Compaq Armada 7350MT Laptop - Disassembly - How To Replace The Hard Disk Drive

As you can see, there is an unlocked/unsecured flap on the side that reveals the hard disk drive and its caddy... you cant actually remove it yet though as it is secured by a single screw holding a metal plate in place which you access from underneath the laptop.

That's it!  The hard disk is now removed and you can do what you need to with it and remember, the rattle noise is normal :)

Disassembly

As this partticular laptop of mine doesn't power on, it's time to remove all the screws underneath, carefully remove the keyboard and top bezel to reveal the motherboard:

Everything looks OK but on closer inspection you can see that the CMOS battery is a bit dodgy and the connectors are stuck fast on the motherboard.

As it's beyond economical repair this will get put back together and placed in my Spares and Repairs pile in case I get another one etc.

Cleaning A Very Dirty Compaq 7350MT Laptop

I picked up a (very) dirty old laptop the other day for a couple of quid that has clearly been sitting in a barn or garage somewhere for a very long time...

To clean a dirty old laptop like this, I use two different products.  First I give it a once-over with the trusty old AF Foamclene followed by a magic sponge/eraser!

After a very short while you then end up with something like this:

As you can see it has come out really nice :)

How To... Replace The CMOS Battery On A Compaq Armada 1700/1750 Laptop

Changing the RTC/CMOS battery on a Compaq Armada 1700/1750 is really quite easy as all you need to do is remove the keyboard, remove a little cover, remove the battery and then replace it with another one as shown in the photos below:

The thing is though, where do you get a replacement battery from?  Well, you can either get one off of eBay or you can make your own...


To make your own you are going to need the following items:

• Sharp knife
• Soldering Iron, Solder and a De-Soldering Tool
• Side Cutters (or scissors)
• Heat Shrink
• Heat Gun
• A replacement CR2032 Battery
• Aluminium Foil Tape with Conductive Acrylic Adhesive

The first thing you need is the original flat battery from your Compaq Armada laptop.  Once removed from the laptop you will need to carefully remove the plastic surround with a sharp knife.

Carefully remove the connectors from the battery and then using your soldering iron remove the leads from the connectors.

Once you have removed both of the connectors it's time to get a short length of aluminium foil tape with conductive adhesive and solder each wire to a piece.  This can be quite tricky so practice first before trying on the actual connector.

Then, take some heat-shrink tubing and cut to size.  Place over the two terminals you have created and then use your heat gun to shrink it nice and tight.  Not only will this make it look neat and tidy but has the added benefit that if you're not very good at soldering and end up in time with a dry joint, it might just hold the wire'solder to the aluminium foil tape so there is still a proper connection!

Once you have put heat-shrink tubing on the ends of both connectors (as shown in the photo above) it's time to remove the paper-backing from the adhesive tape and stick it on your battery:

Now you could leave it like this, but the aluminium tape is very thin and therefor fragile so you can either wrap tightly in some very good quality electrical tape or (you can do what I did) and use some more heat-shrink tubing.

As you can see, using the heat-shrink tubing makes it look a bit more professional and it fits perfectly in the laptop.

Compaq Armada 1700 and 1750 - Entering The BIOS

According to the Service Manual for the Compaq Armada 1700 series, you press F10 to enter the BIOS.  Unlike modern computers, the BIOS program on these laptops is stored on a service partition on the hard disk drive.

If the hard disk drive has been replaced at some point then the service partition wont exist any more and it wont matter how many times you press F10 nothing will happen!

Not to worry thought as you can create a floppy disk to boot by downloading sp8975.exe from the Compaq/HP website (get it while you can).  This file wont work on a modern operating system so you'll need to run it from Windows 95.

When you launch the executable you will be prompted to insert a formatted floppy disk and a bootable disk will then be created so you can change your BIOS settings.

Compaq Armada 1750 Photos

Look what I've just taken delivery of: