In article <hm8g67$jnq$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
BillW50 <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote:
>In news:hm73qb$i5i$1@news.eternal-september.org,
>Barry Watzman typed on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:15:04 -0500:
>> The most likely problem is a capacitor or switching transistor failure
>> in the power supply section of the motherboard. Chances of fixing it
>> are slim (not zero, however, just slim; it MIGHT be visibly obvious if
>> you remove the motherboard). What I would do, however, is look for
>> another Toshiba 1900 on E-Bay. One is likely to turn up, and to be
>> cheap (under $20 for the entire laptop).
>>
>> Don Phillipson wrote:
>>> Advice requested: ancient Toshiba Satellite 1900
>>> (new battery last year, used seldom) while connected
>>> to mains power (downloading Ubuntu upgrades for
>>> 40 min. or so) emitted a soft pop and went wholly
>>> dark. Power button initiates startup process for
>>> about 5 seconds, dying with the same soft pop
>>> before GRUB has timee to load.
>>>
>>> On a desktop this would suggest a PSU failure.
>>> Has anyone seen this elsewhere?
>
>If you both are talking about the old '94 era 486 T1900 series of
>Toshiba laptops... I didn't know there was any of them still running
>after all of this time. As Toshiba didn't use any fans and the power
>regulators would cook themselves to death in about 5 years of everyday
>use. And here is a handy link for those old 486 Toshibas.
>
>The Ultimate Unofficial 486 Toshiba FAQ
>http://home.att.net/~ronkar/toshiba.html
This brings back memories of my old T1950CT. The on-board PSU was
particularly finicky and prone to instant damage. One story circulating
was that you needed to plug the external power supply into the computer
_before_ connecting it to the wall jack. If the power supply was "live"
when first connected to the computer, it could fry some component in the
internal PSU requiring motherboard replacement.
I once added a memory card in the dedicated RAM slot only to have all
sorts of power-related blinkies occurring. The machine would not boot on
battery alone, only with the AC supply connectedf. Ick.