i-Buddie 4 Desknote Review

Whoa!!! the power adapter cost around $50 even on ebay. It cost more than the repair on the laptop. Is it ok if i continue using the slightly melted cord? :D
 
it's your life, why not?

kewl_head said:
Whoa!!! the power adapter cost around $50 even on ebay. It cost more than the repair on the laptop. Is it ok if i continue using the slightly melted cord? :D
Click to expand...
Sure, a fire extinguisher will only cost about £10. :thumb:

:rolleyes:
 
kewl_head said:
Whoa!!! the power adapter cost around $50 even on ebay. It cost more than the repair on the laptop. Is it ok if i continue using the slightly melted cord? :D
Click to expand...

Since it's working, don't changed it.
 
wow! got the 2nd i-buddy back from david in canada.
works perfect, no more hot connector melting!!!!!!!!!!!!
david can fix the power bricks also.

many thanks david. you helped me save my 1500.00 investment in these i-buddys.
we'll be forever grateful.
 
I had my I-buddy 4 since 2001-2002 and last week the ground pin melted and came out as I unplugged the ac adapter from the computer.

Found out on this forum that David Cai repaired that kind of problem.

Sent him the computer, from Montreal, on a Monday, it came back on thursday. That, my friend, is FAST!

He even fixed problems I had with the cpu fan and the ethernet jack at a reasonnable additionnal charge. In total, it cost me 170.56$ wich is little money to save the investment I've made on this computer.

Everything is working perfectly now and the computer is never as hot as before.

I really really recommend having your I-buddy 4 repaired by David Cai if you have that melted ground pin problem.
 
Need HELP with i buddy4 A928

I have an i buddy4 A928. I purchased it to use doing gigs as a DJ. However, whenever I connect the machine to a mixer either dirctly from the internal sound card or from the external USB sound card, there is a very bad noise problem. It sounds as though you can hear the inside of the computer itself working. I don't experience this problem when connected to headphones or listening through the speakers of the computer. Is there anyway for this noise to be eliminated? I don't want to have to buy another laptop. I understand that the soun card for this machine is integrated with the mother board so theres no way to change sound cards. HELP PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
here I thought i was an island

I actually thought I was the only one this had happened to.

Melted plug, ground pin in plug coming out.

Me to a tee.

Holy CRAP will any of us do anything?

I'll add my name and complaint to anybody who thinks they want to pursue the purveyors of a decent laptop with a proven track record of crappy setup for power adaptation. Sheesh, 37 pages and names on this very topic.

LOTS of unhappy folks at risk of fire and accompanying loss due to aforesaid.... The least they can do is offer to service them, or send adapters as needed.
 
Hi,
I also own an ECS A928, I had the melting plug problem too, but I decided to soldered the power wire directly onto the motherboard. It was working ok but one morning my machine do not turn on any more. I believed to resolve this problem I need to replace AMIBIOS Chip in the motherboard, but I need the data about AMIBIO version. It is available in the P.O.S.T. display for the system board when it boots up, PLease I need your help to identify your AMI BIOS code and the version number that appears at the bottom of the screen at boot time. You can press the Pause/Break key on your desknote to stop the system from booting up so you can copy down this information and help me because sales department tell me you they can provide a new BIOS chip for this machine without tihis information.

QUOTE=dimoul]Just stumbled on to this site, grateful to connect with other desknote users. I typed in "a928 battery cable loose or problem" in google

I've had my desknote a928 for almost 1.5 yrs. I had the melting plug problem that got fixed after a month and $45 in shipping, I'm on my 3rd power cord. I need a new cord from the battery to the unit b/c it fits so tightly that when I pull it from the unit, the hard plastic piece on the end of the cable is beginning to come loose. (had the battery for 2 weeks). Speakers sound distorted now and screen flickers every now and then. Desknote sells parts at very high prices and charges a lot for shipping and all sales are final. I love the idea of this machine, but ECS makes a poor quality product with horrible support.
I use many usb devices (scanners, floppy drives smart media reader, wireless usb adapter, game pad) on this machine with xp and have had no problems with that.[/QUOTE]
 
Hi,
I also own an ECS A928, I had the melting plug problem too, but I decided to soldered the power wire directly onto the motherboard. It was working ok but one morning my machine do not turn on any more. I believed to resolve this problem I need to replace AMIBIOS Chip in the motherboard, but I need the data about AMIBIO version. It is available in the P.O.S.T. display for the system board when it boots up, PLease I need your help to identify your AMI BIOS code and the version number that appears at the bottom of the screen at boot time. You can press the Pause/Break key on your desknote to stop the system from booting up so you can copy down this information and help me because sales department tell me you they can provide a new BIOS chip for this machine without tihis information.
 
For what it's worth...

AMI 8/20/2003
For DESKNOTE BIOS
REFRENCE # A928-030820-OT-01-00-FF-FF
I have tried working with AMI and as soon as I said "laptop" they said call the manufacturer. I tried to explain that it was their bios to no avail. Pretty much he plugged his ears and said loudly "I'm not listining, I'm not listining.........
Good Luck.

PS send it to David.
 
for what it's worth part DUX

AMI 8/20/2003 S
For DESKNOTE BIOS
REFRENCE # A928-030820-OT-01-00-FF-FF
(C) American Megatrends Inc.,
62-0620-00999-00101111-040201-SIS650-A928
 
Desknote overheating plug

I also had an overheating problem, but thanks to people in this forum, I
resoldiered the negative pin with silver soldier and now no more overheating.
But instead of taking the unit apart, I heated a sharp knife with a propane
tourch cut the plastic back about an inch to get to the pin, then glued the plastic back in place, everything went very well.

Riodelta
 
i Buddie A928

I have a A928 and of course I aslo got the over heating problem as well. Guess it just comes with the package. Not only did it melt my power cord and the plug in the notebook, it also started to shut off and then it wouldn't turn on anymoe. Effectively turning it into a brick.

After reading the posts in this thread, I decided to send it to David Cai to get fixed. He responded very quickly to all my emails and was very professional. When he received my computer he also fixed it very quickly.

It seems to be running smoothly now without any heating problems. If you're having this problem with your A928, I'd recommend sending it to David Cai to get fixed. I did and it saved me from having to buy a new notebook.
 
Using dual-monitor with A928

To Genericus:

I've been away from the forum for a while, don't know if you will see this. To do dual- or tri-monitor, I just go into the display properties and then go to Advanced under the Settings tab. Then click on Utility Manager and click on Driver Mode Settings. You can untick Auto and then pick whichever mode you want. Just make sure that your displays are plugged in and turned on. You can then play around with the settings until you have it the way you want. You may need to restart.

You can also need to upgrade the drivers. I upgraded and I think it helped. I have the driver version 6.14.10.2220 (for SIS 650), which was released in January 2004.

Here are some screenshots from my display properties.

Umiwangu
 
asks on I Buddie's parts A928

Hola
It wanted to do a question to you it brings over wherefrom you quoted the value of the supplies(replacements) of a Desknote A928, especially the source of power since also I have the problem that in the plug that is connected to the computer warms up and it was begun to melt.
Thank you very much for your response

evigilu said:
Hi,
I also own an ECS A928, I had the melting plug problem too, but I decided to soldered the power wire directly onto the motherboard. It was working ok but one morning my machine do not turn on any more. I believed to resolve this problem I need to replace AMIBIOS Chip in the motherboard, but I need the data about AMIBIO version. It is available in the P.O.S.T. display for the system board when it boots up, PLease I need your help to identify your AMI BIOS code and the version number that appears at the bottom of the screen at boot time. You can press the Pause/Break key on your desknote to stop the system from booting up so you can copy down this information and help me because sales department tell me you they can provide a new BIOS chip for this machine without tihis information.

QUOTE=dimoul]Just stumbled on to this site, grateful to connect with other desknote users. I typed in "a928 battery cable loose or problem" in google

I've had my desknote a928 for almost 1.5 yrs. I had the melting plug problem that got fixed after a month and $45 in shipping, I'm on my 3rd power cord. I need a new cord from the battery to the unit b/c it fits so tightly that when I pull it from the unit, the hard plastic piece on the end of the cable is beginning to come loose. (had the battery for 2 weeks). Speakers sound distorted now and screen flickers every now and then. Desknote sells parts at very high prices and charges a lot for shipping and all sales are final. I love the idea of this machine, but ECS makes a poor quality product with horrible support.
I use many usb devices (scanners, floppy drives smart media reader, wireless usb adapter, game pad) on this machine with xp and have had no problems with that.
Click to expand...
[/QUOTE]
 
Some experiences to share with power supply problems in a A928 i-Buddie desktop of ECS / Elitegroup and with loss of HDD connectivity.

problems observed on a version 4 board:

1) erratic and unpredictable start behaviour; sometimes no power light and nothing at all, sometimes powerlight but no fan noise nor bios, and sometimes OK. Disconnecting power cord and reconnecting it also seemed to have influence.

2) after some time of operation loss of connectivity with the harddisk HDD. In windows this obviously causes the blue screen of death and perhaps corruption of HDD data. In BIOS the HDD is not detected anymore, the CD-R/DVD is still seen. BIOS sees that there is a device as it dwells some time on trying to detect it but doesn't manage to communicate with it to even establish its identity. Upon removal of the HDD the BIOS sees that there is nothing there and shows the CD-R/DVD drive instantaniously.

Remedies tried on 1):
(unfortunately cannot tell which of all these things is exactly the remedy but in the end the desktop started to function as it should with suprisingly little heat being developed)
Have no service docs of the A928 but found on the net the service doc of the Mitac 8500 and Mitac 8677 which to a large extent use the same keycomponents in the power supply (Maxim's max1632 and Intersil's hip6301) and north/south bridges (Sis650, Sis961, or XP4's HT7650 and HT7961).
There is much written in this thread about melted power plugs and receptacles and following damage to the i-Buddie.
My guess is that in either of the power supplies (the max1632 does 5V and 3.4 V, the hip6301 does the processor core voltage like 1.5 V) then a classical switch-mode power supply problem has occurred that in any of the pairs of power transistors-in-series both transistors for some time are conducting although it is the intention that it is always either one or the other. This in fact causes a momentary short circuit over the input power and obviously high dissipation. Not enough to make the built-in smd fuses trip but enough to melt the plug and perhaps damage the power transistors and their drive circuitry.
It seems that ECS did not follow intersil's instructions to have independent decoupling of the power supply to each of the three converters that the hip6301 is driving in the A928. All three are in parallel and decoupled only with 6 electrolytic capacitors in parallel. So there is very poor isolation between the three stages and havoc may occur.
Also obseved that the MAX1632, although creating the voltages it should, sometimes thinks it is not and signals the rest of the circuitry not to start up (only power light situation) via its reset output.

Actions:
* 1 uF, 5V tantalum capacitor parallel to C458, next to the max1632
* 3 pcs. 0.22 uF capacitors in positions C200, C201, C202 (were not present; to be found at the back of the six electrolytes)
* mount C152, 86 uF, 22V, plus towards processor
* check BIOS and update to latest (20 aug 2003) with a flash/eeprom programmer
* check cmos battery ( > 3 V) and renew if necessary
tip: remove the cmos battery holder, connect it to the previous position via thin isolated wires soldered at the ends, make it end up in the space between the keyboard connector and the touchpad connector, put battery in and isolate it with tape. It can fit snugly under the keyboard and the battery can now be replaced without taking the entire computer apart.

This made my i-Buddie react normally to power up and down commands.
The plug stays cool. There are clearly issues in the board lay-out and in the chosen circuit and in some components not having been placed or having aged that cause transient voltages and erratic bahaviour of the sensitive switch-mode power control ICs and the power switching circuits that they control. My desknote now runs for several hours from the external ecs battery (2.4 GHz P4, 512MB DDR), the fans run at very low level and are hardly audible, and it certainly doesn't draw enough current to melt a plug. Most noise comes from the little fan in the mains power supply that connects to the desknote or to the battery. If you see heating of the power plug and receptacle only replacing those won't help; the cause is elsewhere in the circuitry, the heating of the plug is just a symptom.

Another tip: clean the heatsink surface to shiny copper, clean the P4 metal surface and put some fresh heat conducting paste on the P4. Before fastening the 4 screws gently move the heatsink in tiny 8 movement until you feel the heatsink stick to the P4 as the paste has evenly been distributed. Now fasten the screws, diagonally opposite in stages, while exerting pressure on the center of the heatsink so that it doesn't get undone from the P4 by uneven pulling by the screws. The P4 will report lower temperature that way (the heatsink is actually of excellent quality) and the fans will make less noise as they are turned lower by the system.

Remedies tried on 2)
rather brute; take motherboard out, 961 chip that does IDE facing up (next to mini PCI modem board), remove modem and plastic/rubber isolation material, take piece of alu foil and cut a rectangle out slightly bigger than the 961. Put foil in position with the 961 sticking through the opening and alu foil touching the PCB so little air can get under it. With a hot air gun heat the 961 chip to melting point of solder (close to 200 C). Let it gently cool down. Don't exert force on the chip, it's just to make the many bond pads reflow once more. The foil is to protect the surrounding area. Remove foil, reassemble the desktop to the stage that IDE function can be tested. In my case the loss-of-HDD problem had disappeared so it must have been a bad contact to the 961 when the chip heated to its normal operating temperature.

All the above is clearly in the spirit of hobby solutions and I take no responsability for the reader following any of these hints.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top