I broke my laptop

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in news:bUlGs.696421$ snipped-for-privacy@fx21.am:

The water causes the chip to deliver the wrong, too high voltage, processor and/or memory dies, and in doing that, draws excessive current, melting the stabilizer chip. No need for the water to carry lots of current.

Not clear why you chose to obscure the plug in the picture. If that's a metal ring around the periphery of the plug, the likely scenario is that the wine got on the outside and shorted that metal ring to the pads on the socket. Then the pins got hot and melted the plug and socket. The conductive medium may have been remnants of flux.

I'd clean up the socket to clear the shorts and see if it runs on an external monitor. Since you have the schematic, put power to it and see if the display works. Then worry about the chip. You can always remove the tape and tap into the power wires and jumper to the board.

In what way were they defective? I have a cheap EMachine whose VGA output failed (the HDMI seemed to still produce some output, but I can't use that) and a cheap Gateway laptop whose output to its LCD screen also failed (at about the time I had decided to use it with a serial link to the EMachine to try to see what was going on.

Both have NVidia chips.

Then I used the laptop with an external VGA monitor and a serial link to the Emachine. When I made the serial connection, both machines started to display correctly, and have worked for some months since!

That's enough to make me wonder what is in those NVidia chips besides VGA circuitry.

Bizarre.

There was a class action suit involving Dell, HP-Compaq, and some others. I attempted to get 5 laptops repaired under the settlement, but was denied because I lacked the original receipt. I did manage to get one repaired by Dell. They replaced the motherboard with another defective motherboard trading one problem for another. When I called Dell to get their repair fixed under their warranty, they announced that they do not warranty their own warranty repairs. I gave up.

The original Nvidia settlement web site was removed immediately after the settlement window had expired. These offer some detail: What I find disgusting is that even during the settlement window, Nvidia was continuing to ship known defective video chips.

Sorry, but I can't help you. You didn't bother supplying the model number or either the machine or video card. I have had serious difficulties in the distant past dealing with Emachine hardware and refuse to fix them. The most common problem is a failing power supply, which initially causes parts and pieces of the computer to act oddly (hangs, crashes, feature failures, etc). Eventually, the power supply just quits, making the culprit obvious.

I have 3 assorted Gateway laptops in the closet (for parts). All have the same problem. They won't turn on. Gateway has been uncooperative bordering on hostile, has refused to supply repair information, parts, or repair information. I don't have the time or equipment to do reballing, so they're destined for either a miraculous fix if I can find the parts and time, or cannibalization.

So do most of my working laptops.

Yes, that's common. There's no common failure mode for the Nvidia chips. More correctly, there are multiple failure modes most of which are itemized in the settlement web pages. Sometimes, and external monitor works, sometimes not.

There's a HUGE amount of technology in the video chips. The idea is to offload anything that has to do with video to the video chips, leaving the CPU to run programs, not deal with video management. Just read about the enhanced technologies used by game programs and you'll have a clue. (near bottom of page)

Not really. More like disgusting.

Are any P series ? We might be able to make a deal. I got one that seemed t o shut down at random running Vista, but would run Linux all week long. It was not the OS though because I had four identical ones and swapped drives around and the problem stayed with the machine. Also the HD (a WD1600BEVT) locked itself and Gateway as ell as WD are being useless. This spontateous lockdown is a known issue with this model. Guess what I will never buy agai n and will unrecommend in the strongest of terms.

Anyway, this laptop is a real gem. I broke the CD door (front only) on the one I use so that is getting swapped, but it still works. I broke the keybo ard connector on the MB so I have to use external, but it doesn't matter be cause the one I use is about ready. The edge enter key is flopping in the b reeze and the arrow keys need to be hit hard to work.

My sister had one of the lot I bought and broke the screen so that is gone. The PS has been dropped and has a cracked case.

Although it shuts down, it does not fail to power up. Think maybe we can do something with the lot of them ? (that is if they're P series, these are t he 17" jobs with the (almost) full keyboard, which is one of the reasons I bought them)

They have the shitties sound I have ever heard. It's compressed like AM rad io and I can't seem to find out how to turn off that "feature".

Anyway, I would trade the thing for damnear anything. It's basically a core in a way. the shutting down could well be a cooling problem, one of your s crap units might have just what it needs. A cooling problem would explain w hy it shuts down on Vista but not Ubuntu.

Lemmme know if we might be able to do something here. I don't weant muuch f or such aa decrepit thing of course, in fact a trade would be good. Junk fo r junk lol.

Thank you for the links; I'll take a look. After I complete my tax return :-(