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CTX EzBook 800 No Power/No post

You'll need some low melt solder like Cerrobend or Chipquik and a hot air tool set to a really low temperature to not melt the connector getting it off.
 
I've got the hot air station, but no low-melt stuff. I could get some, sure, but either way, the PCMCIA won't ever work again without swapping the gigantic QFP controller chip, and I think at this point, I'd likely be better off just getting myself a parts unit and hoping for less damage. This one's pretty bad, and I'll bet there's damage to the inner layers of the board too.
 
Out of curiosity, what makes this particular laptop worth the effort to preserve and repair? Not trying to knock it, I'm just interested to know what's special about this machine.
 
Not much, I just like weird old laptops. It's fairly mediocre overall. They're just my thing.

I did have it running for a short time before this all happened - and from that I can say this much about it:

- The screen is fine, TFT 800x600.
- Performance seemed ok? AMD laptops are a bit more uncommon I'd say.
- Keyboard is meh. Perfectly usable but unremarkable.
- Build quality is pretty solid, although it has the usual weak point where the hinges mount.
- If working, would make a nice enough Win98 laptop overall I'd say. And plus mine is just in such nice cosmetic shape, and I've got all original documentation and stuff.

In the end I'm the kind of guy who will look at a vintage laptop, objectively know it's a pretty terrible computer to actually use, then spend several hours trying to get it to work. To me, I just imagine that not very many people will bother trying to preserve them, and I still think it's worth doing so, so that at least one will survive for a little while longer.

Not that this one is terrible, it's actually not bad at all.
 
I posted a few earlier in the thread but here’s some more, including of the back.
C8EF812A-519B-4665-8F8F-BCED105971F0.jpeg
583B5B25-2108-44CB-BCE2-13D317CA6E5D.jpeg
7295CE85-8D70-4581-805B-035228443B88.jpeg
FF6EF724-F1B8-4D9D-8DD5-433F7726BFD6.jpeg
FAD6A576-9E64-4867-9188-B86B6A3BCC22.jpeg
B9BE0E2F-3827-402F-BAAA-7FB4E59BD6B0.jpeg
Last two are the PCMCIA chip before and after cleaning. Notice the broken legs. I’d also like to point out just how massive this board is, it’s big enough to be desktop size! Never seen a laptop board this big and complex before, especially not one from this era of system.
 
Just because that chip has legs eaten off, doesn't mean it's a total loss. It is possible to either solder magnet wire to the bits left poking out, or taking a dremel to the package to get down to the chip carrier and solder to that instead.

Though, with the large number of damaged pins, that's going to take awhile. And I suspect more of those pins that look fine are just loosely packed corrosion waiting to be poked and turned to dust.

I do see many what look like lifted legs as well, that whole chip will have to be gone over.
 
3lectr1c said:
Not much, I just like weird old laptops.
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Don't we all?

Lol, this is the sort of thing I understand. Most of my vintage equipment was garbage when it was new. I just like the shapes of things. I've got an old 386 laptop I'm thinking I may try and restore if I can ever find the PSU.

I do seem to recall AMD laptops were a bit more common in the early 2000s; when I went shopping for mine I feel like they were roughly 70/30 intel/amds. But from this era? Yeah I can't remember seeing a single AMD laptop on the market during the late 90s. Then again its not like I kept super careful track.

Hey I did a quick eBay search and it looks like there's one for sale for only about $30 USD. Might be the parts machine you're after.
 
Yeah I’ve been watching that one and may grab it soon. Still considering whether I’d like to chance that I’ll end up with another battery victim or not.

@GiGaBiTe - I’m sure it’s technically fixable with enough precision and skill but I just don’t think I have that I’m afraid. My skill about peaks out at being able to bodge bad traces and replace failed capacitors, that sort of thing. I may use this board as a practice board once I’m sure I’m not going to attempt to repair it further though.

What’s funny about this model as well is that I went and dug CTX’s documentation out from the Wayback machine and they never mention an AMD K6 once. They say these were pentium laptops. Yet the only other working unit I’ve seen of these, also on eBay but much more expensive, is also a K6. Wonder what the disconnect there is.
 
3lectr1c said:
What’s funny about this model as well is that I went and dug CTX’s documentation out from the Wayback machine and they never mention an AMD K6 once. They say these were pentium laptops. Yet the only other working unit I’ve seen of these, also on eBay but much more expensive, is also a K6. Wonder what the disconnect there is.
Click to expand...

A few possibilities occur:

I know that at one point in time, AMDs were essentially intel-clones with interchangeable with Intels. I'm not sure when this changed, maybe the laptop is from that era?

Its possible the laptop was originally designed as a Pentium and only changed to AMD late in the design process(this sort of thing happens, more often than people realize) and the documentation you have is either from earlier in the design stage or was simply not updated.
 
We’ll both used socket 7 so that certainly is a possibility.

I’ve also yet to figure out who the ODM that made these was. Sure, it’s possible CTX made them in-house, but judging by what I know about laptops from smaller brands at this time, it’s likely that CTX used some OEM/ODM design. Likely the same one that Optima used for this laptop if I had to guess:

They are built quite similarly and use the same cooling design. The hinge design looks similar too.
 
3lectr1c said:
We’ll both used socket 7 so that certainly is a possibility.
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Its socket7 and your specific laptop is actually changeable. Most laptops from that era(at least all the ones I took apart as a kid) had the chips soldered directly to the board. Its completely plausible they were either installing AMDs during the production run or people just swapped them out later.
 
It was pretty common back then(and even now) for everyone to rebadge everyone else's laptops. Alienwares for example were just rebadged Sagers, and so on. Good news for you is it might mean a compatible motherboard is out there that takes coincell batteries.
 
Yeah that would be nice. And yeah the rebadging was nuts. I’ve been looking all far into that for research for my website documenting this stuff.

I’m pretty sure sager wasn’t the original manufacturer of their laptops either or am I wrong? I thought Clevo made them, and the alienwares.
 
3lectr1c said:
Yeah that would be nice. And yeah the rebadging was nuts. I’ve been looking all far into that for research for my website documenting this stuff.

I’m pretty sure sager wasn’t the original manufacturer of their laptops either or am I wrong? I thought Clevo made them, and the alienwares.
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Honestly? I don't think I ever actually knew. I just remember hearing about the whole Alienware/Sager thing because you could get a Sager for significantly less money and still get all that sweet performance. Too much for me back then, though, so I never had either.

I don't know if it was as bad back then as it is today, but something like 33% of all laptops are made by a company called Quanta in Taiwan.
 
Yeah I’m fairly certain Clevo made both of those brands laptops. I really want one of those mid 2000s Alienware laptops someday, they’re awesome.

Quanta was around back then, they made laptops like the PowerBook 1400 for apple and the WinBook FX, but we’re a lot smaller than they are today. The ODM space was really wide back then, here are the ones I remember off the top of my head:
- Jetta International
- Clevo/Nan-Tan
- Quanta
- ASE Group
- Chicony
- Compal
- Twinhead
- FIC
- Mitac
- AlphaTop
- ECS Elitegroup

And the list goes on really.
 
Heh - so IBM and Sony never actually made their own laptops. Who knew? (well, you, obviously, and probably Sony).

Those mid-2000s alienware laptops shouldn't be that expensive. They aren't quote old enough to be "retro" yet, but too old to be useful. Right in that sweet spot.
 
Well, IBM and Sony did. Well, for the most part. Many of the ThinkPad i Series laptops were made by Acer, the ThinkPad 300 was made by Zenith, and one of the other 300 series laptops was also made by Acer I'm pretty sure. Sony likely made their laptops all in-house. So did Toshiba. Some of the other big brands went through ODMs but only for manufacturing, such as Compaq and probably Dell.

The Alienware in specific that I'm after is an Aurora M7700. and the only ones I've seen on eBay were a couple hundred dollars, while I'm really not looking to spend that much. Seems the big all-powerful gaming laptops out there from the time are already sought after unfortunately. It's totally a Clevo, and I know of other brands using the same base design, but the Alienware seems to be the most common of them. The other I know of was Falcon Northwest. Plus, I love the bright blue of the Alienware model.
 
You're probably not likely to ever find an Aurora M7700 for less than a couple hundred dollars. This is very likely the-point before collectors come after them. These things were always elite and exclusive, so they were never going to hit the $30 mark. Anyone who still has one probably paid thousands of dollars for it brand new. And unlike a generic Dell or Thinkpad, its rare.
 
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