Gateway Solo 9300, Won't Power On, Any Experience??

[kb0nly]

Anyone have experience with this particular model and this problem??

From what the owner told me... One day it works, the next day go to turn it on and nothing, was always just sitting on the desk plugged in. When you plug it in the battery light comes on, orange and charging, push the power button and the power light blinks on once every couple seconds, and thats it.

Weird! I did some general snooping, checked the voltage from the power adapter and that was fine, even tried another power adapter of the same voltage and current rating, no change. I'm thinking something just died on it, and if thats the case its time to scrap it out, but just curious if this is a common failure with these old Solo laptops.

I did some google searching on it and didn't come up with much there either.

Anyway, about to junk it and figured i would post on here for the heck of it. Seems like a lot of us on here, me included, work on computers for a living so chances are this was a common problem i just havent seen before.

[JAYMZ]

If that is the "vintage" I think it is the computer may have literally just reached it's end of life. You know... cracked solder joint on the internal PS... components with intermittent failures... Unless it were a computer that was within a year or 2 old... I would do the same thing. Suggest that it is time for an upgrade, back up their data and send them on their way.

[kb0nly]

Yep, unfortunately thats all i can i do at this point. Something went to heck inside it. It's an older lady with out much money to spare and she only uses it for email to the kids, etc.. So yeah its old and slow but it ran at her pace! LOL

People just don't have money to spend on stuff like this these days, i see more and more people just tossing instead of fixing computers, and not just old laptops like this. I found a complete computer sitting on the curb, the only thing wrong with it was a bad power supply and i had a working computer.

Unfortunately i am feeling the economy crunch here now.....

[Jim202]

You might want to do just a little checking. If it's like some of the other computers around, there has to
be 5 volts available all the time in order for the power supply to turn on. The ATX type power supplies
have a green wire in the middle of the connector. Pulling this wire to ground will normally turn the
power supply on.

If you have this type supply, take a moment and check it out. You may have a bad front panel switch
connection not letting the power supply start up.

Jim

[kb0nly]

This is a laptop, not a desktop...

And yes, know all about the ATX power supplies. I built an inline tester that i can put between the power supply and motherboard for just that purpose. Comes in handy often.

[JAYMZ]

Scott you have a schematic for what you did? I have a tester that one of my college professors gave me but it just plugs into the supple and doesn't hook to the MoBo at all.

[kb0nly]

Not really, its just something i put together. I can explain how i did it however!

I took the 20 pin cable from a dead power supply, about 4 inches of the wire on the plug, and then i desoldered the 20 pin jack from a dead motherboard. From that point on i just soldered and heatshrinked all the wires to the jack from the plug pigtail. After i had that done i put a latching pushbutton switch inline with the green wire to ground, so i can turn the power supply on and off independent of the motherboard.

I also took some of those bullet connectors, i think thats what they still call them, and clipped the various voltages, 3.3v, 5v, etc, and put one of those female bullet connectors on to splice them back together, the only reason i did that is it gives me a convenient inline place to put in the voltmeter probes to check voltages if something is awry.

I have thought about making something more sophisticated, maybe a rotary switch and voltmeter built into a small project box, rotate the switch to select whatever line you want to check voltages, etc.

[JAYMZ]

Ah ok. I figured you had gone all out to begin with. The tester I have is a simple plug n play pass/fail device. I like your idea, I think I have a dead MoBo that I can rape the connector off of.

[kb0nly]

I have one of those to. But its nice having this one so that if i'm testing a mothboard i can just use that to turn it on instead.