More Precision M6600 Fun

[litsnsirn]

I finally broke down and bought a new to me motherboard for my problem child M6600. I rebuilt it as far as I needed to try and power it on, no battery, drives, keyboard, or palm rest. After connecting power, I'd get a quick spin of the cpu fan and when attempting to power it up, I'd get the power LED and both fans would spin for a second or two and then everything would stop. I changed the ram stick and moved it around, to no avail. I swapped in an Nvidia card for the original AMD and I was able to get to the dell splash screen once, but when I powered it off and added a keyboard and hard drive, I'm back to the fan's spinning for a second or two, then nothing. I added the led panel and speaker back, I'm not getting any diagnostic beeps or flashes.

This machine has really been driving me crazy for as long as I can remember. Anyone have an idea or two? TIA!

[BalkanBoy]

Re: More Precision M6600 Fun

What was the problem with old motherboard?

Does it come on (lights and fans) by itself upon connecting PSU?

[litsnsirn]

Re: More Precision M6600 Fun

There was a display problem with the original. With the original amd video card, it booted fully, but the screen had no display and on an external monitor, there were horizontal lines across the screen. Swapping the video card out for an Nvidia, the display was normal, but the driver for the either the discrete or built in Intel graphics would load properly. Showing a broken symbol in the device manager. If I tried gpu-z I was able to see both display adapters but a lot of the values were missing and I was unable to read the display bios. I tried both in gpu-z and in a CLI with different tools. I tried a couple of different Nvidia cards and all behaved the same way.

When I connect the power supply, the gpu fan spins for about a second or so.

[litsnsirn]

Re: More Precision M6600 Fun

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...ighlight=M6600

This is my original thread, I work on it for a while til I get frustrated and then stash it away until I'm in the mood to try again.

[BalkanBoy]

Re: More Precision M6600 Fun

Ok, when you say your kid used laptop and puked on it killing AMD card, do you mean he/she puked on the keyboard and it all got in somehow?

If keyboard was puked have you try disconnecting it?
Have you try powering on machine without dedicated GPU? How about another CPU if you have it?

When testing such strange problem it's best to disconnect everything from motherboard, leave just essentials like cpu, ram, cmos battery (check that battery too) and eventually speakers and LED ribbon for error code diagnostics. You can even try without screen just with HDMI but not sure if Intel can display over HDMI.

I'm not sure but as far as I remember my m6600 didn't have optimus enabled, it had just dedicated visible.
Same applies for most high end laptops with 2nd generation of Intel CPUs like HP 8760W, MSI GT780 and similar.

[litsnsirn]

Re: More Precision M6600 Fun

I was referring to puked a little more metaphorically. The laptop stopped working normally, no fluids were exchanged.

I tried booting it up on the original MB without a video card and it wouldn't do anything, I wasn't sure if it was supposed to or not. I don't think i have another 2nd gen mobile processor laying around, I'll have to look.

[litsnsirn]

Re: More Precision M6600 Fun

I tried booting it up with the video card removed and it’s behaving the same.