Trying to bring laptops to life....help.

[neodave]

Just bought two very cheap laptops in hopes I could get them working. One is a Compaq Armada 1590DMT (with no battery) and the other is a Compaq Armada 1130. Neither one will power up at all.

Also got a basically free M-Tech 486DX2-50 laptop. I didn't get a power cord with it and of course the battery is dead.

Any suggestions?

[neodave]

Update:

The 1590 now powers on and simply displays '16384 KB OK'. Doesn't go past that. Just makes a few space game sounds. The AC converter on the 1130 shows 16volts.

[redacidman]

sound like the bios is screwed up

[gorp2000]

if the cmos battery is dead you will get a configuration error and sometimes a message to enter setup as far as the sounds go it may be faulty video and or drives. your cpu is ok and your memory is good faulty memory displays as checksum errors or parity errors. if the cpu itself was faulty the system would be completely dead