Clio brief display then nothing, how to troubleshoot??

In the past few months I have acquired three Clio C-1050s from separate eBay auctions.

Two arrived and work fine. The third one just displays an image of several Clios for a few seconds and then turns to a black screen.

I tried this with a battery from one of the working Clios and just on AC and the result is always the same. After it turns black, if I pull the ac adapter and then reattach, it will do the same display one more time.

No change after soft and after hard resets (tested without the battery in place).

Not sure how to troubleshoot further and appreciate any advice or referral.

thanks

Steve

You must pray to the HPC gods to release the enslaved soul of your Clio.
On a serious note, can you send it back?

Is there any response from the sound system on the device, any hint that the input functions are working - keyclick, screens taps or attempts by a connected PC to connect (over and above inadvertant COM chatter)

can you try a ROM/RAM chip from a working clio in it? or is the rom/ram not on a daughterboard (i.e. it is soldered in)?

i'm suggesting this because i had a jornada 720 with a dead rom/ram, it would always try to boot but got stuck on the hp initial screen... i could get it to try to get into the hp diag (reset + s) but it would never actually get there (just displaying the message it is going there).
changed the rom/ram chips, works fine now...

Underneath is an egg-shaped cover, held by a single screw. Once opened you will see two cards which should say DO NOT REMOVE memory card...
Anyway, before you mess with them, I would try the memory erase switch which is a button (under the cover you removed) next to the where the screw connects with the chassis.

If you need to test with memory from another clio. The memory boards can be removed by carefully levering up (top &bottom) edges.

Edited by jpfx 2006-03-25 10:26 AM

I looked at the ROMs from my two working Clio C-1050s. Both of them look similar and differ from the non-working one in having two black plastic rectangles covering parts of the traces on the lower left part of the ROM.

Does anyone know if this is meaningful? If the black rectangles (jumpers?, capacitors?) are needed, can they be replaced?

Are there different versions of the ROM chip in the Clio C-1050? Anyone have the specs?

I haven't tried exchanging ROMs yet, since I currently have two working Clios and I don't want to damage their ROMs trying to find out if the third one will work if that is replaced. Anyone know where I could buy the proper replacement ROM?

Appreciate any thoughts...

Steve

If you remove the battery cover, there is a small button switch that tells the unit the cover is on. Sometimes the button breaks off or the switch goes bad. Try to push in the button and power-up.

Swapping ROm/Ram cards should not do any damage.