Principia Discordia

Principia Discordia => Apple Talk => Topic started by: Cuddlefish on January 24, 2011, 03:38:48 PM

Title: Ah, Hell
Post by: Cuddlefish on January 24, 2011, 03:38:48 PM
My computer shit the bed (Asus Eee PC black screen of death). Did my best to fix it (even opened the thing up to look for the cmos battery without breaking it further. Turns out there's an external cmos reset button  :| ). That and the semester starts today, so if anyone notices my lack of attendance here, that's why. If you don't notice my absence, then, please to disregard message.
Title: Re: Ah, Hell
Post by: Adios on January 24, 2011, 03:41:00 PM
Damn.
Title: Re: Ah, Hell
Post by: Cramulus on January 24, 2011, 03:44:05 PM
hey how old is your computer? I've got an asus eee PC too and I've heard they do eventually just quit.
Title: Re: Ah, Hell
Post by: Triple Zero on January 24, 2011, 04:46:24 PM
This is interesting to know. I got a Medion Akoya (MSI Wind ALDI rebrand), but it's just slowly falling apart cause I take it everywhere and use it so much, I don't have the feeling it would actually every just simply quit.

Why do they quit? What breaks in them?

Currently mine has: the batteries duct-taped in their place cause a clips of the battery cover broke off. The fan is making a lot of noise sometimes, I should open it and see why. The A key got fucked up once due to beer spillage, but by popping out the keys and attacking them with cotton-swab-tips and toothpicks, I somehow managed to solve that. Two weeks ago it fell on the ground and some part of the hinge for the screen popped out or broke off, now the screen falls open or closed if I don't prop it. I think the WiFi antenna wire got loose too, cause my WiFi doesn't work anymore. I think I can fix those last two by opening it up as well.

The little machine is two years old.

Poor thing.

Maybe once it gets unusuable I'll turn it into a closet-media-server or something. That is, if the CPU still works.
Title: Re: Ah, Hell
Post by: Sir Squid Diddimus on January 24, 2011, 05:39:08 PM
I had one of their first models that just shit the bed as well.
Same black screen. It ran really hot though as there wasn't adequate cooling for the chip so I assume that was the problem.

It was one of the white ones with the little iddy biddy keys on the keyboard.

The newer one I have is awesome though. Hope it doesn't just die on me
Title: Re: Ah, Hell
Post by: Cuddlefish on January 25, 2011, 03:29:18 PM
From what I was able to gather (though, my understanding of computer lingo, admittedly, isn't the tops) a couple things can cause this particular problem with this model of computer. One of which is updating to a newer OS (I think that's what I want to say), which for one reason or another causes the comp to not boot. The other is a hardware issue dealing with the CMOS battery (whatever the hell that is), which there ARE some hackneyed fixes for, though none worked for me. I'm really not sure what I'm gonna do about this. I'm going to have my guitarist look at it and see what he can do. If not, I can use the unused fed. money for school to get a new one, which would suck, because I don't get that till the end of the semester, and it would be nice to have a comp for school. Ah, well. I'm over it.
Title: Re: Ah, Hell
Post by: Triple Zero on January 26, 2011, 02:18:05 PM
Afaik, the CMOS a chip that contains information, program code and circuits that the computer needs to know in order to even start to figure out how to use this CPU processor thingy and all those wires and boot the damn thing.

Or maybe that was the BIOS.

Anyway, the battery in it is, among other things, for keeping the clock running while the computer is off. I think. Unless that is again a separate battery. Because I heard of computers where this battery ran out and it just meant that the time was always wrong cause the clock didn't progress when the computer was off. But then, maybe these Asus EEE things won't even boot if the clock don't run.

Okay okay I admit, I have no idea and I'm just guessing.
Title: Re: Ah, Hell
Post by: Richter on January 26, 2011, 02:27:40 PM
Which EEE verison is it?  Mine shat the bad software wise, but with some advice from the EEE PC forums ( eeeuser.com or something), I was able to reinstall everything.  Sound doesn't work now, but when I wiped/reinstalled it came back to factory spec fine.
Title: Re: Ah, Hell
Post by: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on January 27, 2011, 08:58:40 PM
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 26, 2011, 02:18:05 PM
Afaik, the CMOS a chip that contains information, program code and circuits that the computer needs to know in order to even start to figure out how to use this CPU processor thingy and all those wires and boot the damn thing.

Or maybe that was the BIOS.

Anyway, the battery in it is, among other things, for keeping the clock running while the computer is off. I think. Unless that is again a separate battery. Because I heard of computers where this battery ran out and it just meant that the time was always wrong cause the clock didn't progress when the computer was off. But then, maybe these Asus EEE things won't even boot if the clock don't run.

Okay okay I admit, I have no idea and I'm just guessing.

CMOS is the chip, BIOS is the code on the chip ;-)

The battery also holds the BIOS configuration... so if there is no battery, it will revert to some 'default' which could be a problem. I'm wondering if the upgrade was to the BIOS rather than the OS. An OS shouldn't stop the system from booting... might stop it from loading the OS successfully, but it should still at least get to POST. If the BIOS was updated and failed/had bad code etc. it could screw the ability for the system to boot usefully.