Repairing a ST Book.

[AndresPlazaR]

Hello!

I recently acquired a ST Book; having one has been my dream for a while. :-)

Before I bought it, I new it wasn't working, but having fixed my STacy previously, repaired other computers and built a Phoenix, I was confident I could make it work again. The tricky part, in my mind, is the "mechanical" part (the broken case).

It has been a few weeks since I started to repair it, but I decided that I want to document what I'm doing in case other people find similar problems with theirs and can get ideas on how to proceed.

So, I will be posting in this thread, little by little. The first few posts will talk about things I already did, and when I catch up I will be updating as things happen.

Of course, suggestions are welcome (but because some repairs already happened, I may not be able to try things).

First, let me show you a few pictures and describe the state of the machine (as I received it).

PXL_20240614_013840166.jpg

Beautiful, ah? :)

As I mentioned above. the person that sold it mentioned that it was not turning on, and that the case was broken on a few parts:

PXL_20240614_013846336.jpg

PXL_20240614_013904130.MP.jpg

PXL_20240614_013951073.jpg

Clearly, the notebook fell and the right hinge took a beating. Besides that, the latch to close the screen and the lid of the ports in the back have lost one of the two pivot points (I will post pictures of that later).

But even with all those problems, I was very happy that I finally own one of these beautiful machines!

My next step was to disassemble it, research the problems and fix them. That will be the next post.

BTW, I want to thank @Robson for all his help and ideas!

Andres.

[Badwolf]

They're certainly good looking machines!

Best of luck.

BW

[alexh]

#Jealous looks good. Even battle damaged :)

[sporniket]

That's a great catch, have fun with it.

[AndresPlazaR]

Thanks for the comments! :-)

The first thing I tried is, of course, see what happened when pressing the power button: the power light turned on, I think I could hear the hard disk spinning, but the screen remained off (old ST Book owners are probably screaming at the screen right now; it will obvious why later).

So, off I went on disassembling the notebook. I found @Robson's instructions on how to do it here: here . That's a great guide and I won't repeat here the steps from there.

This is how it looked at the end:

s_PXL_20240615_032803816.jpg

(it is a German ST Book, so it has the German TOS). And this is how the hinges of the LCD screen looked:

s_PXL_20240615_040702114.jpg

You can clearly see that the one on the right is crooked and, on closer inspection, the embedded supports for the screws are loose because the plastic is broken (picture of this later), so it is basically not holding any weight (the left hinge is the one doing all the work); I needed to keep disassembling the LCD screen.

Because @Robson's instructions did not mention those steps, I decided to contact him for ideas and/or guidance. He hadn't disassemble that part before, but gave me good information on how to take the back cover of the LCD screen, and that could help me figure out what to do next (I will describe this process later).

He did mention something that may be obvious to old ST Book owners, but it is not in the manual and I could not find any reference on sites dedicated to the notebook, so I will mention it here: pressing the power button is not enough to turn it on. After pressing the power button (and the power light turning on), you need to press the reset button (with something pointy). And doing that, the screen came alive and it kind of booted:

s_PXL_20240615_160433900.jpg

A few things to point out from this picture:

1. There are some vertical lines in the Atari logo and the text below.
2. I got 4 bombs.
3. The bombs look weird.

The vertical lines are similar to the ones described here, including how to fix them.

One reason for the 4 bombs is described here.

No idea about the look of the bombs.

My next post will be on the investigation of the first two issues.

Andres.

[AndresPlazaR]

By the way, this thing about needing to press the reset button to start the ST Book bothered me... In the manual there is no mention about it.
So, I guessed, there must be something wrong in the circuit.

But looking at the schematics (granted these are the ones for rev.7, and my board is rev.5), there is no connection between the power and reset lines, so I guess it was always that way? So strange.

[stephen_usher]

This is very similar to the Macintosh Portable.

With that, if it looses all power then when the battery is installed or recharged then before you can start the machine you have to do a hard reset by pressing the reset and debug buttons at the same time.

I think these old machines didn’t have a useful full power-on reset circuit for the power management sub-systems.

[Darklord]

"No idea about the look of the bombs."

First off, congratulations on capturing such a rare machine. Some of us were actually
watching this auction in a message thread over at SouthernAmis.com.

Second...any chance that the appearance of the bombs is a continuing symptom, from
top to bottom, of the vertical lines that are going through the logo and text?

Just a thought. :)

[AndresPlazaR]

This is very similar to the Macintosh Portable.

With that, if it looses all power then when the battery is installed or recharged then before you can start the machine you have to do a hard reset by pressing the reset and debug buttons at the same time.

I think these old machines didn’t have a useful full power-on reset circuit for the power management sub-systems.

Ah, interesting... I guess it was common then.

But why not mention that on the manual? :?

[AndresPlazaR]

"No idea about the look of the bombs."

First off, congratulations on capturing such a rare machine. Some of us were actually
watching this auction in a message thread over at SouthernAmis.com.

Second...any chance that the appearance of the bombs is a continuing symptom, from
top to bottom, of the vertical lines that are going through the logo and text?

Just a thought. :)

Thanks!

Stay tuned for the conclusion of that cliffhanger. ;-)