Two Lombards

#1 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 - 09:20 68kMLA

Hi,

My girlfriend asked if I could build up a notebook for one of her best friends, so I was lucky enough to score:

Lombard # 1: The old "$20 special", 333Mhz 192MB/4GB, stuffed DVD drive, old black (unsafe?) charger. Sadly the screen was smashed to bits during shipping it to me: a total of 10km!

Lombard # 2: Keeping on the "$20 special", this time round a much better condition 400Mhz model ? RAM/stuffed 4GB HD, no optical drive.

So now I've a nice little project on my hands, to merge the two machines together. Both machines appear to boot but due to no OS installed nor optical drive I've been unable to test them both. However, I'm hoping to make it up into a sweet 400+ Mhz machine, 256MB+ RAM, and a new 80GB HD. Should make for an adequate 10.3.9 machine to run Firefox and the like.

JB

#2 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 - 10:49 68kMLA

Nice, I'd be lucky enough to get even one.

#3 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 - 12:03 68kMLA

Nice score. Out of curiousity, how well was (or wasn't) Lombard #1 packed?

#4 Tue, 11 Nov 2008 - 02:34 68kMLA

Badly - in two sheets of bubble wrap in an express post bag

It's in terrible condition though, but working, so I can't complain - I will use most of the plastics etc from Lombard # 2.

JB

#5 Tue, 11 Nov 2008 - 19:32 68kMLA

Ghah. I shipped my mil-spec toughened tablet PCs in more protection that that.

#6 Wed, 12 Nov 2008 - 02:32 68kMLA

I quickly built up the Super Lombard last night; mostly using the parts from the 400Mhz model, and using the keyboard, RAM and HD from the other mess of a notebook.

It boots, all good, reinstalled 8.6. Turned it on today and when you plug it in, the green light turns on and it attempts to start up (hard disk, fan) without me pressing any power button. I turned it on properly, chimes, grey screen - and that's no, no more. Looks like I might be in for some lengthy troubleshooting ...

JB

#7 Wed, 12 Nov 2008 - 11:19 68kMLA

So I'm pretty sure the "glamour" Lombard # 2 is the 400Mhz with the old faulty L2 cache problem; it can't reliably boot OS 9 and it came up with a cache error dialog box (and then it was fine). Of course, getting it to boot is the problem - I can only get it to do so every ten restarts or so.

At least I've a 333Mhz CPU card, and can hopefully get this up to 400Mhz (a past Lombard I owned went straight to 433Mhz, which was quite a surprise!)

JB

#8 Fri, 14 Nov 2008 - 03:43 68kMLA

Sadly the 400Mhz/1MB cache card is definately a goner; as soon as I plug in the 333Mhz/512K cache card, it boots reliably and without issue.

Does anyone know if the DVD decoder is hard wired to the Lombard 400's motherboard or a removable part?

Thanks

JB