A31p motherboard problems

[kfzhu1229]

Why can't I put it into sleep?

Thermal cycling. You can but you shouldn't.

I often shut it down or else it will end up like that A31p I got and a 770ED I have used up - power board failure.

No need to shut it down. Ever.

I've never had an A31p fail due to being constantly on, and I've likely seen more of them than the rest of this forum put together.

You see the problem is nothing lasts forever - even with quality products. For those two machines it is really the capacitors on the power board failed thus supplying insufficient voltage/current to the machine itself so I become afraid of leaving it on constantly
So you mean that by NOT putting it to sleep may lower the chance of desoldering by somehow?
Technically my solution was that I have already bought 2 A30p mb replacements and one A31p mb replacement, all together after shipping and tax duties is around USD$100

[ajkula66]

You see the problem is nothing lasts forever - even with quality products. For those two machines it is really the capacitors on the power board failed thus supplying insufficient voltage/current to the machine itself so I become afraid of leaving it on constantly

Your machine your call. What you're describing has never happened to any of my A31p systems.

As for "nothing lasts forever"...IDK. I'm currently half-way done with setting up an almost dead mint Rickenbacker 4001S made in 1973...and can pretty much guarantee that it will last for another 43 years if taken care of. That's not forever, but it's likely to outlive me, or its current owner who's about the same age as the instrument in question.

So you mean that by NOT putting it to sleep may lower the chance of desoldering by somehow?

Read up on thermal cycling and feel free to visit one of the gazillion posts that I've written about the A31p on this forum...

[kfzhu1229]

I see what you mean by thermal cycling.
It doesn't help either for me that the RAM sticks heat up really well and I'm using my dock as a charger. The screen flickers and stuff every time I hot dock or undock. What doesn't help even more is that it sometimes shuts down because of battery overheating when doing intense stuff and charging. The battery can get to 70 degrees which is quite dangerous.

[TPFanatic]

Are the A31p s in the space station ever shut down? Maybe that's how they last so long.

[kfzhu1229]

One question: does all A3x motherboards have the thermal pad under the solder of the GPU? I see some of them don't?

[ajkula66]

One question: does all A3x motherboards have the thermal pad under the solder of the GPU? I see some of them don't?

It's not a thermal pad, it's a thermal sponge. Big difference.

The A3x planar design calls for a bunch of these sponges which are supposed to be replaced from time to time, but good luck finding a set for less than $100 nowadays.

[micrex22]

You see the problem is nothing lasts forever* - even with quality products. For those two machines it is really the capacitors on the power board failed thus supplying insufficient voltage/current to the machine itself so I become afraid of leaving it on constantly
So you mean that by NOT putting it to sleep may lower the chance of desoldering by somehow?
Technically my solution was that I have already bought 2 A30p mb replacements and one A31p mb replacement, all together after shipping and tax duties is around USD$100

Capacitors are some of the most trivial things to replace (assuming you have the tools) on electronics and I've serviced a lot because they're some of the first things to go. Especially on 70's electronics...

The concern with thermal cycling is that with the constant heating and cooling, stress is placed on the components with expansion. However, I do this all of the time with T61s (including some even with 'bad' nvidia chips) and they have yet to fail. Everyone's experience can vary due to so many variables.

*Nothing lasts forever without upkeep and R&D. It just depends how far someone wants to go or how much time to spend on a problem. Fortunately a lot of rare ICs and transistors are still working to this very day (such as a few Motorola and Fairchild parts) so I've yet to encounter something that hasn't reached a critical point of no repair.

[kfzhu1229]

One question: does all A3x motherboards have the thermal pad under the solder of the GPU? I see some of them don't?

It's not a thermal pad, it's a thermal sponge. Big difference.

The A3x planar design calls for a bunch of these sponges which are supposed to be replaced from time to time, but good luck finding a set for less than $100 nowadays.

I don't know if these thermal sponges will help or break the GPU if I transplant the one from my dead A31p motherboard onto a A30/p
Also talking about replacement, IBM clearly says on the manual to replace the nylon covered screws every time you open the machine up. I wonder who does that these days

[RealBlackStuff]

Also talking about replacement, IBM clearly says on the manual to replace the nylon covered screws every time you open the machine up. I wonder who does that these days

Never done that in well over 10 years.
I reuse the old ones and have enough spares if any go missing.

[kfzhu1229]

You see the problem is nothing lasts forever* - even with quality products. For those two machines it is really the capacitors on the power board failed thus supplying insufficient voltage/current to the machine itself so I become afraid of leaving it on constantly
So you mean that by NOT putting it to sleep may lower the chance of desoldering by somehow?
Technically my solution was that I have already bought 2 A30p mb replacements and one A31p mb replacement, all together after shipping and tax duties is around USD$100

Capacitors are some of the most trivial things to replace (assuming you have the tools) on electronics and I've serviced a lot because they're some of the first things to go. Especially on 70's electronics...

Capacitors are indeed the first ones to break aside from heating issues, disc drives and battery. The worst thing about capacitors is that often times it takes huge hassle to clearly determine which one is bad for the SMC ones which is unlikely to bulge like the regular ones. If they fail, your computer is likely not to get sufficient power to even start up just like what happened to my 770ED and that A31p motherboard. Also good luck if they leak or blow up. Also newer computers' quality goes down as the price goes down as well. My mom's X220i had its fan broken 1 year ago (when it was around 4 years old) after leaving it on for a whole day while this is something you are highly unlikely to see on a T43 when it was 4 years old despite its faster fan RPM. Also the newer computers' battery become smaller and smaller. They even have 2-cell ASUS c**p out there which the newer processor saves it on idle but when doing intensive stuff that c**p can barely last an hour.

[kfzhu1229]

Btw the motherboard arrived yesterday and I put it in exactly as the manual indicated. THE REPLACEMENT FIXES EVERYTHING!! The inconstant clock speed problem and freezing problem are all gone. I had a keyboard problem with the original mb (definitely not because of improperly plugging) that the keys around the trackpoint don't work. Just when I was thinking of getting a replacement keyboard, the replacement motherboard fixed that. Now the problems I still have are the dying inverter which kinda makes the backlight flash and the screen. I put the original pink IPS screen in my A30 and left a 14.1" SXGA+ for that A31p instead (The LCD does NOT have any backlight problem as I replaced the backlight a few months ago). Switching from an IPS panel to a 14.1" TFT panel is horrible! My eyes can only bear the dark black from the IPS and turned-off pixel black from my Samsung Galaxy phones (all of mine have AMOLED). My next project is that I have ordered A30p motherboard as well and I would like to see how much more video performance that thing gives me (if any) with the extra 16mb of VRAM.
I have also tested the video performance on the A31p with the exact same OS (cloned from A30), the result is that it can do more intense 720p videos but for the videos A30 can play, that thing drops a bit more frames than my A30.
Does that mean a 1.8ghz P4-M Northwood without SSE2 utilized is slower than a top-of-the-line 1.2Ghz PIII-M (1.26 and 1.33ghz ones are near non-existent rare)?

[kfzhu1229]

I did some optimizations/upgrades:
I cleaned the speakers. The left one is still a bit funky at times but much better.
The two screw holes of the right hinge were enlarged and destroyed by the original flat-head screw (1st image, right). They no longer stay in. I found round-head screws that came with my dead 770ED (1st image, left) which are just a bit longer with the same radius therefore solved the problem perfectly.
I put my brand new old stock Intel (R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection card into the replacement motherboard only to find out surprisingly that the previous user/seller already did the no-1802 mod. (2nd image for box)
http://imgur.com/a/NyODb

[kfzhu1229]

I did a CPU Mark test between A31p (Pentium 4 - M 1.80Ghz) and my A30 (Pentium III - M 1.2Ghz) with PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0 in Windows 7 SP1 without any bloats and that clearly explains why I get better 720p mkv video frame rates on my A30... CPU-Z bench shows the exact same trend.
http://imgur.com/MlBK1wL
If you run 3DMark01 however, you get twice the frame rate on the A31p due to its FireGL V7800 with 4 times the VRAM vs the first-gen Radeon 7000 on the A30.