Z96 Owners Lounge!

Thanks for the input.

The power supply works ok as it charged the battery ok over night and I have been doing the testing with power supply connected and just the battery alone.

Very frustrating....will have to wait till I get done at work and an event I have to at tonight before I can play some more.

If this was a really old system I would expect the beeps from post to tell me what failed, on this nothing. I know it is shutting off most likely to something drawing too much current but I really am down to the processor and maybe the ram.

What fun we have!

Jeff

 

A bit more information.

I went back and determined that it was 1 of my 2 ram sticks that is causing the computer to shut down right away. After removing the offending RAM, I have a 2GB stick in now and when I press the power button, I heard the optical drive reset and the CPU fan turn on and run. (however on further power ons the CPU doesn't turn on) The HD is spinning also as the Hd light is on solid and I do know it is good because after the original mobo smoked I connected the HD to an enclosure and copied off my data. However that is all it is doing. The display doesn't light up, no post. I have pressed the reset button and pulled the battery and held down the power button for 15 or so seconds. I have tried the ram in both sockets.

What's the next option here guys and gals??

Jeff

 

Well I have either lost everyones attention or I just like to see my own posts!

Today a friend who has a similar model of Asus is going to let me swap processors with him to see if mine starts to work. If it is not that I really am at a loss as to what to do.

I know, just get a new one...

Jeff

 

I can't think of anything more to help sorry.

Either your CPU isn't properly seated or it's dead or your RAM is bad. Those are the "likely" causes.

There could also be a short somewhere. Or you could have two bad boards... and then we fall off the deep end of probability.

 

Yep I figured. It is weird and I have been doing this for a long time!

Yesterday I was able to pop in another CPU, not the exacpt one but same line of the core 2 duo, no difference.

It doesn't even care if I remove the ram, so that to me is saying the CPU is not being powered or initialized because it is never runing the initial boot strap process to access RAM an the mobo. If it wasn't a new in the boix mobo I bought I might even say I did have a second bad mobo but really?

Oh well...............

Jeff

Another quick thought, but not sure what to do about it if this is the issue.

From reading up on the initial boot process the power-good signal is not getting to the CPU or the CPU is failing reading from the BIOS on the mobo so it never continues in the start up process.

Again that leads back to a mobo issue......

Jeff

 

Two motherboards and two CPUs and still a dead system. You should try to get a hold of the cheapest stick of RAM you can to rule that out.

Does this model have a GPU that's soldered to the mobo or is it a discrete card?

 

GPU is soldered... The dead Z96J that I have died in a similar fashion... Going to sell it for parts in the coming weeks and it might cover the cost of Lenovo T61. The hardware is interchangeable... The same Santa Rossa platform... The last thing you might do is try baking the old MB...

 

The final post.

I don't know if I should be more happy or just mad at myself for this.

It was the ram! I actually had both ram dimms bad. One caused the system to shut off (I assume it had a short in it) and the other was bad in some way that the system either didn't see it or was not able to initialize it.

I put in a couple of 512MB dimms and it fired up!

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.

Jeff

 

@AevnsGrandpa congrats. Glad your system is working again!

 

I have a few questions for you guys regarding my Z96J that I got in 07.

* Can I upgrade to 4GB (2x-2GB) Ram?
* Does the T2500 support 64bit?
* If not, what is the best processor I can upgrade to?

Thanks!

 

Yes you can upgrade to 2x 2GB but the system will not see all of it.
mine only got 2.89 on 32bit. I dont know how that changes on 64bit, if it would see all of the 4GB that is.

T2500 doesnt support 64bit. you will have to upgrade to merom processor.

Best one you can upgrade to is T7600, besides that, T7200 and T7400 also work. They are all merom processor

Make sure you update your BIOS first before upgrading the CPU

 

Upgraded my 1280x800 screen to a 1680x1050 on my S96J. At first I was doubtful because I couldn't find any threads on google where someone had actually upgraded their screen to a higher resolution in a S96J. I took a gamble and it worked. I was mainly driven because I noticed that on CPUZ my motherboard is that of a Z96JS eventhough I have the S96J model. Got my LCDfrom ebay (new).

So now I guess my laptop has evolved to a z96j?...

Posting this in case there are any S96J owners searching because the S96J owners lounge got locked.

 

Hi, i own mine z96 actually s96 as yours one for 6 years and my matrix has vertical issue that is visible on black and all dark colors. When i press the upper boarder of the screen it seem to dissappear but just for seconds. So i wanna change my matrix with such as you did. Please send me details on exact model number, price to understand.. Some more questions. I had successfully installed win 7 64 bit ultimate. Everything works perfect except cam. I have bison one. Driver installed, cam does turn on i mean led indicator but cam shows black .... If you may help me with drivers. The one more question is about video out vga or s-video if you use which is working and with wich drivers in our case. Describe more. I 'm so proud of my old laptop and very interested to hear of yours. Thanks

 

Does anybody here has z96 running windows 7 64bit?

 

Hey vovka. I bought my LCD from this ebay user:
ASUS Z96J Z96JP Z96JS 15.4" LCD panel screen monitor | eBay
I think any z96 lcd should be compatible. Unfortunately, that lcd comes with no webcam, and I didn't want to take it apart just to put the old one in. The plastics are kind of delicate on these laptops.
However, I could never get the webcam to work with windows 7. Sorry for the bad news. I'll post CPUZ info and lshw info later tonight so you can see what model my laptop is.

 

My screenshots for my S96J info. From ubuntu and windows 7.