System board also know as motherboard
A system board also known as motherboard or mainboard is the main circtuit board in any laptop. Unlike desktop PC system boards, laptop system boards come in thousands of different shapes and sizes. Laptop motherboards are model-specific. In other words, you cannot remove motherboard from a Toshiba laptop and stick it into a Dell laptop. All parts inside a laptop are connected to the system board, either directly via a connector mounted on the system board or through a cable.
In a typical laptop the following ports and components are permanently attached to the system board and cannot be easily removed and replaced without soldering:
1. Hard drive (HDD) connector.
2. CD/DVD drive connector.
3. Memory (RAM) slots.
4. Battery connector.
5. Keyboard connector.
6. Audio (headphone and microphone) jacks.
7. Volume control wheel.
8. USB ports.
9. Eithernet (RJ45 aka network) port.
10. IEEE 1394 (Fire Wire) ports.
11. Video chip and some other components and ports.
System board, processor (CPU) and LCD screen are the most expensive parts in any laptop. In some cases, when one of these three parts fails, it’s cheaper to buy a brand new laptop than replace the failed part. But each case is different so do your research.
The system board is mounted inside the laptop base assembly. In order to remove or replace the motherboard, you’ll have to disassemble the whole laptop.
SYSTEM BOARD FAILURE SYMPTOMS.
When a system board fails, you may experience the following most common problems with your laptop. 1. The laptop is completely dead. There are no LED light activity when you press on the power button or plug in a known good AC power adapter. 2. The laptop starts but the video output on the LCD screen or external monitor is garbled. Most likely this is related to the VGA chip failure. 3. The laptop turns on without video on the screen and the power LED starts flashing. 4. The laptop works fine with AC power adapter but will not charge a known good battery. If that’s the case, most likely there is something wrong with the battery charging circuit or DC power jack.
Need spare parts for your laptop?
If you are looking for spare parts for your laptop you can find brand new and used parts here. Just search by the part name and laptop model.
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:35 am
Ed,
Not sure what you are asking about.
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:29 am
Can you tell me how big the download is?
March 2nd, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Tara,
First of all, test your laptop with video output on the external monitor. Can you see same problem on the external video or it works properly?
You can, but first you have to find out if the problem is related to the video card failure or not. That’s why I’m asking you to test the laptop with external video.
If you see the same problem on both screens, the laptop LCD and external monitor, this is the video card failure.
If this problem appears only on the laptop screen but external video is fine, this could be the video cable or LCD screen failure.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:29 pm
My gateway p fx 6860 display reacted with odd pixels all over it then had dual images on it,one on top of the other, with a green/yellow tint. After doing all I could to rescue it I just bought a new Asus. I am curious thou is there anyway I can use this as a project and possibly rebuild it? Replace the system board and reuse the detachable parts to reconnect it?
February 23rd, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Steve,
Most likely this is heat related issue.
http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2006/01/04/toshiba-laptop-overheating/
Take a look inside the heat sink. If the heat sink is clogged with dust, clean it with compressed air. Try after that. Should work fine now.
February 23rd, 2010 at 6:12 am
I have a Compal AL51 based system: it runs OK most of the time but the fan runs quite hard at times, and anything demanding just causes it to power off. Any ideas? I don’t see anything (quite) the same above