Day 445: Tablet I/O board problems |
On Thursday at Starbucks sitting inside the local Fred Meyer store in Puyallup and turns out they don’t have any WiFi (I thought all Starbucks had them?) and tried out some offline blogging via OneNote. The picture above is significant because this was the last time that I could plug any device into the USB slot on the M1400 save for the mouse.
The last time my portable keyboard worked with my M1400 and also the external CD which means no way to get to the recovery software either. Hmm … I tried deleting the root hubs and no luck. Any other suggestions out there?
A call into Motion Computing tech support informed me that the I/O board was bad and I needed to send the tablet in for repair. No matter what I’ve tried so far it won’t recognize the keyboard or external CD. The mouse is fine though. Warranty period is over, so this will be a chargeable repair and the tech thought it would cost a couple hundred dollars. Just send it in and we’ll send you a quote, he said. Not sure I like the vagueness of that reply, plus I’d be down a machine which I’ve gotten used to using in business and home.
I’m going to poke around Tablet PC Buzz and see if anybody else has had this problem. Seems odd that the mouse would work and yet not the keyboard or the CD if the I/O board was completley shot. The tech said: “this happens a lot” which is disturbing if it’s true.
This is the first hardware problem I’ve experienced with the M1400. Welcome to Day 445 of tablet computing. I can still use the pen and all other functions just fine. Since I use with synergy I can use my desktop as a keyboard but if I need to plug anything or install from a CD (and can’t use a network drive) that would create problems.
I’m going to try adding a USB hub and see if that might give me back the ability to add the keyboard and external drive. Boy, this last week we had a lot of hardware problems, some of which I didn’t even write about here. Black cloud above us, please go away now.
Did this post make you go hmm?
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Must be phase of the moon: http://www.chipstips.com/microblog/index.php/post/74/
Sorry, no help on your I/O problem. You didn’t spill that Starbucks in the keyboard, did you?
Comment by Sterling Camden — March 4, 2006 @ 12:56 pm PST
I seriously doubt that it is a hardware failure. If the USB I/O was really shot, then nothing should work in it. It sounds like you’ve got a bad driver for a USB device somewhere in the mix. I’m not too surprised, given that Microsoft has never really gotten the idea of Plug an Play right, leaving most users with Plug & Pray.
Of course, the tech at Motion Computing would love for you to send the machine to them, as then they’d have you over a barrel and there wouldn’t be much you could do about it. I find that good technical support rarely makes vague diagnoses like the one you were given. Did the tech at Motion Computing ever try to explain how the USB would work for a mouse but not for a keyboard or CD-drive.
One hardware possibility that could cause this is if the power circuit on the USB I/O board went bad. The mouse probably doesn’t draw enough power for it to be a problem. A simple way to test this is to get a powered USB hub and connect the mouse, keyboard and CD-rom drive to the hub, and have it power them. If they all work, then you know the issue is the power on the USB port.
Good luck and let me know if this helps.
Comment by Dan — March 4, 2006 @ 1:11 pm PST
Oh man, when it rains it pours! Sorry to hear about that, Sterling
Comment by TDavid — March 4, 2006 @ 1:22 pm PST
That was strange. Just got a popup from cocomment wanting to verify the post information. Must be their own CAPTCHA to weed out bots.
Comment by TDavid — March 4, 2006 @ 1:24 pm PST
Dan - going to get one of those after bowling today, thanks for the added info. I’m not sending it in until I’ve exhausted all software options.
Comment by TDavid — March 4, 2006 @ 1:30 pm PST
I got the same verification popup, but I thought it might be how I got to your site. I guess not.
Comment by Sterling Camden — March 4, 2006 @ 1:46 pm PST
[…] Today is day 472 in my engaging Tablet PC journey and some might have noticed I haven’t been writing as much about the tablet since my I/O problems began near Day 445. It amazing how much wind from sails computer hardware problems can bring on. It’s true that if I would have shipped it in for repair I would have gotten it back by now, but a lingering thought disturbs me that this isn’t really hardware related, despite what Motion support told me. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Day 472: All tablet 5th grade and 2nd year tablet hardware woes — March 30, 2006 @ 8:49 pm PST