[tlug] NEC Laptop Issue

["Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon" <ronfaxon@example.com>]

I've written before about the NEC laptop I was given a few years back.  
It had developed a progressively worse problem where - when you fired it 
up - it would insist on trying to boot from the floppy.  It would go 
"kacha-kacha-kacha - beep-beep-beep - kacha-kacha-kacha - 
beep-beep-beep!" as it alternated between trying to read from the floppy 
drive and giving an error beep.

I thought it was a BIOS issue and some vocal people on the list insisted 
it was a mechanical problem where the machine was mistakenly thinking 
there was a floppy in the drive even though there wasn't.  We were all 
wrong.  Actually, although I entertained the possibility of there being 
a mechanical problem, I realized it couldn't be that - since doing a 
reboot was never a problem - just cold startups.

So what was the problem?  Memory!  The machine originally came with 
100MHz memory and I put in a couple of 133MHz boards - that worked 
initially, but even then it took three reboots before I got anything 
other than a blank screen.  After that, they worked fine for a few 
months, and then the boot-up problem crept up.

Having recently fixed another computer that was behaving strangely just 
by putting in different memory boards, I decided to try that on the old 
NEC - and it worked.  Now it starts up with no problem at all - with a 
different 133MHz 128MB board.  Running half the memory, it's bloody slow 
now though.....

Lyle