OT: Computer repair

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Why? The repair tech has determined that the fault is in the motherboard, which is the field-replaceable unit. Short of tooling up to remanufacture the boards, it's time to replace the logic board or declare the unit unrepairable.

Probably the motherboard, even with good battery, power supply, RAM, still doesn't pass power-on-self-test. The technician knows why- it's a bad logic board. Fried, in his parlance.

schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@80g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...

You almost understand what I mean. If "the motherboard, even with good battery, power supply, RAM, still doesn't pass power-on-self-test" then that's what I want to hear. "Fried motherbord" tells next to nothing.

petrus bitbyter

"petrus bitbyter" wrote in news:4589765e$0$22284$ snipped-for-privacy@dreader25.news.xs4all.nl:

Why would you take a 586 machine to a repair shop in the first place, get a pentium on ebay for $20...

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Ebay? around here you can get P1 machines for nothing, if you just tell people you want one. Newer and faster machines are harder to find, but I was told the County will have to replace a little over 200 five year old Dell computers this year, and they had trouble GIVING away about the same number of working systems last year. They were under a corporate OS license, so the HD has been reformatted. You can stick the hard drive from your old machine into one of them. and find the drivers in a hour or less.

I started telling people I wanted old computers and parts about two years ago. I get pickup truck loads of dead computers from single phone calls. I am teaching a free computer repair course, and the kids love to fire up a junker, and find the problems, or will sit there for hours testing and sorting piles of salvaged parts. One of the largest churches in the area is mostly retirees and I was asked if I could teach some of them, as well. I have had parts and computers sent to me by members of this newsgroup, as well. The repaired computers go to disabled Veterans. I heard a couple weeks ago that the VFW just got the land and zoning to build a new retirement home, so I have to talk to them about some computers for their residents. These men and women live on small military pensions, and can use all the help they can get.

Will they have high-speed Internet access? Seems to me that's going to be a key feature as boomers and younger generations start moving into retirement homes -- to a large extent to stay in contact with others via e-mail.

---Joel

If the VFW home provide space for the computers, I will try to get the cable company to donate free broadband. I can dig up enough networking to connect at least a half dozen computers. Maybe they can even be talked into pre wiring the rooms for individual network ports? If it is like the other home in the area, there are four to eight small apartments per building, and a community center. You would be amazed at the number of senior citizens who have a computer, a laptop, and a broadband connection for their home wireless network.

BTW, three boxes arrived Tuesday at 3:07 PM. Thanks.

My opinion of cable providers would definitely go up a notch if they agreed. :-)

That would be great (quite smart, really), although there's always the wireless option if not. Let me know if you want a wireless router; I have a Linksys WRT54GC sitting around that you can have if so.

---Joel