The Saga of the Sager (NP3790)

[ivor]

Got the Sager NP in a few hours ago.  It's an older one, and not actually an NP, which was a little disappointing.  Still it has an ATI Radeon 9700 in it which was the ultimate laptop gaming video option of it's day.  I was worried that it had been worked on but it clearly hasn't.  No tool marks of any kind.  No screws with marks from a screwdriver.  It's nearly immaculate and built like a Rolls.  There were a few stickers on it which left unfaded paint here and there.  Gonna talk to my paint guy and see what he thinks but I probably won't worry about it.  Doesn't have the original power supply.  It came with one of those adjustable power supplies.  Not about to use that.  Found a replacement for $70.00.  Gonna look around and see if I can find an original.

Edit:
Okay it's a NP 3790.  The part numbers are weird.  You have to cross it from the number on the machine itself...  Still way in the money.  The motherboard and LCD are worth $800 alone...

[ivor]

Hope nobody minds the multi-post here.  Need to save me some time but I want to show all the work so far.

I got brave and decided to go for a partial disassembly so I can make sure it's in running order.  Pulled the CPU cover to check the fan and heat-sink compound.  Wow!  Totally plugged. What I like to call a "felt factory."

[ivor]

The CPU is a what?  Oh bother...

Pretty sure I can only go one CPU better unless it's a hybrid socket which I'm not hopeful on...

[ivor]

The fan was filthy.  Pulled the cover and cleaned it all out.  I'll get the other side later when I pull the palm rest.

[ivor]

Cleaned the heat-sink off.  The compound was still good.  Not totally dry.  Bet this machine wasn't used a whole lot.

I need a better camera... 

[ivor]

Fresh heat-sink compound.  It seems that the camera also adds "ten pounds" to the amount of heat-sink compound you use.  It was only a tiny bit with my trademark Dairy Queen flourish.  That's worth a few watts of TDP by the way...  

[ivor]

Modem, wireless card, RAM and hard drive.  Some room for improvment on the RAM side for sure.  Can get 2 Gb of DDR 2 400 in it.

[ivor]

Read failure on the original hard drive.  I'm sure it's the drive.  Replaced it with a similar model for now so I can benchmark it.  This was the closest thing I had.

After that I installed Windows 7 x86 32.  x64 wouldn't fly.  Not a 64 bit processor and pretty sure the chipset is 32 bit also.

Windows 7 came up and runs but lots of missing drivers.  Even the LAN wouldn't work.  Had to dig a bit to find a driver.  Found one at Realtek that works fine!  Had to set it to boot from PXE so I could see what chip it was.

Let's see those Experience Index numbers!     I'm in big trouble...

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There was a discount on SSDs on newegg, and I can tell you that they are fast. The problem is that the interface of yours might be IDE and I don't know how good the memory controller is on those.

[ivor]

Got most of the drivers working save a couple.  The Windows driver for the ATI Radeon 9600/9700 works which is good.  But it seems that if I use it I only get the VGA port instead of the LCD.  It seems they are mutually exclusive.  If I run the compatibility driver I get the LCD but no VGA port.  I've been Googling the heck out of that one.  Gonna try the drivers from some of the newer models.  Also looking for a BIOS update.

I attached a CPU-Z report.

As somebody I know would say, "I'm in big trouble."

[ivor]

There was a discount on SSDs on newegg, and I can tell you that they are fast. The problem is that the interface of yours might be IDE and I don't know how good the memory controller is on those.

Indeed it is ATA/66.  Not a problem though as most SSDs are...  Still way below the interface's theoretical transfer rate.  I like SSDs because the performance doesn't fall off on random seeks.  Should make up for the fact that I can only get two gigs of ram in it.

Sokay.  I'll work on it until I can't take it any more and part it out if I can improve it greatly.  Probably worth more in parts anyway.  It has a WUXGA (1920 x 1200) screen in it.  I could put that in another laptop. Na, I should sell it as a Sager NP LCD...

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Oooo! Nice screen! If you could place a nice quad on that baby...

[ivor]

Be better to get a newer Sager with a broken screen and fix it with this one...

Believe it or not somebody said the Windows 2K driver would work and indeed it does.  Not quite sure about 3D performance.  GPU-Z says everything is golden.  The numbers should be better than 1.9 I would think.  Need a WDDM 1.1 driver... *sigh*

Looks good.  Only one weird driver left and it's not critical.

Edit:

Found a service manual.  It's the most complete I've ever seen.  It even has schematics for the motherboard!

[ivor]

Well I finally got the Sager on eBay.  I never did get Windows 7 to run good on it.  Ubuntu 10.10 runs like a champ on it though.  Ubuntu 10.10 supports hardware acceleration of the graphics card.  It was so much better than Windows 7 I decided to leave it alone.  I also retro-fitted a Toshiba webcam into it replacing the original sub-par webcam.