silicon pop culture - forum

TR3AP Bricked! Any Last-ditch Pointers?

2009-01-02T19:51:37Z

Long time reader, first post! This place has been a great resource, and I’ve really appreciated all the time/effort you’ve all provided to keep me thoroughly educated the past few years: thank you for that!

Good advice I have been given here - mix a stiff drink before continuing, this has gotten pretty lengthy!

Been living in love with my TR3AP four years now. Gone around the world a few times, but it’s been babied and is mostly a home network nerve center. It’s lean and mean since day 1; a minimum TSR’s loaded and plenty of HDD space for virtual mem maintained. 512mb added in the past 18mos ‘was’ the only Hware updgrade.

Over the last 6mos it’s been presenting the ambiguous IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSD followed by a system reboot. Nothing significant added/rem apart from memory almost a year before, but it was the first place I started to look. Extensive Google research taught me it’s definitely not the more specific DRIVER_IRQ_NOT_YADDA_YADDA. In cases with hand built PC’s memory ECC, or mismatched mem speed (as well as a handful of Hware specific issue are known to exhibit this issue), but nothing about this Sony configuration has been detailed. Though a few Sony cases are documented, they’ve not had to go through the extensive troubleshooting I have to return to the same place each time…

Being in high-tech and PC software development since ‘95 I’m fairly proficient with all things hardware, OS related, so want to ask if something has been overlooked here?

Error occurs under all scenarios:
- Both 512mb sticks and both mem bays have been tested seperately
- Memcheck x86 ran with no errors generated
- Replaced NTKRNL.SYS (WinDBG dump report)
- Uninstalled Norton AV (Event viewer error reported with NETEVENT.DLL)
- Fresh factory (Sony) HDD restore
- Stand alone XP Pro fresh install
[Each of these test-cases were run before/after HDD/mem upgrades. Both continued to exhibit the error, either after a clean setup that ran w/out for up to a day, or a mid setup occurring error—>reboot cycle that never allowed OS setup to complete]
- Changed out the Toshiba 40gb for the newer Toshiba 60gb given it had exhibited knocking and perf issues for 12mos, so figured it possibly directly related
- Failing that, changed out the two mismatched mem sticks with new matching 512mb sticks

Over the course of the Hware upgrades I’ve stripped this to the metal—> rebuilt—> stripped—> had a stiff drink—> examined all parts for scorched PCB—> rebuilt, and received the same error after a few minutes of running fresh, third party app-less XP installs. Given the scenarios laid out here and the multitude of test-cases exhibiting the same error, I’m at a total loss to guess what else! Short of an EC error that only a few more hours with a multimeter and logging will provide…

Anyone more informed on this? Guess I’m just looking to know definatively that I haven’t been blind to the obvious, and my next post ‘‘TR3 Parts!’’ can be duly constructed.

As you were men, and thanks.

Tr3a motherboard replacement easy? any link to instructions? and will it solve my problem?

2008-12-08T10:41:34Z

I previously used this site (or Sony TR World) to replace my HDD for my TR3a. The instructions and pictures were really great as they made changing the hard drive really easy.

Are there any instructions here for replacing the motherboard and is it just as easy? I searched the web site but can’t find any instructions for motherboard replacement.
Are there any things to be careful of or I need to watch out for? (Like making sure the motherboard is compatible with my current hard drive connector) I was thinking of purchasing a replacement motherboard from ebay unless anyone advises against it.

My laptop has been great but recently it had a hard time booting up from being cold. Once it was running, it ran fine and I could restart it over and over with no problems. However, when I would start from it being off for the night, it would freeze during the boot, over and over until it warmed up. I realized I could just hit F8 during boot up and wait and until it could sit on that boot option screen for about 5 minutes without freezing and once it could last 5 minutes without freezing I new I could then start it up. If it did freeze, I would just hold down the power button and try again with F8. Now it’s completely dead and won’t even come one, or show the battery charging. Someone told me that replacing the motherboard would fix it. Has anyone encountered anything like this and does anyone have any tips or things I should know before buying a replacement motherboard?
Thanks for any help here.

Connecting to an external monitor

2007-10-22T13:41:37Z

Has anyone had any issues trying to connect to an external monitor? I have tried connecting to a 40” LCD a couple of times. The FN F7 combo works, but all I get for choices is “LCD Only / Setup”. No matter what I select, nothing happens. Yes, the 40” LCD is set on external / computer connection.

When I use the Display function in the Control Panel section, nothing really happens either. Does anyone have any ideas?

HDD in secondary IDE vs primary IDE

2008-12-07T15:39:22Z

I have a bit of a strange problem, in that I have a 2.5 inch drive which, when plugged into the primary IDE, is not recognised by the BIOS, but when it is plugged into the secondary one is fine and boots up. However, when the normal 1.8 inch drive is in the primary IDE it can get recognised and can be booted from. I cannot think of any reason why there is this difference as the BIOS should recognise both as HDDs. Does anyone have any idea why this is the case?

RAM sliding in and out problem

2008-11-10T13:16:15Z

Hi all, I have a bad feeling I have just broken my TR5 and was wondering if anyone can clear something up for me. I have both a 512 and a 256 bits of RAM, but my system was only recognising the 512 it was originally installed with in bank 1. I then switched the 256 into bank 1, with nothing in the other side, and the TR recognised the 256 fine. I was thinking that possibly bank 2 was broken, so I tried putting the 512 in there on its own, but the machine didn’t boot up, so I put the 512 back into bank 1. At this point, I realised that I’d left the battery in during the last bit of changing and the laptop wasn’t booting up or even posting… all it does is have a black screen (doesn’t look like any power going to it), the power light is green, the hard drive is lit for a bit and I can hear it spinning, and the battery light is lit too.

Now I have noticed that the RAM in bank 1 isn’t actually held in place by the clips, but rather, I push it in at 45 degrees then snap it down so it is in place, the RAM can slide out under the clips. I hope I haven’t broken the slots themselves, but rather just blown the RAM… I’ve ordered a new 512 to try out.

Anyone seen this before or have any ideas? I’m going to be really quite annoyed if I’ve broken my machine considering I’ve only just newly fixed it after dropping it a year ago…

Power Problem (switch between AC/battery)

2008-02-07T09:34:24Z

My TR3AP has been acting finicky lately. When it is plugged in, the power profile keeps popping up and switching back and forth every few minutes indicating it is either “AC plugged in” or “Running on Batteries”.

My first thought was that I may have a problem with the physical plug - however I am wondering if it might be a power profile problem because now it will show AC plugged in even when I’m just running on batteries. It is driving me CRAZY!

Any suggestions? Is there another option other than the Sony Power Profile software? I can’t even figure out how to get the darn popup messages to stop.

I would appreciate any help the group might be able to provide,

Thanks

PCG-TR2AP

2008-10-05T07:05:01Z

I bought my PCG-TR2AP when it first came out for about 3,000$. It has (had) 30 giga which seemed terrific at the time; however, all the blasted software I didn’t use but was already loaded took up most of the memory. Anyway long story short I used the recovery discs I made to reformat and remove the rubbish I didn’t use and then it stopped working properly. So I bought some software to recover lost files and now I get a blue screen and have rendered the laptop useless. I only used it for travelling mainly Word and to download photographs. I don’t recall if I got Windows CDs with it, (can’t find them anywhere if I did) only that I made the full recovery kit which is proving (has proved) to be useless.
I’ve been toying with the idea of scrapping it and buying an Apple laptop for half the price. The thing is it should still work…and I used money I inherited from my dad so…for sentimental reasons I want the blasted thing to work again.

Help! Please.

you can’t believe this

2008-09-20T20:10:25Z

one month ago. the weather is damn hot in california. my sony tr3a HDD died and it couldn’t detect operating system and no hard disk shown in BIOS. I tried more than 10 times and no way to get t back. so i set my laptop aside to collecting dust.

today, I try to start up the laptop. amazingly, now it works fine. i immedially
backed up all data . you just can’t believe this!

Oh dear. Swapped out HDD, now it wont boot

2008-03-26T14:42:40Z

Hi,

As the title suggests.

My hitachi died, so i’ve spent ages getting the parts to swap out to a toshiba.

I’ve put it in, i also had the bios battery out for a while but have now connected that up again. Also took the ram out to have a look and put it back in as it was.

I’ve put it all together again, and now it wont boot. The lights at the front come on, and the cd drive flashes. If i put a cd in it will also spin up.

However the fan doesnt appear to do anything, but im not sure if it does on boot. and the harddrive doesnt sound like its doing anything.

But surely if the harddrive was dead it would still boot to BIOS wouldnt it? Im getting nothing, no life on the screen at all.

Someone please help, I dont wanna lose my TR!!!!

cheers

*edit - i’ve left it on for a little bit now just incase it springs into life.

it hasnt. but it is warming up in the harddrive area, which makes me think it is probably doing something.

i’ve also prodded the reset hole underneath which hasnt done anything.

also if i press the caps lock key or num locks it doesnt turn on the corresponding light under the screen. i’ve tried fn+pf7 to see if the screen is routed to external, but it hasnt helped

Switch to mains power and screen goes dark

2008-09-03T03:34:35Z

I’ve just started experiencing a problem with a Vaio PCG 6L1M.

Working off the battery power all works fine. But since a couple of days ago, when you plug in the mains adaptor the screen goes so dark as to be almost unreadable. The Fn+F5/F6 keys don’t do anything at all.

VAIO display power settings have power saving mode switched off for mains and battery power, and if I use the VAIO display control panel to reset the display brightness to 5 then hit apply and OK the screen brightness goes as it should for about 15 seconds, then goes back to being gloomy and headache-inducing.

Anyone experienced this problem and able to suggest a resolution?

Thanks in advance.