[Fixed] M18X R1 8 Beeps

I sold my m18x r1 to a friend awhile back, told him not to install windows 10 because of the known errors. stopped working on him, so i bought it back at half the price. (460m sli)

He claims that he had just installed MSI afterburner to monitor temps, (he has no reason to lie) and then he left the laptop for a few hours, and then it started to 8 beep.

after alot of trial and error, ive got it to boot by hooking up another screen (its from an old toshiba laptop with a similar connector, 15 inches as compared to the 18.4 of the m18xr1

Ive been reading that using linux to reflash the edid of the monitor should make the screen usable again, but the links to the versions of linux people uploaded with the edid files needed are always corrupted, and i dont know where to find the edid for my monitor, (from online research i believe its model is HGT3J.

I have no experience with linux, but have found a few windows programs which claim should work, but im unsure, and i dont want to fry the screen or something.

could anyone help me out?

 

@t456 have most experience with this.

 

See here for the last live image + tools, the link appears to be fine, so just let it complete and make sure to use the ' Download through browser' option. However, this option does not work with IE 11, claiming 'file over 1GB', even though it is 760MB. Downloaded it just now myself, tested the archive, checked for viruses and made a binary compare with the original file; all is still good and unmodified from the original. Just to be sure; you need 7-Zip to extract the .img and something like USB Image Tool to write the .img to the usb stick.

You can also simply download a live image elsewhere (or make a normal install) and install the edid tools afterwards; i2c-tools, edid-rw, lm-sensors and the write-edid script. No new versions are available for any of them though, so the pre-set image is just as 'current'. The image is just to make things easier for non-Linux users and in order to have tools, guide and edids all in one place. You can also find the last instance of the edid archive separately here: archive correct edids, v12.7z.

That's an internal Dell part nr., they probably do this to annoy their customers. The real panel nr. for that id is LTN184HT02-S01, the edid you'd need being 'SEC5448 - LTN184HT02-S01.bin'. There's other 18.4" lcds, so do verify this either by looking at the sticker on the back or when reading out its edid in linux.

Since you already have the donor screen it is relatively easy:

1. Make sure you have the live image working (just test on another laptop or desktop) and boot to Linux on the M18x R1 with the Toshiba lcd attached, making sure you have access to the lcd cable.
2. While still running detach the cable from the 15.x" and hot-plug the 18.4", making sure to remove and re-insert the cable carefully and not one-side first, as that would likely cause a short.
3. The 18.4" should be running now, even though the edid is still corrupt, and it will be possible to reflash it according to the instructions.

Tried most of those Windows-based programs myself and none of them worked over LVDS, most being useful for VGA or HDMI only, meaning they can fix external monitors, but not internal laptop lcds. There are a few non-free/industry tools that should work, but haven't tried those, so can't help there. And even then; the hard part is not in flashing the screen, but in hot-swapping the display, which those tools would also require you to do.

 

First off, thank you for the swift response!

Secondly, upon looking further , the panel nr is LTN184HT05-T01, which isn't in the list of edid numbers in the Linux.

I originally extracted that Linux with winrar and wrote it to a USB with Rufus, but following your directions it worked with 7zip and USB writing tools, and I am able to boot now into it now.

I didnt want to just use another one and hoped it worked, incase it would fry my screen, so I thought I'd ask first on your thoughts of what I should do?

 

Have gathered 375 different edids by now, but not that one, unfortunately.

Could risk trying the HT02 or HT03, but they do have some significant differences. None would harm the panel, but it would be much better to use step 09 and make a dump of the current, corrupt HT05 edid; ' sudo i2cdump -r 0-127 X 0x50 > EDID/edidexport.txt' (where X is your bus). Copy/paste or upload the edidexport.txt and we can make sure which of the two is compatible or even fix the original HT05 edid.

 

Alright so I found the corrupt edid, it was in port 2, (first time it was trying to read my external monitor, only reason i realized is because on the right side where it says GT3J?184HT?, it said W2442PA or something similar, which is the model number of my monitor.)


0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f 0123456789abcdef
00: 00 ff ff ff ff ff ff 00 4c ff ff ff 05 00 00 00 ........L...?...
10: 05 14 01 04 05 29 17 78 05 c8 95 9e 57 54 92 26 ?????)?x????WT?&
20: 0f 50 54 00 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 ?PT...??????????
30: 01 01 01 01 01 01 29 36 80 a0 70 38 1f 40 18 10 ??????)6??p8?@??
40: 25 00 99 e6 10 00 00 1a 1c 24 80 a0 70 38 1f 40 %.???..??$??p8?@
50: 18 10 25 00 99 e6 10 00 00 1a 00 00 00 fe 00 48 ??%.???..?...?.H
60: 47 54 33 4a 80 31 38 34 48 54 0a 20 00 00 00 00 GT3J?184HT? ....
70: 00 00 41 01 9e 00 00 00 00 02 01 0a 20 20 00 a8 ..A??....??? .?

 

Nice work .

It is definitely trashed in some parts, but otherwise identical to the 'SEC5448 - LTN184HT02-S01.bin', so you're good to flash that. As to why these corrupt edids do not play nice (even apart from having an incorrect checksum):

Spoiler: SEC5448 (LTN184HT02-S01) - ok and corrupt

 

Thank you! Got my screen up and running

(My linux drive kept telling me it couldnt move files due to no room, because on the 8gig drive it only partitioned enough for the linux file, leaving 7 gigs unused, so i just partitioned that from in linux, and moved the files needed to there, and used the cd command to get myself into that partition to use the files)

Thank you so much for your time helping me getting this fixed ^.^ Now to put my computer back together and if anyone ever needs to figure this out too, i hope this thread is helpful to them as well