Repairs : Twinhead Efio!121i Can’t Boot
So I’ve got a Twinhead Efio!121i that died over 10 years ago. What happened was that it wouldn’t boot up at all. Power went in, but just didn’t function. Initially I thought could be a RAM issue, so I tried to use the eraser trick but that didn’t do anything much. Never the less, it was left untouched until as of late. Not satisfied previously so I tried to see if I can find a replacement RAM for this. Considering the ram it uses is quite old (DDR1), thought I would be able to get it cheap. So I’ve managed to ordered online, and got the rams just today.
So after I replaced the original one with this, it boots up and came back to life and now running perfectly fine just the way it suppose to be. Regarding how the RAM failed in the first place could be due to the electricity at the housing area where it was used in Jakarta. I was told back then that the electricity there wasn’t really stable as it tends to fluctuates a lot, hence that could had short circuit the RAM.
Anyway, I’ve managed to removed the Trojan Horse in it and now trying to see if I can install Windows 7 on this. If it fails, then most likely I’ll probably install Linux on it and see how it goes. Will update this post if I was successful in installing Windows 7 or Linux on it.
Updated : 21st December 2019
Due to the lack of support for drivers especially on Windows 7 (which supports will end in 14 January 2020. I’ve decided to install Bodhi Linux (legacy) on it and everything works just as it is. Considering that this is an old device, it works nicely now with Linux in it. After using it for a couple of weeks, as a work station it will do just fine. Unfortunately this device will not play anything that exceed 144p as the processing power is just not sufficient to do so. Running VCDs or DVDs on the other hand is not a problem. One way of recycling this is to turn this into a POS System either that it can be used to teach others as a demo unit. Whatever it may be, this laptop managed to get a second chance in life.