Laptop Woes

[windozeuser]

I just picked up a Toshiba Satelite 2545CDS for $30. The laptop worked fine, then I noticed the AC connector on the motherboard had an open in it(Broken solder joint). I stripped it down to the motherboard, took out the motherboard and re soldered the connections. I put everything back together, checked connections twice. Laptop works fine at this stage, I installed Linux (Slackware 11.0) on it. Then I brought it to school, the laptop was in my book bag when someone accidentally knocked my book bag off the lunch table( about a 3 ft fall). I thought my laptop would be alright cause I've had much bigger impacts with other laptops and they survived. When I got home I turned the Laptop on and the LCD screen won't display video, also there seems to be no HDD activity* and the CPU fan isn't moving. I tore it apart and didn't find any noticeable damage, and I checked connectors and CPU socket seating. It still won't work, any idea on what could of happened?

* - The HDD powers up and spins, but there seems to be no reading data from the BIOS it just seems to sit there with a black screen
Also, would putting 8X64 PC100-322 SODIMM RAM in this laptop screw it up?

 

[Hero999]

Put it back together, it might work, it's possible that it was just a connector that's bounced out of its socket.

Alslo check that all of the ICs are firmly inserted into their sockets.

 

[Pax Writer]

Hello

I think this may be a rather late answer, but here are my 5 cents:
I once got hold of a broken IBM laptop which had been dropped on the floor. It could turn on, but it only showed the IBM logo and then went into bust-mode saying something about IRQs which were unresponsive and that was it. After a bit of consideration, decided that maybe a crystal had been ruined, since they are usually the components which are most susceptible to mechanical shocks, and since the text on the screen seemed to indicate some kind of problem with the PCI-bus, I set about locating the PCI-controller on the motherboard.
Fortunately the responsible chip was labeled with a manufacturer, name and something about PCI. The next step was to check if there were any crystals in the immediate surroundings - Which I found that there was. Its been a while, but I think it was a 14.something MHz crystal. I started browsing through my old electronics for cannibalisation and found a leaded crystal of the same value on one. Although there wasn't exactly a lot of space, I managed to solder a couple of short wires to the old footprint in one end, and the new crystal in the other (I know, I know, these wires are supposed to be so short as possible, but what could I do, I had no space ) ).
I then assembled the whole thing, hit the power button and ka-tjiiing, the machine booted normally and worked fine the rest of the time (I sold it after a couple of weeks normal functioning).

I guess the point of this long and dull story is that you could always try to change the most vital crystals, if you get sufficiently frustrated with other ineffective solutions. Its a hell of a job, but it might work.

Cheers )