hi everyone,
my FutureTech FM88XLP2 arrived a couple some weeks ago. i was pretty
pleased with its looks and construction. the 15.1 inch display was
very nice and the whole machine worked well under windo$
it came with CD-ROM and LS-120 doubling up as 3.5 floppy. 450 Mhz
and 128 MB, 10GB disk
one day it quit working. the power button would not do anything.
after i managed to get in touch with the FutureTech, they instructed me
on how to do basic debugging (over the phone)
while taking the components out one by one, i noticed greenish, whitish
deposits near the connectors for the floppy, the CD-ROM, and the hard disk.
as if some liquid had seeped, and then dried out !
the pins themselves appeared clean.
HOWEVER, LIFTING THE KEYBOARD DID NOT SHOW ANY TRACES OF ANY LIQUID HAVING
BEEN SPILLED ON IT.
at any rate, i found that if only the CD-ROM was out, then the power button
would work, and the machine would start its selftest process. however,
after finishing with the IDE auto-detect, it would fail to show the
lilo: (for dual boot linux/windows98) prompt. the screen would just
stay blank.
disk activity could be seen, but nothing on the screen.
so, the sellers said to sent it in.
**** my question is : what could have produced those greenish - whitish
deposits near the connectors ?
i had been using the machine in lima,peru, which has high humidity
all the time. so, i thought maybe water had condensed inside the machine
and dissolved or shorted something. but, there are plenty
of laptops working just fine in that city.
i remember (or think i do) that in the old days there were some
capacitors that had stuff that could leak. could it be something like
that ?
any clues ?
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In Heaven there will be no DOS, no Intel, and above all, no Bill.
