Laptop batteries?

[analog]

OT - Here's a bulletin board with quite a few postings about Sony Vaios. It looks like an awful lot of people have had trouble and much of it appears to be with the memory slots. Reading this site will make you weep.

http://www.vaioshutdown.com/overheat.html

(that grease he recommends has about 10X thermal conductivity of ordinary stuff from radio shack)


I was hoping to find hardware diagnostics for you. Will look some further.

Did you notice any galvanized sheet metal parts inside that machine?

<small>[ 03-14-2006, 03:28 AM: Message edited by: analog ]</small>

[OperaTenor]

Hi Analog, thanks for the link. After reading the forum, I've come to the conclusion this will require yet more sheckels, and it will be an exercise in throwing good money away. Aside from the fact I'm pretty sure I buggered one of the RAM chips in fooling around with it(got goosed by a ceratin young child at a bad moment with a tweaker -

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

I looked at that site. Had no idea so many people were unhappy with their Vaio laptops.

Costco website has notebook computers on sale this week.

[OperaTenor]

Originally posted by Selma in Sandy Eggo:

Costco website has notebook computers on sale this week.

Thanks, pal! :p They'll just have to carry on their sale without my money. The only way I could justify to myself buying another computer is if this desktop of mine(some components - i.e., the HARD DRIVES are at least 8 years old) dies.

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I really shouldn't have said that, should I?



Jim "The guy with the hard drive(s) so noisy you can hear it(them) halfway across the house." B.

PS. The really cool part is the way they fluctuate - they tend to quiet down as I load up applications.



<small>[ 03-14-2006, 04:44 PM: Message edited by: OperaTenor ]</small>

[analog]

Originally posted by OperaTenor:


I didn't notice anything galvanized inside, but the upper fan duct piece was definitely plated - very shiny.

I may try the grease, however. Even so, the grease on mine is still goopy and fresh-looking.

Thanks again.

The grease might well be worth a try. Is it possible a previous owner tried it and put it on like toothpaste, under the assumption "If a Little is Good, More is Better?" If you do it remember less is more, you want to get both surfaces really clean then apply a THIN coat of the stuff, just enough to haze it good. A few micron gap is better than a few mils, and the grease should just fill the valleys in the surface roughness. Where I worked, for big power semiconductors we used to polish the heatsink flat with 400 sandpaper within 1/2 hour of assembly ,so there'd be no high spots and the oxide layer would be not very thick. But we didn't have that fancy silver bearing heat grease.

Reason I asked about plated parts is this - in the last few years the electronics industry has re-discovered "Metal Whiskers", pesky little strands of metal that grow out of pure tin or zinc. It's a crystal phenomenon, like growing rock candy with sugar water only it's metal crystals. The unleaded solder that everybody is switching to will grow them, as will electroplated bright zinc. They'll grow long enough to short out pins on today's miniature circuits, there's a great photo at this link:
http://www.calce.umd.edu/lead-free/tin-whiskers/TINWHISKERRISKS.pdf
Those darn Europeans - first it was metric cars, now lead-free solder.


With that site isting so many different troubles on this particular line of computers, I thought I'd ask about zinc, just for my own curiosity. Not even speculating, just gathering data. I'm sorta wierd that way, enjoy collecting useless information.

An awful lot of companies are replacing their computer room floor tiles, the ones with galvanized bottom plates, with plastic ones. The whiskers get swept up into the machines by the underfloor vent system. You say there's something zinc-looking in your laptop vent system? More likely you were right, it's heat.....

Good Luck!!!!

<small>[ 03-14-2006, 05:42 PM: Message edited by: analog ]</small>

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

I wonder if that explains any of the boards that spontaneously healed themselves after I dunked 'em in a dish of tech. grade isopropyl alcohol and scrubbed 'em with my little static free scrubbrush?

It's a reflex. If it doesn't work, smack it, scrub it, and wiggle the loose bits.

On second thought, probably not. We have saltwater exposure to contend with, so things are usually conformal coated.

<small>[ 03-14-2006, 05:58 PM: Message edited by: Selma in Sandy Eggo ]</small>

[analog]

Last place I worked had a lot of trouble with so called "no wash" solder flux. If you don't wash it off the residue becomes conductive enough to really upset high resistance circuitry. A good bath fixed many of those boards.

I'd think a good conformal coating would stop whiskers. It's not a problem in old fashioned lead bearing solder, so far as I know.

[OperaTenor]

Hi Analog,

I know the previous owner, and he never went inside the computer.

The exsisting coat of grease is paper thin.

Yes, these particular laptops seem to be exceptionally troublesome, mostly centering around the #2 RAM slot. Some of the descriptions of the difficulties couldn't be more similar to my experience if I had wriiten them myself.

If the grease job doesn't work, I think I'll try to find some way to recycle the computer. Maybe a local shop that would like to cannibalize it.