Compaq R3480 system board

[Olivier Fourdan]

Hi all,

My Compaq R3480EA laptop has died last mid-December. I had a lot of
problems with this laptop. It was less than 2 years old when it died, so
I will never ever buy anything from Compaq/HP anymore and will advise
anyone to avoid Compaq/HP brand. HP support has been totally lame (I
live in Europe, if that makes a difference)

Well, this being said, I believe it's the nVidia GeForce4 Go MX440 video
card or the 64Mb embedded video ram that has died.

Since it's soldered on the motherboard, I have no choice but replacing
the system board, or trash the laptop all together.

I wonder if it's possible to buy a, cheaper, second hand, working system
board for the R3000. Does anyone has any hint or information on this?

Thanks in advance,
Olivier.

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:38:15 +0100

Post by Olivier Fourdan
My Compaq R3480EA laptop has died last mid-December. I had a lot of
problems with this laptop. It was less than 2 years old when it died, so
I will never ever buy anything from Compaq/HP anymore and will advise
anyone to avoid Compaq/HP brand. HP support has been totally lame (I
live in Europe, if that makes a difference)
Well, this being said, I believe it's the nVidia GeForce4 Go MX440 video
card or the 64Mb embedded video ram that has died.
Since it's soldered on the motherboard, I have no choice but replacing
the system board, or trash the laptop all together.
I wonder if it's possible to buy a, cheaper, second hand, working system
board for the R3000. Does anyone has any hint or information on this?

I have to agree on the quality issue. I have a problem with the hard
disk connector, which is also soldered to the motherborad on my
R3240US. It's only 20 months old, and that's not the only problem I
have had. For example, the design of the keyboard makes it really easy
to catch a fingernail under a keycap and snap it out. I had to replace
the motherboard already. Luckily I found one on eBay for $50. I also
don't like the fact that the faceplate around the keyboard is just
painted, so it shows scratches and wear. And when the lid is closed the
screen touches parts of the faceplate, leaving marks on the screen.

The good part is that I have everything working with Ubuntu Edgy amd64.
Also, it was not expensive, considering what I got for my money. But
next time Im going to spend a little more and get something that
hopefully is better quality.

Maybe google can help you find a replacement motherboard.

[Jonathan Berry]

Post by Olivier Fourdan
Hi all,
My Compaq R3480EA laptop has died last mid-December. I had a lot of
problems with this laptop. It was less than 2 years old when it died, so
I will never ever buy anything from Compaq/HP anymore and will advise
anyone to avoid Compaq/HP brand. HP support has been totally lame (I
live in Europe, if that makes a difference)
Well, this being said, I believe it's the nVidia GeForce4 Go MX440 video
card or the 64Mb embedded video ram that has died.

I think the exact same thing happened to me. I had used my laptop one
night for quite a while, then the next day when I booted it up, the
screen was all scrambled. It looked a lot like a video RAM issue
(could have been the GPU controlling the VRAM, not sure). Eventually
it got to where it would not boot at all. This only a little more
than a year after I bought it (if only I had extended my warranty,
*sigh*). I decided just to take the loss and build be a nice desktop,
which I did for less than the cost of the laptop the year before
(well, about the same if you count the LCD display I bought a little
while after that).

I didn't try HP support when this happened as it was just out of
warranty and I was in the midst of my second to last semester of
college, so I didn't have the time to see if HP would do anything for
me. Also, by this time they had stopped making the R3000z. I did
deal with them about a month before this when my battery had gotten to
where it would not hold a charge. They sent me a new battery and I
shipped the old one back to them. Everything went smoothly and the
service was excellent. I am in the US, so you may be right and part
of your issues being that you are in Europe.

I'm not sure how much good it does to personally "black-list"
HP/Compaq. There really doesn't seem to be a good laptop manufacturer
out there, or at least none that really stand out. Especially if you
want an AMD CPU or AMD+nVidia.

Jonathan

[Olivier Fourdan]

Post by Olivier Fourdan
Since it's soldered on the motherboard, I have no choice but replacing
the system board, or trash the laptop all together.
I wonder if it's possible to buy a, cheaper, second hand, working system
board for the R3000. Does anyone has any hint or information on this?

Just for the record, if that can help others, well , I did it... I
bought a motherboard on ebay (quite expensive, got to find one seller
that would ship the item over to Europe), and got it installed in the
R3480EA. I wouldn't say it was easy, it took me 2 hours to open the
laptop, replace the motherboard, put the CPU back in place and put all
pieces back together.

I ran into some trouble, when at first boot the BIOS just hanged with
the message:

104-Unsupported wireless network device detected.
System Halted. Remove device and restart.

Scary, heh?

Well, I did just what it says, I removed the keyboard and unplugged the
wireless card. Then I could boot and update the BIOS to the latest one
available from HP/Compaq. Then I plugged the wireless card again, and
all is well now. It appears that the motherboard had a bios a too old
for the wireless card that shipped with my R3480EA.

My R3000 is functionnal again...

Cheers,
Olivier.