If you would like to add your own wallpapers, please e-mail me the ones you have and I’ll manually add them to the list or you can post links to your own server if you have one.

VAIO Deep Sea (as found on the North American VAIO TR1-series)

VAIO Orbit (as found on the North American VAIO TR2-series)

Japan VAIO TR site

VAIO “09” (a modified wallpaper from   )

Tom’s Island Collection (from   . some images modified to 1280x768)

Sony VAIO Bright Pack

I have a TR3-A that was running fine. I plugged in an apparently bad microdive into a USB port.  Got shutdown and a black screen almost immediately. After several tries and about an hour the machine came back up.  Problem is the USB ports do not function and I get an error message “device not recognized” with nothing plugged in.  I’ve reloaded the drivers and even used recovery discs to rebuild the machine without success. Everything else works fine except for the memory stick reader.  Any ideas?  Fried motherboard or possibly just a daughter card?

Thanks

I’ll start by posting a picture which I just took of my TR a few minutes ago, please feel free to post your own pictures! I wouldn’t mind posting more pictures, but I would like to know if any one is interested in them before doing so.

One is in amazing condition, almost no scratches, everything (including camera) works great.

Second is as above, but with a few scratches on the cover.

The third has everything working (plus a sony vaio motion eye camera (in packaging) that can be installed), but with a cracked screen.

If you’re interested, please pm me with an offer - both my husband and I loved these for travelling, but we’re not on the road enough to keep them!

I am asking if you would please allow me to clean up and moderate this forum.  There is a lot of good and helpful information on this site and people are still using these older Sony machines.  I would be glad to maintain these forums and toss out the spammers.

Please email me at my registered address.  Thanks.

S22S

PS.Find all the parts yourself bundle them in one pack and I rebuild your TR and send it back complete renewed, more info dot dot dot gery at viewtronics dot com

S22S

After several years of faithful service from my TR3A, I decided to finally do some upgrades.  I added another 512MB of memory for 1GB total.  I saw a bit of an improvement, but it was the addition of a Kingspec 64GB PATA SSD ($240, ebay, shipped from USA) that made the big difference.  WOW!  This machine now fully boots in just over a minute.  Internet Explorer 8 comes up super fast.  MS Word 2007 comes up about 3 or 4 times faster than before.  It comes out of standby instantly, and the machine is very quiet.  It is weird seeing the hard drive activity light yet hearing nothing but the faint whisper of the CPU fan.

I highly recommend the Kingspec SSD.  I did a complete recovery using the excellent Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery Desktop 8.0 (Found for $17.00 on Ebay) in about 37 minutes.

I will not miss my S-l-o-o-o-o-w, noisy 40GB Hitachi HDD.

UPDATED: 7/3/09.  Everything I said above was running XP SP3.  Windows 7 runs super fast on this same machine.

I’m compiling and updating a single post in that thread on the start-to-finish steps needed to get Windows 7 running (and running well) on the TR.  This thread seemed to die out, but now that Windows 7 Upgrade pre-sales have started ($49.00 through July 11 !), I want to keep this thread going to help keep our TR’s alive for years to come.

I would appreciate your input on tips and tricks to add to the instructions that will help other TR users in the months ahead.  Please don’t post them here, but in the Software Forum thread.

Thanks.

s22s (Thread Hijacker)

I’ve reciently purchased a Sony TR3A notebook, I simply fell in love with it years ago, but forgot it for a long time and finally it’s in my hands!

Back to the main topic, I must add one thing:
-The laptop has no HDD, it is running Ubuntu from a live CD (Ordered caddy and ribbon cable already :D)

I was noticing the laptop getting VERY, specially the bottom part in general, so I decided to have a look at the heatsink, maybe it was disconnected for some reason, or the fan was blocked, or what ever.

When I took it appart, every thing looked fine, how ever, when I boot the laptop up there’s no sign of life in the fan. It doesn’t spin no matter how warm it gets. I thought it could’ve been a problem with the heatsink its self, I tried replacing it with a spare one I had, but nothing changed, the fan was still not spinning. I’ve read the fan is usually idle (not moving) unleast you enable it to do so, how ever I’ve looked all over the BIOS and found nothing.

I’ve made several conclusions:
-The motherboard is not transfering any power to the fan at all
-The second heatsink was faulty
-Software related problem, BIOS update maybe?

Anyway… I really hope some one can help me, because it just gets too warm, and it’s rather scary to see the fan not spinning at all despite the fact the laptop could be burning down… (I’m aware the system would auto-shut down when it hits a peak temperature )

I’ve also come accross another problem, but this one is quite hard to explain… Basically the area between the power input in the notebook and the charger output (The yellow plug in the notebook) makes strange noises when charged and the LCD is on. It looks like it’s short-circuiting, or there’s a problem transfering the power, because at the same time it makes the noises, the screen brightness fades out, and then back to normal, in about a second. The noises stop when I close the notebook; sounds like an inverter problem maybe? A note on this is the LCD was under VERY HEAVY pressure when it was shipped from the UK to Spain (where I live), the LCD panel was semi-damaged and the keys were marked on the LCD, creating white ‘‘pixel shadows’’ and what look like cracks (Yes cracks) but the LCD is still functioning.

Oh and a note I’d like to add, is the hinges can reach a 90º angle, it cracks and very roughly sets to a 90º angle after opening the notebook excessively, how ever, behind the hinges, there are 2 holes in each hinge, where it looks like a wire or some sort of protection is meant to be, but I don’t have a clue where or how to get this solved; it’s still a minor issue anyway… a bit irrating though.

I apologize for making this so long, but I’m trying to describe things the best I can; I understand I might not get any replies too, but it’s worth giving this a shot…

P.S: I’m unfortunately very perfectionist and exigent with my electronic devices unfortunately, as you can see

Thanks for reading, if you did ,
Marc.