Psion netBook Troubleshooting Guide
Fault-finding for the Psion netBook.
The netBook and the Psion Series 7 are the same machine: same case, same motherboard, same screen, same battery.[1] Everything mechanical and electrical is on the Psion Series 7 Troubleshooting Guide — the screen cable, the battery-catch trap, the CompactFlash drawer, the microphone contact, the PC Card current problem, the reset procedures and the "things that are not faults" table. Do not duplicate that work here; start there and come back for the netBook-specific behaviour below.
This page covers what the netBook does differently: it has no operating system of its own.
⚠️ Before you start
[edit | edit source]- Back up first, and back up the OS image separately. On a netBook the operating system lives in RAM alongside your data, so a machine that loses power in the wrong way loses both. See the maintenance page for a route that needs no desktop software.
- Remove every battery — main pack, backup cell — before changing the personality module.[2]
- Watch the screen every time you release the battery catch. A microswitch fault on some machines wipes the internal disk when the pack comes out; the procedure for avoiding it is in the Series 7 guide.
- There are no mains voltages inside. The external supply is 15.5 V at 1.5 A. The lithium pack is the real hazard — see Battery Refurbishment.
- Anti-static precautions throughout.
The netBook has no OS, and that changes diagnosis
[edit | edit source]At power-on the netBook searches the D: drive for a CompactFlash card holding a file called OS.img, loads it into a walled-off region of RAM and runs it. If there is no card, it displays a message telling you so.[2]
So a netBook that shows a message and stops is behaving exactly as designed. It is the single most common misdiagnosis on these machines: a perfectly healthy netBook with no card, or a card whose partition is not marked bootable, looks like a dead computer to anyone expecting a Series 7.
| Symptom | Likely cause | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Message on screen about no CompactFlash card; no further boot | Normal. No card, or no OS.img on it | Fit a card carrying a valid OS.img. Psion supplied the OS and applications on CD so customers could build their own image.[2] |
| Card is present with OS.img but the machine does not load it | The DOS partition holding the file must be marked bootable | Check the partition flag.[3] |
| EPOC upgrades refuse to install | A OneEd / "Malaysian" netBook with bootloader version 12 rather than the standard version 11 | Hardware is identical to an ordinary netBook. Fitting an ordinary netBook personality module is the understood route back to standard behaviour. For Linux, no special treatment is needed at all.[3] |
| Machine reports the wrong amount of memory | Mismatch between the personality module and what is fitted | Only 16, 32 and 64 MB are accepted; 48 MB does not work, and a Series 7 memory upgrade will not work in a netBook.[1] |
| Series 7 fitted with a netBook module is unstable at speed | Some Series 7 machines failed the high-speed test and were binned as Series 7 parts | The safe swap direction is netBook down to Series 7, not Series 7 up to netBook.[1] |
Always remove every battery — main pack, backup cell and both modules — before changing the personality module.[2]
Identifying what you have
[edit | edit source]| Clue | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Bootloader version | 11 = netBook; 12 = OneEd/"Malaysian" netBook.[3] |
| Serial number slip inside the CompactFlash slot | After the four letters, the first digit is the year (8 = 2000, 0 = 2002, 1 = 2003) and the next two digits are the week of manufacture.[1] |
| Manufacturing week from 35 of 2002 | Revision 10 board, which supplies more current to the PC Card slot than the revision 7 it replaced.[1] |
| Machine identifies as a Series 7 but runs at 191.692 MHz | A Series 7 fitted with a netBook personality module.[2] |
Storage and expansion
[edit | edit source]| Symptom | Likely cause | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Large CompactFlash card not recognised | Rarely a size limit. There is no size limit inherent in the hardware; 4 GB cards have been verified working under Linux | Reformat on the machine, and check the partition table.[3] |
| Microdrive works but the battery goes flat much faster | Normal. A Microdrive is a mechanical drive and draws more power than CompactFlash | Use solid-state CompactFlash unless you specifically need the drive's write endurance for swap.[3] |
| GPRS or high-current PC Card fails | Board revision. Late netBooks have a higher PC Card power rating | Check the manufacturing week. See the Psion Series 7 Troubleshooting Guide for the modem current workaround.[1] |
| Combined modem/Ethernet card unreliable | Documented as the most problematic class of card — ironically including Psion's own DACOM 56K/Ethernet | Use a single-function card.[3] |
Linux on the netBook
[edit | edit source]The OpenPsion project (formerly PsiLinux) ported a 2.4 kernel to the netBook. Two boot routes exist: ArLo, started from a running EPOC system, and bookboot, which builds a Linux OS.img the bootloader loads directly, bypassing EPOC entirely.[3]
Three limitations are permanent and are not faults in your machine:
- No power management. There is no way to switch a Linux netBook off. The documented workaround is to reboot and switch off at the startup screen.[3]
- No battery level reading. Nothing reports the state of the main or backup battery, so there is no warning before it stops.[3]
- No sound, and no infrared. Sound out of a Linux netBook was never reported working; an infrared patch was never delivered despite a standing offer of a free modem for one.[3]
Separate kernels are needed for 16, 32 and 64 MB machines. A Series 7 kernel gives you 16 MB regardless of what is fitted; the effect of a 64 MB kernel on a 32 MB machine is undocumented and not worth discovering.[3]
Transferring 10–15 MB into a ramdisk gradually consumes all memory and freezes the machine — use ramfs or tmpfs instead.[3]
Backing up before you work on one
[edit | edit source]The internal C: drive is RAM, and several diagnostic steps on this machine lose it. A backup route that needs no desktop software: copy the entire contents of C:, including the System directory, to a subdirectory on the CompactFlash D: drive (select all, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V). To restore, delete the whole of C: including System, then copy it back. You will have to close every application that starts at reboot first, and reset the time, home city, sound and hidden-file preferences afterwards.[3]
What is realistically repairable
[edit | edit source]| Part | Repairable? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| OS image / CompactFlash card | Yes, trivially | The commonest "dead netBook" is a missing or corrupt card. Keep a spare image and a spare card.[2] |
| Personality module | Yes, by substitution | A Series 7 module will run a netBook as a Series 7. Only 16, 32 and 64 MB configurations are accepted.[1] |
| Bootloader version (OneEd machines) | Yes, by substitution | Fitting an ordinary netBook module is the understood route back to standard upgrade behaviour.[3] |
| Screen cable seating | Yes | Psion documented the fix themselves. See the Series 7 guide. |
| Battery pack | Yes | Rebuildable with new 18650 cells. See Psion netBook Battery Service. |
| Keyboard | Yes | New-old-stock Series 7 / netBook keyboards are still sold in several layouts. The keyboard itself is a sealed unit and should not be further disassembled.[1] |
| RAM (board-level) | For SMD-capable hands | Two unfitted DRAM sites exist on the board; use low-power parts, since the DRAM is powered continuously.[1] |
| PC Card power capability | No | A property of the board revision. A revision 7 board will not become a revision 10 one.[1] |
| Screen cable clamp | No, practically | Soldered to the motherboard; breaking it means a donor board. |
| NEC ASIC, Philips CPLD | No | Custom parts. A failure means a donor board. |
Capacitors
[edit | edit source]The netBook is not a recap candidate. No report of a failed capacitor on a Series 7, netBook or netBook Pro appears anywhere in the surviving community record. The reasoning and the two situations where capacitor work is nevertheless justified are set out in the Series 7 troubleshooting guide. For recognising a genuinely failed capacitor when you do meet one, see Capacitor Failure Symptoms.
Related pages
[edit | edit source]- Psion netBook · Psion netBook General Maintenance · Psion netBook Battery Service
- Psion Series 7 Troubleshooting Guide — the shared hardware faults, in detail
- Psion netBook Pro Troubleshooting Guide
- Battery Explosion, Capacitor or Corrosion Damage · Recommended Tools
References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Eric Lindsay, "Psion 7 and NetBook Portable Computers", mirrored at ericlindsay.com. Source for the shared motherboards, the board revision history and PC Card power, the serial-number date coding, the module-swap direction caveat and the memory-size restrictions. Includes material posted to comp.sys.psion by Ralph Barrett.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 "Psion Series 7 FAQ: General & hardware information", oocities.org/epoc_32 (February 2000). Source for the netBook's OS.img boot arrangement, the reason for the doubled RAM, the module-swap results and the reset procedures.
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 OpenPsion, "Linux on the Psion netBook HOWTO — Introduction and netBook Specifications" and "FAQs". Source for the bootable-partition requirement, the bootloader versions and the Malaysian netBooks, the CompactFlash size limits, the kernel memory configurations, the serial-mouse burnout report and the null-modem cable.