Hello everyone,

I just bought a faulty X505CP from ebay. The seller said it has the problem of recharging battery. I tested it immediately when it arrived. Yes, it’s true. But I am not sure it’s the problem of mainboard or just the old battery (Sony genuine). The problem is:

1. It will take a whole day to recharge (battery light keeps flashing).
2. I can boot without AC adapter but it will shut down soon (it looks like ran out battery)
3. When I tried to plug the AC adapter only (no battery), it didn’t boot.

Hopefully you can understand what I said and forgive my poor English.

By the way, I had replaced the 1.8” weak Toshiba hard drive into 4G compact flash card as fake SSD. It impressed me on super fast XP install (though I didn’t finish the whole install process due to reasons above…

allblack - 24 April 2008 05:05 PM

Hello everyone,

I just bought a faulty X505CP from ebay. The seller said it has the problem of recharging battery. I tested it immediately when it arrived. Yes, it’s true. But I am not sure it’s the problem of mainboard or just the old battery (Sony genuine). The problem is:

1. It will take a whole day to recharge (battery light keeps flashing).
2. I can boot without AC adapter but it will shut down soon (it looks like ran out battery)
3. When I tried to plug the AC adapter only (no battery), it didn’t boot.

Hopefully you can understand what I said and forgive my poor English.

By the way, I had replaced the 1.8” weak Toshiba hard drive into 4G compact flash card as fake SSD. It impressed me on super fast XP install (though I didn’t finish the whole install process due to reasons above…

Hi, from 1-2 problems seem like the battery is dead, I’m not sure what causes the third one tho.
BTW, which 1.8” adapter and CF card did you use for the fake SSD, I was thinking about the same thing, but was a little worry about the height of 5mm, would you mind to share the process.
I’m in the market for a Samsung 32gb SSD MCBOE32G8APR-0XA00, it was everywhere when I checked couple month ago, but now they’re all gone, even on Neweggs, weird…

Hi, Poky

Yes, It’s a bizarre situation. The seller said he ever took this X505 to a computer workshop and they thought the solder of power jack had worn off. But I just wonder if the ac adapter can recharge the battery no problem (though its probably dead), why ac adapter can not boot up the X505 without battery???

As to the 1.8” adapter and CF card, just type in [1.8” ide] you will find quite a lot choices on ebay, though they are all the same model and bloody cheap. I chose Transcend 266X 4G CF as my fake SSD, but 8G CF will better (higher price!).Transcend 266X 8G CF with adapter in practical test,the average speed is 32.2MB/sec,almost the triple fast of poor TOSHIBA HDD.The theoretical value of 266X is approaching 40MB/sec so I think the bottle neck is the adapter. But it’s good enough for X505 and think about the pretty low cost.

If you are interesting, you can refer this link (sorry no English text)
http://www.wretch.cc/blog/bottler&article_id=12022788

By the way, NOT all CF card can be used as fake SSD. Sandisk Extreme IV(266X)is fast enough but it won’t work due to “non fixed-disk mode”. Transcend is cheaper than Sandisk and popular choice for many fake SSD players. The is no height problem for such a combination,all you need to do is slightly cut the jumper cap (on the adapter)to less than 5mm.

I just tried to turn on my X505ZP without installed the battery, it can be booted, perhaps you something wrong with the power system on the mainboard.

Thanks for the link, lucky me, I’m from Taiwan, so I can understand every single word from that website, too bad it wasn’t for a X505.

Hi allblack,
Sounds to me like one of following problems (in order of probability)
a) power jack on PC - bad solder
b) AC adaptor problem
c) power supply on MB

For b): voltage on AC adaptor output should be 16V (16.4V or so); you can try with another adaptor, also some Fujitsu 16V adaptors have same socket. Might be a broken cord/connector problem. AC would probably be dead completly if faulty.
For a): this explains the symptoms; if supply is intermittent, battery charges slowly. Normally new battery charges to 80% in 1.5h, old one even sooner.
Boot the PC with battery & AC, wiggle power cord, check the battery charge icon in start bar.
You can also run perfmon & check battery charge, discharge & voltage data. (see here)
For c): well, that would be a real problem
BTW: did you get the CP from DFJ?

Hi fortexg,

Thank you for detail analysis !

What a surprise !!!

I left my x505 on my desk and no touch it for 3 days (AC adapter plugged),it amazingly worked by battery only for over one hour today ! So I finished the whole install procedures of XP now.

For(a),is there any one knows where I can find a good VAIO repair specialist who charges “reasonable fare” in UK?  (bye bye my money) It’s crazy as the seller said the workshop quoted him 160 pounds to fix the bad solder @@”

For(b),I will try to find a compatible ac adapter to try
For(c),hopefully it will not happen to me…>”<

No, I didn’t buy it from DFJ, the seller should be a individual one.

Hi,Guys

I finally resolved the problem. My AC adapter was faulty. I bought a new charger from ebay then the X505 works well now.

BTW, my fake SSD + Ramdisk makes my X505 running as fast as other two C2D base laptops,GREAT !!!