Parts Interchange for R-52

[jjmclean]

I've been looking for some parts for my R-52 1846-CTO. I have three questions. Are there a 41.1" and a 15.1" display screen for this machine or are the people selling them measuring them differently and if there are two screen sizes, are they interchangeable or is the computer built in a completely different case? Second, there are some with Intel Video and some with ATI Video. Will the mother board with the Intel interchange with a motherboard with the ATI as long as you have the fan and hold down straps? I also noticed several listings on hard drives also listed them for a 14" machine and a 15" machine. Are ther a difference there also?

[schen]

I've been looking for some parts for my R-52 1846-CTO. I have three questions. Are there a 41.1" and a 15.1" display screen for this machine or are the people selling them measuring them differently and if there are two screen sizes, are they interchangeable or is the computer built in a completely different case? Second, there are some with Intel Video and some with ATI Video. Will the mother board with the Intel interchange with a motherboard with the ATI as long as you have the fan and hold down straps? I also noticed several listings on hard drives also listed them for a 14" machine and a 15" machine. Are ther a difference there also?

OK, here we go; I'll try to answer your questions in order to keep things clear.
* Yes, there were both 14.1" and 15.1" displays built into 2 different size cases.
* The cases are not interchangeable other than a few "minor" parts such as the bottom RAM slot cover.
* There are generally 2 groups of machine in a GPU sense: ATI and Intel. The ATI has some subgroups as well with varying capabilities and built-in memory capacity. Each groups uses a different fan and to make things a little more complex, there is a "Long Fan" which came on some models that not only cools the CPU, but has an extension that goes over the ATI GPU thus giving that chip some extra cooling as well. The ATIs in these as well as the T4x of the same generation were a bit infamous for the GPU detaching issue which caused garbled video and/or eventual failure to boot due to GPU not POSTing.
* The Hard Drives (and the caddy) are NOT different from the 14 to the 15 inch versions. The different is the 15" version had a different HDD Cover to account for the fact the the case is wider, but still uses the same Mobo inside.

I think that covers what you asked, but below are a few items that you might also take into consideration as well:
* The 14.1" screens can be had in 2 resolutions, XGA and SXGA (1400 x 1050) and the vast majority (possible all) machines are able to drive either panel as long as you have the correct invertor and LCD cable for it. The 15.1" screens came in 3 resolutions, XGA, SXGA and UXGA. The XGA is supported by all GPUs, whether Intel or ATI, the SXGA is supported by most, even the Intels, but the UXGA can only be used on very few models. Of course they all require the correct invertor and cable as well.
* All the HDDs must be Parallel or PATA (aka IDE), under no circumstances will you be able to use a SATA drive in the main bay of an R5x machine. They range in spindle speed from the old 4200rpm to the fast 7200rpm (all out of production) to the current 5400rpm which although technically slower, but due to the higher ariel density tends to behave about the same as the 7200rpm in daily use.
* The wildcard in all this is the R5x and T4x machines use basically the same Mobos and those can (and often do) be interchanged. It's just that the 15" version requires an "interposer" card that bridges the difference in width of the larger case.

I wish you luck on your project.

Stan

PS- Oh, R52s and T43 use DDR2 instead of the DDR from the earlier R5x/T4x machines.

[RealBlackStuff]

The R52 almost is almost identical to the T43 mobo, and interchangeable.
However, the T43 Intel GPU mobo can NOT drive an SXGA+, but the R52 Intel GPU mobo can!
All ATI mobos can drive SXGA+.

Contrary to popular believe, the T43 (and R52) do hardly ever suffer from bad GPU.
If there is a problem with them, it's the Southbridge that may come unstuck, but even this is quite rare.

[jjmclean]

Stan and RealBlackStuff
Thanks for all the info. It'll take some time for all this to sink in and then I'll probably have some more questions.

RealBlackStuff

Contrary to popular believe, the T43 (and R52) do hardly ever suffer from bad GPU.
If there is a problem with them, it's the Southbridge that may come unstuck, but even this is quite rare.

You replied some to my earlier post about the R-52 not booting up. Thanks for that also. I am wanting to blame the trouble on the GPU and you're definately trying to convince me that it's not my trouble. I'm going to take your advice and do some more testing (hopefully this afternoon) but I've tested about everything I know to test. Maybe I've overlooked something.
Thanks again for all the help
Jerry