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Dell Latitude CPi A series - not booting after resetting BIOS password (?)

JamieDoesStuff

JamieDoesStuff

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 9, 2021
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Location
Novi Sad, Serbia
Hello, everyone.

I bought a Latitude CPi a couple of days ago. It's a fine machine; when it's working, that is.
After seeing that the BIOS was locked with an administrative password, and finding an archived website detailing on how to remove it on Dells, I did the deed.
It required removing the Pentium II 300 Mhz CPU from the board - MMC-2 socket - to get to the EEPROM chip which held the password. I jumped the 2 required pins and (seemingly) put the CPU back in. It lit up the power LED, caps, num and scroll lock, and stayed that way for a few seconds, powering back off. So I (foolishly) thought the RAM might be the issue, and removed just one stick, but the problem persisted. Next, I turned my attention to the CPU. Well, look at that, it wasn't properly seated! Turns out I didn't clip in the connector at all. So, fingers crossed, i powered it on, and voila! The service menu appeared, and the password was indeed gone!

Next, I proceeded to put that one RAM stick in its slot, and did an obligatory power test.
Whoops.
Now, there's only an orange battery LED lighting up for a second, and powering on the machine does nothing. There's also a rapid, clicking sound coming from the general direction of the NeoMagic GPU-thing, although it was making it while the CPU wasn't inserted as well.
What's weird to me is that the LEDs lit up just the same as in the first paragraph, without the CPU inserted, before i put in that stick of RAM.

I don't see any bent pins on the CPU connector, nor on the RAM. Unfortunately, I don't have spare sticks to test with them, but I'll get some if that's a possible issue. No idea where to get the CPU, though.

So, I dunno what the issue could be. I'm hoping someone here could help me get this sorted out, as this is my first retro machine, and I'd hate seeing it slowly accumulate dust under the bed.

Cheers.
 
Welcome to the forum @JamieDoesStuff .

I would indeed try taking the RAM out and powering the machine on. It should power on even with no RAM installed, and beep. You should also make sure that the CPU is seated correctly.

Have you looked at the Dell service manual? Those are usually available, as Dell keeps vintage content on their website.

- Alex
 
Hi,
Yes, I've done all of that. The service manual was how I even managed to get this thing apart.
There are no beeps when pressing the power button, and none of the lights... light up.
 
Here's an update:

The machine "boots" only when the power button is held and the DC adapter plug is inserted. This is in quotes because A.) sometimes it bootloops, and does just plain weird things, such as stay powered on and do nothing forever and B.) will not respond to any keypress on an external PS/2 keyboard, sometimes displaying a "Stuck key failure" message.
It also only displays on external VGA, no internal panel.

The more I think about it the less sense it makes. What could've been screwed so badly to make it misbehave like this? After all it was only a RAM stick.
 
Take the processor and ram back out, carefully inspect all the connectors, clean with dust off/compressed air, and put it all back together. Its possible the CPU didn't seat correctly or a bit of dust got in there.
 
I've got none at the moment. I'll head to town tomorrow and get a can or two. Still, I doubt that's the issue here. I've reinserted the CPU multiple times, and it looked fine from what I saw. Also, the machine worked fine until I got that RAM stick back in there. What are the chances that static caused this? From what I gather these sticks are quite sensitive, so could be that. Still, I try to be careful: every time I handle any component, I first touch my desktop PC case.
 
Hello, just found this thread now, same guy from the YouTube comment I presume? This is The Electrical Outlet.

Have you removed the CMOS battery? It is a VARTA type that is prone to leaking. It’s possible that you may have some minor damage there as well.
I’d also be curious to see what a BIOS reflash would do, although it may be risky to do one if power on is unreliable. You don’t want to brick that.
 
Yup, I'm that same guy.

Removing the Varta batt was the first thing I did when I got it. It leaked into the connector a bit, but otherwise it's fine. Hasn't gotten to the board.

As for flashing the BIOS, I wouldn't do that, because of the flaky power, as you mentioned. Besides, I don't believe that's the problem.

I'll reassemble the board even further today, see what might be wrong with it. Doubt it'll be anything visible though.

And hey, since you have the same laptop, could you check if it makes that clicking sound somewhere around the NeoMagic GPU/audio thing?

edit: typing mistake. i hate phone keyboards.
 
What area inside is the NeoMagic chipset located? I don't remember hearing any clicking from mine. I highly doubt that the chip itself is making the noise, I'd guess it would be a fan stuck or something shorting out in the DC/DC or VRM section of the board. Could you record audio of what the clicking sounds like?

Edit: No clicking from mine.
 
Last edited:
I haven't been successful in fully disassembling the board. I got it out from the bottom case, but, as you could see, there's a metal bracket that's holding it in place, and it's stuck to it. I'm afraid if I were to use more force it might break.
I'll take a recording in a moment.
 
This just got a bit more interesting.

@3lectr1c , my phone's microphone isn't very good, and as such I wasn't able to get a recording.
However, I did reseat the CPU again as a last ditch effort, and got more feedback as a result!
When booting, the machine now throws a light code error: 5-1-2, which, according to the User's Manual, means no usable memory could be found. Accordingly, I removed one stick of RAM and now it seems to POST, but there's no display output, however. I plugged in an external keyboard, and the LEDs on it light up accordingly.

After this, I put back in that RAM stick, in a different slot however, and it's not complaining anymore. Weird.
The clicking persists. Perhaps I should take my chances and try to dissassemble it completely?
 
So. If you've taken one of yours apart fully you've probably noticed the motherboard is split up into two parts - the second part, on the left side being a daugherboard of sorts - to make room for the PCMCIA slots, presumably.

Well, turns out, and this is just a theory, that, when adding the second RAM stick, I somehow managed to slightly dislodge one of the connections between them. So if I hadn't taken the board fully out I would've concluded that it's just dead and thrown it under my bed, never to be seen again. Good thing I wasn't lazy as usual with this, I guess.

So, the problem is now solved! sorta. There's still that noise coming from around the middle of the keyboard, but it's very faint: it's hearable only very close up to it. I don't recall hearing it the first time I powered the machine, but then again, it's not like I was specifically listening for it :) Don't know, don't care. It works fine. (for now, at least!)

Also, the RAM situation: there were a couple of times when, during assembly, I power-tested the machine. 2 times, it gave me that light code, but slightly pushing on the RAM seemed to fix it? I'll have to run Memtest86+ tomorrow, see what it finds.

Anyhow, I consider this quite fixed. In the end, it turned out to be completely harmless, and I'm very happy because of that!

Thanks everyone for suggestions on trying to figure this out!

P.S. @3lectr1c , amazing how "well" PvP crawls on this machine! You'd think such a game would fly on it, but PopCap do be PopCap.
 
Glad to hear that you’ve gotten yours fixed! I haven’t ever taken mine apart that far so I didn’t know about that actually.

I honestly thought the opposite about PvZ though - I’m surprised that it ran at all on mine. It’s from the late 2000s after all.
 
Sure, it's 10 years newer than the machine it's running on, but look at it: it's a 2D strategy game. Amazing that it can even utilize 3D acceleration (for some reason??? like I get Bejeweled 2 with the neat spinny 3D animations, tunnels and transparency, but this?)
 
I have the same issue with 4 Latitude CPi machines I was given. The website in question seems to be gone now. Any hints on how to reset the password on these?
 
The first link uses the same procedure as qasimtoep's site, and both are of course correct. Did you unlock them all? Also make sure to remove the CMOS battery if you haven't already. BTW, do you have any working main batteries from these? From what I gathered, they use some very high quality Sony cells that aren't very eager on dying. I found another guy'site and his battery, as of 2023, holds an almost-perfect charge. Mine holds for about 1,5 hours.
 
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