Anyone have an experience with the Dell Inspiron One 2305 all in one PC?

[hoorah]

My uncle dropped this off at my house as a recent 'curbside find'.

When powered on, the power light stays amber, no post. Doing a little googling, it seems to be very common for these boards to do this. I've even seen some listings on ebay for Inspiron 2305 motherboard repair (specifically reflowing the GPU), so I suspect thats probably the cause of the failures.

I have seen some projects from time to time where people have used old laptop screens as PC monitors by buying adapter boards for the LCD ribbon cable (to convert the ribbon cable to VGA/DVI). Wondering if anyone has tried something like this with the all-in-one PCs, or are familiar enough with the disassembly of OEM PCs to have an idea of how universal the LCD cables are across models.

 

[i7Baby]

Your uncle dropped off a dud it seems to me.

Dell don't seem to say what's in it - http://www.dell.com/us/dfh/p/inspiron-one-2305-amd/pd

It didn't get good reviews when it was new - http://www.cnet.com/au/products/dell-inspiron-one-2305/

I wouldn't spend much time or money on it getting it up and running.

 

[Snowman09]

No offense but it's a dell. I agree with above^

 

[Homerboy]

I just have to laugh -- our IT department deploys these (and the more modern version) throughout the office. Such pieces of shit.

 

[piasabird]

Take it apart and try some other power supply to see if it is just a bad power supply. Dell says it runs on either a 90 watt or 130 watt power supply. That is really pushing it. A lot of external power supplies come from China and are next to worthless. Might be fun to take it apart.

 

[Ketchup]

Interesting: acquired a Dell XPS One a similar way. Guy called me and said his XPS One 2410 wouldn't power on, and Dell told him the motherboard was dead. Next time I heard from him, he bought a new one and said that I could have the old one if I wanted it.

Wouldn't do anything when I hit the power button (No fans spinning. There may have been an amber light, I honestly don't remember). Reset the BIOS and BOOM! back in business. Makes a decent Media Center PC for my parents.

 

[JWade]

I had one, the 2305 is the AMD version, look up the service tag number on dell's site to see if it has the dedicated video or just the onboard video. it uses the low power Athlon II processors, but could be upgraded to a quad quite easily. it may be something as simple as the ram needing reseating. the whole back cover comes off and a metal cover covers the ram if I remember right.

I liked mine, only reason I got a different model was I didn't care for how it sat on the desk. didn't like the kickstand stand for keeping it upright.

 

[hoorah]

Wow, thanks for all the info guys, but I tossed that system back in august. Its too bad because I would have liked to use the screen with just an HDMI port in, but unfortunately that model didn't have any video inputs. It just wasn't worth putting the money into an older AMD board at the prices they were going for. I pulled the ram and dropped the system off at an electronics recycler.

I actually have another one of those systems that I set up for my mother as a TV in her bedroom. Its pretty neat with a combination of the WMC remote and the touchscreen. Works well for what she uses it for.