Asus EEE PC repair: Smashed LCD, it does not boot either

[Yansi]

hello!

a little bit non-standard project currently: I got an Asus EEE PC with a smashed LCD. Battery was dead, when I got it. So I have dismantled it, measured all three cells in between 1.1 to 1.3V. Well, not that bad, the cells recovered after I slowly charged them directly. The BMS of course disconnected the battery output and plays a dead battery. So whatever, I have clipped 11V directly to the terminals on the notebook. It then tried to power on, but goes off after a few seconds. Okay, it soes not like this. So I dug through my pile of junk adapters and found the correct plug for it. After supplying it 19V from the charging port (w or w/o the battery plugged in), that damned thing does not boot either.

After power on, it spins up the HDD, lights the presumably WiFi LED permanently on, lights the HDD LED for a second or two and then nothing else.  Only the CAPS key does toggle the CAPS LED. Because of the smashed screen. I have also connected an external monitor to the VGA port. It does not even turn the monitor on, just sits there  after power on doing nothing.

Do you have any suggestion or tips what might be wrong or what should I try doing to fix it, before I throw the junk where it belongs? (my enthusiasm for repairing the thing got largely lost after I have found that I can buy a whole working unit for as low as a replacement screen from Aliexpress costs: for $25).

Thanks for suggestions,
Y.

[james_s]

I'm all for trying to repair things, but this sounds like a lost cause to me. Smashed screen and quite possibly a motherboard fault, on a hopelessly obsolete machine that was low end when new.

[SeanB]

Smashed screen, and also probably a dented keyboard, which also doubles as the heatsink for the on board chipset, so very likely one or more of those chips also cracked or has broken loose off the BGA pads. That caps works means the emulated keyboard in the South bridge still works, but the turning off means that it does not have the Celeron CPU coming out of reset and taking over the boot process, then the south bridge continues on and turns off power.

[Yansi]

Keyboard is absolutely fine and does not function as CPU heatsink. CPU is on the bottomside of the mobo.
I have just pried out the mobo, the CPU, guesing the largest chip soldered to the board, has no heatsinking. But there is absolutely no sign that it should have any in the first place. It is the fan-less version of the eee pc. The mobo type is Asus X101CH.

Now I will have a play with the HDD drive, let's see what's on it.

And the turn-off fault is related to missing battery pack communication. I have first tried to power it up using the battery blades, but it does not like that. After I have found the correct jack for the charging port, it stays on idling after powered on. But still, the external VGA does not get turned on (probably not an issue, may be should not be turned on). would be nice to have a working donor machine to test with a working LCD, but this piece of junk may not be worth it. It is junk.

[Nusa]

If it's even got a spot for an internal HDD, it's not the same EEE PC that many of us are familiar with. They were one of the first in the netbook market, and a big feature for the day was the internal SSD!