Motherboard replacement question...

I've just inherited a defunct Vaio VGN-FJ3M, which a friend said
wasn't worth the quote he was given to get it repaired. The repair
sheet says "no processor sgn" which I guess means the CPU's bust.
Would it be worth swapping the CPU for a new Pentium M 740 just to see
if that fixes it? That'd be a fairly cheap/easy job. Or is it likely
there's something else wrong with the board and the CPU's fine?
Choice #2 is to disassemble it for parts and flog on ebay of course!
Thanks!

DanSolo wrote:
> I've just inherited a defunct Vaio VGN-FJ3M, which a friend said
> wasn't worth the quote he was given to get it repaired. The repair
> sheet says "no processor sgn" which I guess means the CPU's bust.
> Would it be worth swapping the CPU for a new Pentium M 740 just to see
> if that fixes it? That'd be a fairly cheap/easy job. Or is it likely
> there's something else wrong with the board and the CPU's fine?
> Choice #2 is to disassemble it for parts and flog on ebay of course!

I would say it's more likely that the motherboard is crackers than the
processor. Also, without knowing the diagnostician, I would say it's
unlikely they tried putting in a new processor, or popping the original
processor in a new motherboard to distinguish the failure.

On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 05:55:27 -0800 (PST), DanSolo
<daniel.otoole@ucd.ie> wrote:

>I've just inherited a defunct Vaio VGN-FJ3M, which a friend said
>wasn't worth the quote he was given to get it repaired. The repair
>sheet says "no processor sgn" which I guess means the CPU's bust.

It's one of those deliberately cryptic messages meant to be
no help to the customer in fixing it themselves.

The CPU is not likely to spontaneously fail, if the unit
wasn't extremely clogged with dust and a fan failure it is
more likely the mainboard that failed, and that would more
likely account for a large enough repair bill to make it
unworthwhile to fix, though I suppose a repair shop could
also want way too much money to just swap a processor.


>Would it be worth swapping the CPU for a new Pentium M 740 just to see
>if that fixes it? That'd be a fairly cheap/easy job.

Sure, if you had the spare CPU lying around, but that's not
likely to be the problem so I wouldn't advise buying one for
it.

>Or is it likely
>there's something else wrong with the board and the CPU's fine?

Yes that's more likely.


>Choice #2 is to disassemble it for parts and flog on ebay of course!
>Thanks!

The problem there is without ever getting it working you are
left selling the parts "as-is" or worse to admit it may not
work, and ultimately the buyer isn't going to be happy at
all when they buy the part that is broken.

It all starts with trying to power it up now and seeing what
happens. You might also pop the covers off and see if you
spot any sign of a problem.

On Feb 13, 6:44 pm, kony <s...@spam.com> wrote:
> It all starts with trying to power it up now and seeing what
> happens. You might also pop the covers off and see if you
> spot any sign of a problem.

In this case EURO 615, plus the EURO 270 they wanted just to look at it,
seemed a bit steep for a 2 year old laptop. I'll keep an eye on ebay
for a MoBo for it, but I guess it's for the bin otherwise. (Although
the RAM/HD/DVD might be useful...)