607 bit the dust a couple of weeks ago. It's so damn frustrating trying to resolve the damn issue, since we all know it's the video board. Every parts warehouse I called said that these two cards (GeForce4 440 Go 32/64 MB) are failing left and right. Which leads me to believe either Toshiba/Nvidia made a terrible product. Is there anything we can do to spread the word? Let people know their machine is going to fail and become unusable?

As a side note, it gives me comfort to know I'm not alone in this, and thanks to all those who have shared their findings.

Thanks
-G

One more for this list... 5105-s501

Apears to over heat, NOT A SPEC OF DUST IN IT, i blew it out with an aircompressor, nothing... took it apart, regooped the heat sinks with ceramique etc...still hot... graphics card apears funky, drivers on toshiba site... almost work... i think its currently using the XP Pro SP2 Drivers or something... grphics card craps out even when not wiggling the thing... but wiggling that one screw by the fan causes problems, i removed the screw... less problems, but its still there if I bend it enough... cleaned everythign its not the connection... its heat damage some were board flex disconnects something some were...

it even craps out when its COLD running the win XP installation CD...

the 5000 model numbers before mine, not including mine... there was a class action suit.. toshiba lost... everyone got 500 1000 or 1500 back... depending on their situation.

toshiba covered up an issue they new about, and used the bios to try and hide/fix by slowing the pc down below a speed that allowed its features, dvd etc to play!

so we need to do it too... i called them they basicly said "tough crap" not even a recomendation how to fix it...

its not the graphics card... its the combination of all the parts in the thing..

I have also had a bad sound card from day 1... the volume knob causes the lap top to make hideously very loud ear busting sounds.. when teh lap top is bumped...

no more toshiba lap tops for me.. im only gona build small portable Desk top ASUS part cases! lol...

I lowered my heat problem by removing the hotkey.exe file that was always in the task manager... it was always pegging the system to 100% even when doing nothign and only windows installed freshly... used hijackthis.exe to remove it.

TOSHITA!!!

Thought some of you might find this interesting, those that didnt take it apart etc... photo of the heat area, and graphics card...

Toshiba claims this is liquid cooled (the 5105-s501 at least)...

I realy dont think this qualifies as liquid cooled.. lol a stick full of liquid.. lol..

very poor cooling design.. so I made some alterations... oddly it has not crapped out on me the last day or so... but it did when I first re-gooped the heat sinks (it takes a few times of heating cooling for the goop to take full effect)...

Wow... there is actualy COOL air comming out of the fan lol... first time for everything I guess.

so heres the depot status of my laptop, i got it back but it was shippped to my parents house... this might be usefull for someone.. i paid $360+ for its fix.

comes to find out that the laptop wasn't fixed... it still has verticle lines...

For those of you trying to open up the case, this page provides a pretty good walkthrough.

I found that my display was more stable if I left out the two screws on the bottom of the case near the VGA-out port. Perhaps leavings these out prevents flex in the case from transferring to the board?

Also, you can prevent Windows from crashing when the display distorts by disabling the graphics adapter. Just open up device manager (boot into safe mode if you gotta) and right click on the display adapter and select disable. Video functions are pretty slow, but it beats trashing an otherwise nice laptop.

vid card was only the beginning

Hey, that's my web page on the disassembly -- hope it is of use to someone. I did get the replacement video card for only £293 including VAT (that's almost $600 for you stateside folks), even got someone to carry it out to me in Abuja before we moved. During the move I found I was having problems with the power supply, sometimes had to tap it on the table to get it to work. Last time I did that I thought I would leave it in to charge the (also new) battery for a while, but the AC power light kept going off and on a few times a minute so thought I should just unplug it. New AC adaptor arrived a few days later, but no dice now. Maybe the new one off eBay doesn't really work and the battery is just dead, but my voltmeter is says it looks right and no green AC light, no nothing. Guess that means the motherboard next, but I've sunk too much money into it now to carry on - at least for new parts. Might find some new info when the freight arrives with the flakey old AC adaptor and the car power adaptor, otherwise I guess I'll be looking for another one with a dead video card on eBay - or drop me a line....

back to desktops with cheap parts.

rob.

Add another victim to the list. My 5100-S501 has the same gfx problems as everyone else on this thread, under both Windows and Linux. Removed and reseated board to no avail.

I'm still not entirely convinced it isn't a heat related issue, since its much more stable when the machine as a whole is kept cool. Intensive CPU usage raises the temperature and knocks the display out.

To this end, I wrote a small Linux script to force the CPU fan on permanently (requires Toshiba ACPI kernel modules and root access or sudo)


This gives me a little more life from the machine, at the cost of battery life.