Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

[ratdude747]

... and this time I think most of you will like this one.

I scored a Dell Latitude ST for $60 shipped:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/331755142204

It does have a hardware fault, which sounds to me like a bad screen cable connection. Hopefully fixiable with a teardown, which doesn't scare me.

It's cool because it was released before windows 8, which makes it a windows 7 tablet. Might be a good one to dualboot, as the hardware might be easier to make work in linux (it's not baytrail). Yes, that's right a windows 7 tablet!

It's also a dell latitude as well, which means (presumably) easy repair and (hopefully) kick-ass build quality. It also is compatible with a Port Replicator, which I can get for $18 if I deem it useful (and uses the same charger as my existing Latitude Laptops). On top of that it has a pen input... which IS included in the listing! Very cool!

What sucks a bit is the measly 1 core atom CPU; however, I bet it's not a power hog either. It has 2GB RAM though, and as per one of the seller's pictures it has 32GB of storage (although IIRC they came with up to a 128GB SSD, could be upgraded if I needed to). Not a replacement for my laptops (obviously), but with the pen input, I bet it would be a good alternative in high-portability situations.

Other nice things are the webcams on it; the rear is 5MP, the front is 720P HD, not that I think that processor could handle such a stream (although I could be wrong).

From what I was seeing they also use full-size ports; full USB (albeit 2.0) and HDMI. It was made to be a laptop user's tablet! None of this "giant smartphone" bullshit.

Finally, there is one sucky point; the thing uses a proprietary charger, which means no car charging unless and until I get a good pure-sine power inverter for my truck. Kinda annoying but I'm not going to complain too much.

Good score?

Edit- Dell lists this under "laptops" , not under "mobile devices and tablets" like the later ST models. Win!

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

Just like my E5530 and E6430, the owner's manual IS a service manual. See attached file.

[shovenose]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

Ugh, single core atom. If it had a decent core2 or an i-series based celeron or pentium, it would be really, really cool.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

Ugh, single core atom. If it had a decent core2 or an i-series based celeron or pentium, it would be really, really cool.

And it would have a 30 minute battery life...

On a positive note it has regular laptop-style Wifi and 3G cards/slots... I could have some fun with those. *cough* Internal Logitech Unifying *cough*. Although in this case the mod isn't as useful as I probably wouldn't be using a mouse/keyboard with it. LVDS cable is modular too, which is probably good news for the repair it will need.

edit- looked at the drivers, the Wifi also has the BT, which means my Intel 7260 AC + BT 4.0 card is compatible! That will be a nice swap!

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

Some more info on the CPU:

http://ark.intel.com/products/55663/...Cache-1_50-GHz

It's a 1.5GHz single core, with HT at least. 3W TDP. The tablet has a 30WH battery. Should be a good combo. Also looks like Dell was kind enough to max the RAM out too. Dell didn't pinch very many pennies on this.

Edit- Looking at a review, it looks like they did red marker the 3G slot for models without it:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-...D.70382.0.html

Whatever, I don't need unifying in this case (I have a freaking hardware pen!).

[keeney123]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

Sounds like you got a deal. In the 1970's I bought my first electronic calculator for $50 I thought I was getting a deal of a life time as the others were selling as much as $250.00

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

Slight setback: looks like this will be a windows-only tablet... as the Intel GMA 600 graphics are Power VR which IIRC has shitty driver support for linux (arch in particular). Whatever, gnome on a touchscreen wasn't anything to write home about, so I'm not mad.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

I have a quad core atom tablet. Right now it's stuck windows only due to lack of power and other critical features support. However it's nice that it has the HD4000 GPU and thus *mostly* compatible with OSS drivers.

Alas even so, it still has initialization issues (screen usually but not always blacks out on startup.)

Gnome on a touchscreen is kind of clunky, but it does work... I don't like Caribou, missing lots of keys...

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

I have a quad core atom tablet. Right now it's stuck windows only due to lack of power and other critical features support. However it's nice that it has the HD4000 GPU and thus *mostly* compatible with OSS drivers.

Alas even so, it still has initialization issues (screen usually but not always blacks out on startup.)

Gnome on a touchscreen is kind of clunky, but it does work... I don't like Caribou, missing lots of keys...

My first two windows tablets were quad core atoms:

1. Insignia 8" flex; Ran windows 8 well (and only on 1GB of DDR3 no less). Digitizer craked, and the digitizers are a monopoly on Alibaba/Aliexpress. As much as I liked it, $38 shipped from china was a bit much to ask. Shame, it was actually well built for the most part (and that was a real glass digitizer albeit probably crap glass).

2. RCA Cambio 10": ran windows 10, bought as black friday gamble. Ended up exchanging it and later returning it for a refund due to bad build quality and issues with windows 10 (no way to remove stock Metro apps that wasn't revered every time MS issued and update).

Neither ran linux well... I had to do a custom arch build (to make the mixmached bitness of the UEFI work); while I did get far enough to get working gnome and patchy wifi, BT and the cameras never did work, and I don't think the audio did either. It was hell to get that to work, and while I did get the Larry Finger wifi driver to work sometimes, his BT driver didn't work for me. Considering that gnome's on screen keyboard was sucky (compared to what I had in windows 8) and that I was able to make windows 8 run almost like 7 (see my "in defense of windows 8.1" thread), to me it was an obvious choice.

[vinceroger69]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

What worries me when buying something like this from ebay if you look at his feed back as a seller hes sold 6 tablets so far im always worried its another technician selling stuff they cant fix/messed with.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

What worries me when buying something like this from ebay if you look at his feed back as a seller hes sold 6 tablets so far im always worried its another technician selling stuff they cant fix/messed with.

Possible, it's also possible that it's a corporate place that had some old units to get rid of. Looking, one of them was a lot of 3 working 1st Gen iPads. That doesn't scream "I can't fix it" since they were working. That screams "I have these old tablets that we don't care for anymore... please take them off our hands. Also, the Latitude ST was from what I can tell mainly a corporate unit; they weren't commonly bought by consumers.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

Came in, no POST. Thought I counted 8 beeps (which is an LCD failure), pulled it apart, rebuilt it, still no POST, this time 7 beeps. CPU cache failure

The good news is that I was able to get a mainboard for peanuts:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/262170651005

So I'm requesting a partial refund to cover the part as the rest of the tablet seems OK. It was a bit hacked together as it looks to have had a screen/digitzer job done on it (a little bit of scotch tape on a copper ground tape and some missing screws).

I'll see...

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

Something else I noticed: it looks like the replacement mobo comes with the WWAN socket... looks like I should order one of my favorite PCIe USB adapters to put in it. Not sure what I'll put in, but I could have some fun... As mentioned before a Logitech Unifying adapter wouldn't make sense in this case... I have room for a "nano" type USB whatever. Suggestions?

[kaboom]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

I'd focus on getting the parts you've got now working, before ordering anything else. Depending on how well it wasn't packaged, the frame could be cracked. Tape and schmag on the corners of the display? Sounds like you got something "SNAD," or seller sent junkier, more-beyond-hope unit than was pictured.

Beware of any ebay auto-generated messages (lies) "demanding" you send it back; do NOT use the "Let ebay step in for you" button if the seller doesn't cooperate after three-four days.


You'll be entrapped into self-defeating option that are not disclosed to you. Like being "demanded," in the auto reply, to return the item for a "conditional" refund.

If you haven't seen my thread in VIP- FUCK ebay.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

I'd focus on getting the parts you've got now working, before ordering anything else. Depending on how well it wasn't packaged, the frame could be cracked. Tape and schmag on the corners of the display? Sounds like you got something "SNAD," or seller sent junkier, more-beyond-hope unit than was pictured.

Beware of any ebay auto-generated messages (lies) "demanding" you send it back; do NOT use the "Let ebay step in for you" button if the seller doesn't cooperate after three-four days.


You'll be entrapped into self-defeating option that are not disclosed to you. Like being "demanded," in the auto reply, to return the item for a "conditional" refund.

If you haven't seen my thread in VIP- FUCK ebay.

The tape was used on a piece of copper grounding tape that was used to ground what appears to be a wifi antenna. The other end of the copper tape looked to be soldered (from the factory) to one of the wifi antennas; the other end was stuck on the metal frame of the LCD.

The screen itself is fine as far as I can tell. It's giving me beep code 7, which the owner's manual says is a "cache test" failure, which means I need to replace the motherboard (as it's a BGA cpu). Until I fix that, I can't test much of anything (the screen's backlight works, I do know that).

Even if I don't get the $12.75 motherboard reimbursed, I'm still ahead of the $150+ going rate for known working ones. $62.25 for the unit plus $12.79 for the board is about $75, which is still half of the $150 going rate.

[kaboom]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

Sounds good.

(as it's a BGA cpu). Until I fix that, I can't test much of anything (the screen's backlight works, I do know that)

BGA CPUs... Maybe marginal joints came loose during shipping?

My suggestion was to only worry about the USB adapter til after you get a working board/CPU. Heh, the stuff on ebay isn't going anywhere...

Good luck, hopefully better than mine..

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

Sounds good.



BGA CPUs... Maybe marginal joints came loose during shipping?

My suggestion was to only worry about the USB adapter til after you get a working board/CPU. Heh, the stuff on ebay isn't going anywhere...

Good luck, hopefully better than mine..

First I'm surprised you didn't bash me for buying another tablet... then again, this isn't a cheap (quality) one...

I'm not an intel atom CPU expert, but IIRC the cache is on-chip... However, as it's connected internally to the CPU, I doubt BGA joints are the issue. Still, that is all I could think of.

The USB was more of a "what can I do with it" sort of question. Looking, the WWAN slot is actually full mini-PCI (duh, they are even on new ones) so I do have more space to fit something. No rush, I'm just looking for ideas (since that's an internal USB port begging to be used). Do they make GPS in USB form that small? (and if so, would it be useful?)

I do have an upgrade sitting someplace... Intel 7260 AC card. If I can find it... not that a 32GB tablet needs AC.

[kaboom]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

First I'm surprised you didn't bash me for buying another tablet... then again, this isn't a cheap (quality) one...

lol... I was rather the last time... the more you examine those cheapies, the worse they seem. A friend of mine bought several similar ones, at a supermarket of all places, for ~$50ish about two years ago. Supposedly "clearance." If I didn't know, I'd have thought they were ebay rejects/fakes/dumped goods. Complete with multi-language "advertising" of dubious capabilities, complete with promises of "free" internet- almost alluding to 3G/4G "internet only" free.

Nice try- upon further examination/debunking, "free" just meant wifi only. It was oddly worded- perhaps to throw off older potential apple buyers off (and get their money).

The $1 power supplies (yes, $1 on alibaba) put out something like half a volt of ripple. I recapped two and got them below 100mV and added some fusible resistors- these things were really nasty. TBH, they should never have been sold.

It was while trying to find info on those things (yeh, sure) that I discovered the made-to-break screens. No, not with those, but others, including what you first had. The parts don't fit! Just a little too big, or leftovers that were forceed to fit. And stressed. They never even had to be dropped- just temperature changes would break them.

Enter the scumbag companies that own all the old electronics brands. They bought this junk and sold it under names like audiovox, rca, emerson, magnavox. Others, like worstbuy, had 'em made/branded to specification but did nothing with the display.

These units became that run of walmart junk that you (and others) learned to hate.

I'm not an intel atom CPU expert, but IIRC the cache is on-chip... However, as it's connected internally to the CPU, I doubt BGA joints are the issue. Still, that is all I could think of.

I've had S478 BGAs give trouble. Even with the system appearing to work, even boot- only to succumb to a repost loop. Releasing and reclamping the heatsink would "fix" it...

I know nothing about Atom stuff other than their tiny power consumption and "performance" tailored to their application. But if there are multiple/staggered clocks, and one line is open, that may explain it. OTOH if the cache clocks are well-removed from external connections and it still doesn't work, the CPU's junk in any case...

The USB was more of a "what can I do with it" sort of question. Looking, the WWAN slot is actually full mini-PCI (duh, they are even on new ones) so I do have more space to fit something. No rush, I'm just looking for ideas (since that's an internal USB port begging to be used). Do they make GPS in USB form that small? (and if so, would it be useful?)

I do have an upgrade sitting someplace... Intel 7260 AC card. If I can find it... not that a 32GB tablet needs AC.

Either way, you seem to be having better luck so far. Hopefully, no more bad parts. As much as I hate ebay, one doesn't have many options for particular/specialized devices, especially when you can't buy locally, or they're not available/suppressed by the "mo-beel" device pushers.

Incidentally, it's a major plus that dell lists it as a "laptop." While it obviously isn't, this suggests that it's a more serious product.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

The seller is trying to be smooth (and stupid):

"Good morning. I assure you that the issue with the tablet was as I described -- the photo on the listing was taken when the tablet was listed."

Yeah right. My reply:

That's not possible. Your picture shows it booted up to windows. With the code 7 CPU fault that I was getting, all I get is a black screen and 7 beeps. It will NOT boot. Obviously a different issue. Either it failed during shipping or the tablet in the picture isn't the tablet I received.

Yeah buddy...

[kaboom]

Re: Ratdude's Tablet Chronicles, Part III

^
What an asshole- shitbay strikes again.

Time for a chargeback with your CC- do not believe for a second scambay or paypig will help.

I hope you're screencapping or otherwise keeping records.

Just as with me, you bought that particular item for a specific purpose; not to play games with a complicit seller. Another jackoff that only cheapens the reputation of honest sellers...

Lying, degenerate piece o' shit- "Barely used. It's been sitting in a closet for a year or so. When we tried booting up, it worked fine for a bit" but gives you BS as an "escape clause."

Hardly meets description, appears to be different item than shipped, etc, etc.
Not that it matters at this point, but did the bumblefuck use packing materials? If it was poorly packed, that would suggest that they really didn't care once they had your money.

It clearly was working in the pictures.



Sorry RD- ebay has become insufferable.