Sharp Actius AV18 Optical Drive Problem

I got a used AV18 from a friend of mine. Planning on making this my project laptop. Ya know, clean it out, customize the casing, max the sucker out, etc... It's perfect: light, slim, portable. Something easy to take along.

He said that the CD drive doesn't work, Windows XP won't recognize it. No biggie I had an extra laptop DVD drive so i just switched caddies and plugged it in. It still didn't see it. Then I tried the one thats in my dell, since i know it works... nothing

I've checked the BIOS but can't seem to find anywhere were it would show an optical drive. I even looked at the boot order and set it to check the optical drive first, popped in a bootable disc...nothing. The indicator light for an optical drive on the laptop itself does go on when i plug it in so the laptop is recognizing something. The drive gets power and i can eject the tray manually.

Could the interface on the board be blown? I'm not sure with laptops but i would think that would that also effect the Hard drive, right?

Everything else appears to work fine. Boots up no problem. USB, firewire, ethernet, everything else appears to function.

I'm wondering if it's the adapter card that fits between the drives IDE connector and the laptop's. I did find another drive on ebay with the caddy and everything so i'm considering buying that and see if it is the adapter thats shorted. Parts are near-impossible to find for this laptop!

I'm hoping it's not the motherboard itself! I've only been able to find one person thats selling an AV18 board with the entire base, and he wants $299!

Don't think my wife would be happy with me spending THAT much for parts on an older computer, especially when i can get something more powerful for not too much more.

 

Well Sharp customer service was no help. By luck i found another individual that was selling an AV18 for parts. Says the screen is cracked but it works with a monitor and still has the hard drive, cpu, dvd/cdrw and 512 RAM. Got it in the end for $59 so now i just haveto wait for it in the mail. The body on this one looks better than mine. I'm assuming the LCD is unsalvageable since it's cracked which is just as well. I'll just switch the bases and pray this solves my issue. I really like this small unit, just needs some loving after being abused so much ^_^ but if this doesn't work i think i'm just gonna auction off both of them for parts instead of putting more money into it. We'll see in a week or so!

 

Well looks like the motherboard was fine this whole time. It's that little adapter card on the optical drive that shorted out. So i'm going to part out the laptop i just got and auction the pieces on eBay. I'll be selling the keyboard (per request from another user), hard drive, memory, modem card, screen backing seperate from the base (which will have the CPU and the hard drive kit). Expect the auction up in a day or 2

 

have you put the parts on ebay? I'm in the UK an was after the LCD inverter from the av18, could you let me know a price inc (cheapest) postage?

cheers

Syd

p.s. email me via my profile on the right

 

Well now the original optical drive is dying. It barely reads my burned discs, and takes a while to read a pressed disc. I'd rather not buy an external drive but i've realized that quite a few optical drives are NOT compatible with this laptop.

I originally thought the adapter between the drive and mainboard was blown but i found that both of these adapaters give the same result. Work fine with the original drive, but won't with either of the 2 additional optical drives i have.

So now my question is does anyone know of any DVD burners, preferably with lightscribe capability, that WILL work on an AV18?

I still have some remaining parts: casing base and top, mainboard (PC card slot is gone), touchpad, optical drive adapter board, LCD backing with brackets to base, AMD 1.5 ghz CPU (MicroPGA)

 

I figured this out a while ago but i never did post an update. I soldered pins 45 & 47 on the adapter card on the optical drive side (I had 2 adapater cards). The problem is an IDE Conflict. Laptops and drives are hardwired to accept connection as a Master OR Slave. Unless both the laptop and the drive are using the same Connection ie Master-->Master they won't communicate, thus the solid green LED on the laptop, in my case. Here's a link to one forum: http://club.cdfreaks.com/f34/ide-1-error-79069/ , and one here that explains why: http://www.cubeowner.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12269.

Ever since i did that haven't had any issues. Laptop still running great with XP and Fedora 8 Linux though now i need a new fan/heatsink as this one is going bad. I'm still looking for a new faceplate for the drive as well. parts are getting harder to find now as time passes.