Good day to you all,
thanks for the help with my "mysterious Floppy" it worked out fine.

This new problem is to do with a Compaq armada 4130t which has a rather peculiar problem

This particular individual fails to start up and emits a loud and irritating hiss from both laptop speakers.

We (me n my buddy) have taken this baby to bits cleaned the mobo and it still hisses...

Need some more ideas on what 2 do

thanks for your time

MacuserLouis

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Aspire to acquire what you require.

When you say, fails to start, do you mean that it does not
boot up or post?

If so, you have a bad regulator on your power supply.
In other words, improper voltage going to the motherboard
from the power supply connector.

Sounds like to much voltage.

If you system does boot, then how far does it go?

maybe a different problem altogether.

Thanks rstarr,

Well mentioning power supplies we measured the p/output and found it at 15.5v instead of the 18.75 V rated on the power supply.

Could this be it? the powersupply also has a growling sound. Is there a possibility of it being something else.

for your question about booting? the laptop does not even post (hardware and memory count). It immediately breaks into the hiss after the first 5 seconds.

Is the information of help?

thanks
MacuserLouis

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Aspire to acquire what you require.

Sounds like either a dying PSU or just a failing power regulation system in general. Your 18V supply dropping to 15.5V is enough to keep the entire system from booting, since it cuts that power apart in several places. Your laptop's CPU shouldn't be taking that much power at once, of course, but only using a volt or so. (Not sure off the top of my head, but that's a guesstimate). Dropping that power supply by 17% (15.5/18 = 17.3% drop) means that you might be getting 0.8V instead of 1.0V. That's enough to keep things from starting.

As for the speakers, the mobo might be powering on the speaker to try to give out POST error codes, but since it's not even really making it to POST, then it's just turning on the speakers and dying then.

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Thanks Curtiss,


Sounds like we are on track to find a permanent solution.

Could it also be the reason that the battery is completely discharged?
Thanks for your support.
will keep you posted on results

MacuserLouis

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Aspire to acquire what you require.

Probably not. The problem is most likely independent of which power source you're using. You can have the battery out of the laptop and the laptop plugged in, and my guess is that the problem will still occur.

Can you not charge the battery up anymore? Does the laptop just not power on from it? What does the on-battery power meter read?

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

Wow! the plot thickens:
to your first Question: Yes even without the battery the laptop still hisses.

To the battery question:
Charging: It is not possible to charge,

The Laptop cannot power-up power-on from the battery,

The On battery test yielded no voltage (0 v).

Are these observations helpful

MacuserLouis

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Aspire to acquire what you require.

You mean it showed no charge, or did you hook up a voltmeter to it? Most Compaq batteries have a tester on the battery to indicate with a few LEDs how much charge the battery has left. This won't tell you the voltage of the battery, but just a general percentage of the power remaining in the battery.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

Sorry, misunderstood the on battery thing: this particular model has a base docking station and semi-external battery pack that is elongated across the length of the laptop.

I took out the battery pack and tested with a voltmeter and got no deflection at all across the contacts.

regards

MacuserLouis

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Aspire to acquire what you require.

Well, regardless of whether the power is on to the battery or not, you should still be able to successfully boot. Most laptops allow you to power on without the battery installed. It's not like the battey completes the circuit or anything.

Regardless though, it sounds like a voltage regulation issue, possibly within your power supply.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

Will implement these points in the moring and post the results

thanks and Good night its 9:55pm here

MacuserLouis

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Aspire to acquire what you require.

Anything new to report, Louis?

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

We had this problem on a laptop. Same things that he
describes here. Battery won't charge, laptop won't boot, etc etc.

It turns out the voltage regulator inside the laptop (just behind the power plug in slot) was on the blink.

Sometimes it hissed and wouldn't boot, sometimes it
booted fine.

Our laptop was complete gone like his.

I do believe its the regulator. Everything is the same problem.

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Serious Soldier

Well ......... We got a PSU from a new Compaq and we tried and it still hissed.

When we set up the mobo without the keyboard and found that an IC near the power input was heating up.

with that Im afraid that it might be beyond help.

Any other options

MacuserLouis

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Yes, that's what I'm talking about. It isn't the ps itself,
its the little diode just inside the laptop case. That
chip is bad. You'll have to replace it.

It should control the amount of voltage the laptop recieves and
also controls the recharging of the battery.

Once replaced, if you can,
Then things should be ok again.

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Serious Soldier