I have an Inspiron 5150 that has lost motherboards.  First board went years ago (Mfg COMPEQ) and was replaced.  The replacement lasted until recently.  I have three dead boards (two new marked Vendor: GCE) that won't boot due to probably memory slot mismounting or failed ball solder of a chip near the video card (that PUSH notation for positioning the aluminum plate on the video card perhaps causing excess pressure to be applied when inserting the video card, bending the board and perhaps breaking ball solder connections on neighboring IC).  Fed up with failed motherboards that won't boot, I went back to the first replacement which has major white noise from the speakers.  This boots consistently but I can't clear the noise.

I wonder if the Sigmatel STAC9750T, used on all the boards, is bad or if the implementation on newer boards allows the chip to be recognized by drivers properly preventing the white noise.

If the chip is bad then it can't be fixed.  The close leads are just too much for my 68 year old eyes to solder in place.  The components used on the newer boards indicate that a different approach in implementation is used and those I can swap to the older board.  This might allow the STAC9750T to be recognized by Dell drivers and some floating gate input put right.

But if the chip itself has gone bad then I won't.  I'd appreciate an answer for this.  Thanks.


soyrunner

STAC9750T www.datasheetarchive.com/.../download.php