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jshackley

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About jshackley

  • Birthday 02/21/1986

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  1. The United States. Idaho to be specific. I'd be interested in a combination offer as well (assuming the panel is the LG LP173WF2) Feel free to PM me or post a link to your order details! Thanks!
  2. Bumping an old thread on this one with some of my own findings about this cable. I've actually been trying for a few months to track down a lead on this eDP cable as I have a 120Hz monitor, but need the cable in order to connect it to my P377SM-A (the eDP port is there and is fully functional). Sadly, I haven't been able to track down anyone (OEM/ODM/Reseller) that has any in stock (Eurocom has them listed for sale on their site for a ludicrous 175 dollars, but when I got in touch with them, they said they didn't have any and weren't expecting any more to arrive. Rj Tech said they could get them, charged me, put the part on back order, and 4 weeks later told me the cable wasn't in the shipment they had sent to them and that they didn't know where the cable was and didn't seem interested in trying to hunt down it's status, but instead refunded me and told me they're no longer available with no plans to resupply. Sager/Xotic won't even talk to me as I didn't purchase my machine through them and refuse to sell me parts) and finding information on this cable is difficult at best. I have been able to get some data and information though that may be helpful for someone looking to hunt this thing down or just looking for current data. Apparently the connector this cable uses on the LCD side (JAE FI-VHP50CL-A-R3000) has been EOL'd by the OEM as of December 2015 and is no longer in production which makes this cable an endangered species. This is (I'm sure) the reason why it's been so difficult to get ahold of one. This connector is also non-standard and wasn't very popular in general which may have attributed to closing the fab lines on it. The LVDS/eDP cable that's needed (6-43-P37E1-020-J) also doesn't use all 50 pins, but rather 30 even on the LCD side (some pins aren't used at all) and Clevo looks to have gone to great pains to make it work to begin with (it's a pain to support, so it would be the first thing they drop). So, that leaves someone who wants to get ahold of one with limited options: 1.) Reach out to a manufacturing facility that specializes in LVDS/eDP fabs and request one be made. There are multiple challenges with this however. Most facilities won't give you the time of day unless you're ordering in bulk (which makes sense. If they did one off spins all the time, the cost of calibrating the machines would far exceed what they're getting from the user), can back the request with company verification (I had to use my work email for them to even respond to me), and you need the line drawings of the cable including the pin out guides, length, cable gauge, shielding, EMI protection, etc. 2.) Make a deal with the Devil and somehow magically conjure one out of the Ether. It's a much better idea to go with option 1, or if you can get ahold of one of these cables through a sales channel, that would be the absolute best way (if you can or know of a reseller that still has these, please let me know!) Through my inquiries though, I was able to get ahold of some data that may be pertinent in the event you wanted to have one manufactured. I've attached the line/CAD drawings of this LVDS cable that gives detailed breakdowns of the wiring/pins/materials needed to make one. Hopefully some of this information will be of use to someone who's looking into upgrading their display and if any one knows of any reseller that has any on hand, feel free to let me know as I'm interested in purchasing one (just not at 175 dollars for a cable)! Thanks! 6-43-P37E1-020-J.zip
  3. Apologies for the late reply. The issue occurs using the stock GTX 970M VBIOS (64.04.22.00.13) as well as the Overvolt ROM found on the forums (I don't have the revision off hand). I've not tested the Overvolt-G ROM yet (G=G-SYNC I imagine). Interestingly enough, the issue is actually present not only with the modified BIOS of the board, but also the stock BIOS as well (Eurocom/PREMA BIOS). I boot exclusively with UEFI, so there is definitely the possibility of the UEFI graphic API not calling to the GPU and not loading it at all, or there may be a small corruption in the vBIOS the card is using where it can't parse a return value to the UEFI driver to output. Or it could be hardware related to the GPU itself, but that should red flag the card during POST I would imagine. I can't currently test UEFI vs. BIOS booting due to the VCORE controller burning out on the motherboard (hit a MOSFET that's impossible to come by as well) due to a pinched LVDS/eDP cable that shorted on a small internal screw (reassembling the laptop caused the cable to be damaged as it was over a screw thread that I didn't notice). I've got another board on order so hopefully I can get it installed and back to testing status first thing in the morning and report back the status. It's my assumption that it's either GPU hardware related or it's vBIOS related. It's not a critical bug as the machine will boot and display once Windows takes over the GPU API handling, but I always hold my breath when it's starting up.
  4. New motherboard installed. I had trouble with this one. The physical install went smooth and without a hitch. The problems came when I attempted to boot. Blank screen. I began to fear that my GPU was bad. After I did some troubleshooting, I was able to grab hold of a thunderbolt cable and tried an external monitor. Lo and behold, I had a splash screen on the external monitor, but not the internal display. Okay, so the display is bad. Not the worst thing that could happen since I want to upgrade anyway. Flashed v2 P377SM-A BIOS no issues. Installed all of my hard drives and booted back into Windows. My internal display flickered back to life. Like nothing at all had happened. After some updates, I decided to reboot the machine and hop into the BIOS settings to check if anything was weird. Blank screen. I hooked the thunderbolt display back up and I could then see the BIOS settings pages. So, the internal display won't display the BIOS splash, but will come to life when I boot into Windows and the only way I can access the BIOS is with an external display. Think this is a bug in the firmware? Ever heard of this happening? I don't know if you'd be interested in any kind of dump logs or anything like that, but if you are, let me know!
  5. There might be more that you would need to get the Killer Wireless AC1525 to work. I've actually implemented this wifi card into my P377SM-A, and I had to pick up a few components to make it work: 1.) Mini PCIe express to m.2 adapter 2.) 2x MHF4 to PCB pigtails 500mm length 3.) Killer Wireless AC1525 WLAN Adapter The pigtails are for the antenna's since my machine came with standard U.fl adapters and they don't make any kind of jumper between U.fl and MHF4 (you wouldn't want s jumper anyway as that's a point of failure and causes EMI reducing range and bandwidth). I had to remove my subwoofer from the computer as the WLAN slot is next to the subwoofer and the 1525 wouldn't be able to sit correctly with it in place. You can't use the other m.2 slots on the board as they run directly to the SATA III pinouts on the board itself and isn't seen as a PCIe m.2 slot, but as a hard drive connection (so you have to use the WLAN slot). I also had to run the antenna's (I had to have these custom made) up through the entire case to the top of the laptop screen which the only way I could do that without the risk of snapping anything was to strip the whole thing down placing the PCB ends at the top of the screen (be really careful as the adhesive on the pigtail PCB's conduct electricity and will fry your motherboard if you place them on it), and running them down the same way the U.fl pigtails were run. It's a good WLAN card though. Extremely stable and fast. A bit involved for the upgrade, but well worth it in my opinion. Hope this helps!
  6. Thank you Prema. I just want to say that I've been a long time lurker in the forums and I've always been blown away by the support you provide. It's unheard of. Hell, most OEM's don't provide the level of support you do. I've never seen or heard of anything like it (and you don't even have to provide the support since they're mods). Thank you for what you do. Yours is the patience of a Saint. I actually work as an Embedded Engineer for a mid size solar inverter OEM writing and designing custom Linux boot loaders/kernels/and high level OS programs for monitoring and networking, so I'm familiar with the flash process of EEPROM and in circuit upgrades. I did attempt recovery with the file provided, no go on that one I'm afraid. One would think Clevo would have some kind of UART/JTAG debugging port on their hardware that one could slice into for a read out of what was failing POST and causing the boot to fail. Couldn't find any information on it though. I feel guilty taking time away from your travels and I don't want to take up any more of your time with my issues. I picked up a new motherboard which should arrive either tomorrow or the next day so I can get my machine back up and running. Maybe I'll play around with the original motherboard and pull the BIOS off replace it with a socket for easy removal and flashing of test BIOS or in circuit EEPROM flashing. I am curious though, how did you get into this racket? If you can share, what are the compilers/decompilers that you use to hack and rebuild the images you find? I would assume you have some kind of master token or you have source code from Clevo directly, I'm just curious how you actually go about it and what you use to break down and rebuild these ROM's. I would love if you could send me the BIOS dump though. I have access to an EPROM/SPI programmer so I could try to push the dump with flashrom to see if it would recover (I want to use the old motherboard as a development board at this point, so why not?) You assistance is more than appreciated and if there is anything that I can do now or in the future, let me know and I'll throw the best I have at it!<script type="text/javascript" src="safari-extension://com.ebay.safari.myebaymanager-QYHMMGCMJR/d0ffde0f/background/helpers/prefilterHelper.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="safari-extension://com.ebay.safari.myebaymanager-QYHMMGCMJR/d0ffde0f/background/helpers/prefilterHelper.js"></script>
  7. This thread can claim another victim. Oddly enough, everything was smooth and had the v2 of Prema's P377SM-A image running for over a week before I reboot Windows (correctly) only to be met with these exact symptoms (they are to the T). I've done all of the troubleshooting I could possibly think of including a multitude of BIOS images for the P377SM-A and renaming then every convention I could possibly think of. I'm at a total loss of even how to debug this issue as the BIOS is corrupt, but I have no video when booting (GTX 970M), but can get the backlight to light on the LCD if I pull the 970M and put a 675M in it's place. I confirmed that the issue isn't my GPU as it will push a splash screen on a P170HMx (it won't go further than that). I also get the pulsing of the fans as well as the power LED light (there's a pattern to the LED blinking. 4 short one long). Oddly, I also get the LED indicator for the trackpad lighting up at times when it's in it's "recovery flashing" state. Another thing of interest is my back light is no longer the soft white it was when the machine could boot. I have the left portion of the keyboard as purple and the middle and right as the soft white. I'm kind of at a loss. I couldn't find any kind of debug or serial connection that I could solder to the board for target debugging to force flash, so if I'm to understand correctly, I'm left with two choices: 1.) Desolder the BIOS from the mainboard, utilize an EEPROM programmer to flash the boot block back to a working state, and resolder the chip back on (I supposed I could just buy a pre flash chip, but it's the same concept). I'm wary of this route due to the obvious high chance to cause more damage than harm. Besides that, I couldn't seem to find the location of the BIOS on the motherboard of the P377SM-A to save my life. I also don't get along with surface mount soldering. 2.) submit for an RMA through my reseller. I am still covered under warranty (bought the machine 2/2015), but my concern is the amount of time they would spend repairing the unit and getting it back out to me (I've had extremely poor post support from my reseller to the tune of an ongoing ticket that I've followed up with their support departments about for 6 months to keep getting told they will respond to me via email and don't. It's literally the worst support I've ever received from any business in any industry), and the fact that I use the machine quite a bit for work and is essential to the tasks I am assigned to makes the repair/RMA extremely time sensitive (I get the feeling that I would absolutely get the backburner because, hey, I already bought the thing, now I'm just being a post sales user and can be ignored). Has anyone else had this issue? More importantly, has anyone been able to correct this issue without having to resort to RMA/removal reprogram of the physical chip? What is the cause of this (I swear I wasn't poking around or anything), how can I avoid it in the future, and in the event something like this happens, could I prepare myself for a higher chance at recovering (via software or even hardware modifications)? Anyone happen to have a picture/location of the BIOS on the P377SM-A mainboard? Would it be better to just pick up a brand new pre flashed BIOS or would it behoove to flash the original chip? Where would one send it for reprogramming and what would be the pricing cost and turn around time? I'll continue to mess around with it over the weekend and if I find anything earth shattering I'll make sure to report. Any insight and/or assistance is humbly welcome. Thanks!
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