Old Presario 1200 Laptop -- Boot problem

[wscreate]

I have an old Compaq Presario 1200 laptop with a K6 processor. It appeared dead, it would not do anything at all as if it had no power. I found that the single USB port was damaged... the internals were touching each other. I straightened that out and the unit will now power up, the lights and indicators on the keyboard light up fine and I can hear the hard drive power up. The fans work and the CPU gets warm. However, the screen will not light up at all. I checked all of the connections for the peripherals on the mother board and everything is hooked up and tight.

Since the unit seems to power up the fans and the lights on the keyboard, but not the screen, does it sound like a CPU is burned out or is this a mother board problem?

 

[Que]

It wouldn't run that far with a fried cpu. GPU may be bad, test that by attaching a monitor to the vga-out, monitor ok = gpu ok.
Tap the switch that turns off the screen when you close the lid, a couple of times. Might be stuck after a long period of no use. Also disconnect/reconnect the LCD Power Inverter cable from/to the motherboard, (it runs through the hinge from the base to the screen), very susceptible to damage, given the strain of bending when opening/closing the lid.
If you have a slot with a vga card, take the card out and put it back in. Not much else you can do when you have an onboard GPU chip.

 

[wscreate]

It wouldn't run that far with a fried cpu. GPU may be bad, test that by attaching a monitor to the vga-out, monitor ok = gpu ok.
Tap the switch that turns off the screen when you close the lid, a couple of times. Might be stuck after a long period of no use. Also disconnect/reconnect the LCD Power Inverter cable from/to the motherboard, (it runs through the hinge from the base to the screen), very susceptible to damage, given the strain of bending when opening/closing the lid.
If you have a slot with a vga card, take the card out and put it back in. Not much else you can do when you have an onboard GPU chip.

Thanks for your reply.

I disconnected and reconnected the LCD cable. I hooked up an external monitor and it also does not work. I tapped the switch that is connected when closing the lid. Still does not work. I do not see a slot with a vga card.

I listened to the hard drive. It is alive. However, when I turn this pc on, I do not hear the usual "beep" when the bios starts to load to the screen. Initially, when I first began trouble shooting, when I would turn this on, I would hear 3 loud beeps and then nothing. Now, pushing the power button gets the following results.

The hard drive hums as if it is working.
The cpu gets warm
The lights near the onboard touch mouse light up fine

That's all that happens. It's as if parts of the pc are alive, but it will not boot. So, I still am not certain whether this is a CPU issue or a motherboard issue or whatever. I can search on ebay for a motherboard and/or cpu. However, I am looking for a hint as to which I should try to replace first.

Thanks.

 

[wscreate]

I forgot to mention, the cd tray will not open and it does not spin up as if it is getting power or a signal of any sort. I checked the physical connection to the motherboard and the connection is firm and good.

 

[Que]

Is your bios battery still holding voltage? Might want to change that as one of the first things. No luck with that cd drive out of the laptop? Check for that 3 beeps, possibly a bios error code pointing to something, like bad ram.
Beep Codes

 

[wscreate]

Is your bios battery still holding voltage? Might want to change that as one of the first things. No luck with that cd drive out of the laptop? Check for that 3 beeps, possibly a bios error code pointing to something, like bad ram.
Beep Codes

Thanks for the reply.

I thought about the battery. I bet it needs to be replaced. I bought this laptop in 1999. I will replace this first.

Question. If the bios battery has lost its charge, will I need to do something to bios to get it up and running again?

 

[Que]

Question. If the bios battery has lost its charge, will I need to do something to bios to get it up and running again?

You may have to set bios up again, time, bootorder etc., the defaults it resets itself to are conservative fail-safe settings.
I see these laptops complete, cheaper as a replacement motherboard, on ebay, btw.

 

[wscreate]

Just tested the bios battery. It is completely without voltage. With the bios battery removed, I started up the pc and I got the 3 beeps again. I guess this is a signal that the bios battery is dead or missing.

Question: Will the bios battery being completely dead (or removed) cause the problems below...

When the laptop is powered on.....
The hard drive hums as if it is working.
The cpu gets warm
The lights near the onboard touch mouse light up fine
The pc will not turn on the monitor, lcd or external monitor
There is no single beep alert to acknowledge that the pc is booting properly

 

[Que]

Question: Will the bios battery being completely dead (or removed) cause the problems below...

When the laptop is powered on.....
The hard drive hums as if it is working. ---Yes, it powers/spins up right on power on, it only needs power to do so, not a command from bios. You may also hear the heads of the drive move from the parking state to the center of the platters.
The cpu gets warm -----Yes, same story, getting power.
The lights near the onboard touch mouse light up fine -----Idem
The pc will not turn on the monitor, lcd or external monitor ---- Yes, bios informs the rest of the system what to look for, where, what to do with it, now it can't.
There is no single beep alert to acknowledge that the pc is booting properly ---- Guess so?

 

[wscreate]

Thanks for helping me out with this issue, que.

I've been reading about dead bios batteries, and the symptoms sound a lot like mine, as you have confirmed. I will be getting a new CR1220 battery tomorrow and will update this thread when I have installed it.

Thanks again.

 

[wscreate]

Bought a new battery for the bios. Installed it, but no luck. Still no single beep showing the boot up process is proceeding and the lcd screen does not come to life at all. The external monitor also shows no sign of life. Sounds like a bad motherboard?

 

[Que]

If you are shure about the memory and processor being okay, it is probably a dead motherboard. The short in the usb might have killed something.

 

[jjh]

This is a problem that has driven Presario 1200 owners nuts for the last 5 years...The problem is that the cmos bios chip develops an intermittent short, when powered up, the power/peripheral chip does an initial read of the cmos bios to determine its integrity. If the bios chips does not respond with the right bits, the laptop will not start. The solution is to replace the bios chip, an Atmel 49F002T, with either the same package (TSOP) or a PLCC package....See the entire horror story here, but the good stuff is about 3/4 of the way down:
http://www.ltcomputers.com/compaq.cfm

While it is true that replacing the cmos batter may cure the problem, it is only a temporary fix because (I believe) that when the cmos battery falls below a certain voltage, spikes from the switching of the power supply and internal battery causes a breakdown of the junctions on some pins of the 49F002T (notably A10 and /OE). The article makes for interesting reading, and the solution emerged after about 1.7 years of complaining and investigating...but the solution didn't come from HP...infact, they stifled the efforts to provide a solution.
Good luck
John