Is this the world's hardest-to-repair PC?

[RebateMonger]

Argh!

I just finished removing the hard drive from a Gateway 610 Media Center. This monstrosity is an all-in-one with motherboard, drives, speaker system (including subwoofer), and LCD monitor in one assembly.

I was asked to remove the hard drive and try to recover data from it, since the PC would no longer get through the BIOS enumeration of the hardware. It wouldn't enter the BIOS, and wouldn't boot from hard drive or CD-ROM.

I lucked onto a disassembly guide, written by someone apparently from Turkey. At first I thought I'd struck gold. Then I tried actually READING the guide. Try reading it yourself! Ouch! And take a good look at the last few photos to see what the pile of components and wires looks like. All to remove a hard drive.

"Step one :
First you must extract the Sub-Woofer from the back.. There is two screw at the top with a plastic joint washer inside the two connection. For reach those, you must handle joggles. There is a gray cover part and a black plastic cover with joggle connection to the back stand. Unfortunately I do not have a picture for this. But it is quite easy to open the joggles. I suggest that you must use a good tool not to make any hazard to the plastic case which is very sensible always.. Use a very thin pointed tool to enter the juggles.. And after two screw go down at the base of the Subwoofer there is two nail which is connect to the stand. Just find good angle to extract the subwoofer. There is four audio connection for the subwoofer, disconnect it and PLEASE MAKE A SMALL NOTES AVER THE CABLES FOR NOT TO FORGOT THEM AFTER THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT DETAIL.."

Anyway, I finally got the drive out. It took SEVERAL hours of guessing, prying, unscrewing, and disconnecting and re-routing cables. You basically have to disassemble the ENTIRE computer to get to the hard drive. And, trust me, there are several key details missing from these photos!

The ONLY standard components in this masterpiece are the 3.5-inch IDE Western Digital hard drive and an Avermedia MCE card. Even the BIOS is non-standard, using a system called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface),

Please tell me this isn't the future of computing, 'cuz it sucks!

 

[Geomagick]

EFI is the future, however your Gateway happens to be one of the first uses of it. All Intel Macs for instance use EFI and they run fine.

Also EFI is not really a BIOS in the normal sense as it does away with the need for the old PS2 standard, ISA buses and the like.

The disassembly guide goes to show the problems with all in one computers. They are not built to be upgraded or serviced by the end user.
I hope you managed to piece all that back together in the end.

 

[wpshooter]

Unfortunately, having had to try to repair (and like you say basically disassembe) some name brand computers, i.e. Dell, Gateway, etc., etc., I can certainly understand your frustration.

Apparently, most of these name brand computer manufacturers have very little understanding of the concept of good hardware design.

Give me a good custom built PC ANY DAY.

 

[Maxspeed996]

That's the exact reason , places like Best Buy Charge $130 to install a stick of RAM. Working on Name brand stuff , that is packed into some case just large enough to accept all of the hardware.....

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: wpshooter
Unfortunately, having had to try to repair (and like you say basically disassembe) some name brand computers, i.e. Dell, Gateway, etc., etc., I can certainly understand your frustration.

Apparently, most of these name brand computer manufacturers have very little understanding of the concept of good hardware design.

Give me a good custom built PC ANY DAY.

To be fair, SOME of the standard OEM cases (particularly the ones built for 'business' environments, such as the Dell GX200 series) are actually pretty easy to open up and work with (at least as long as you don't try to replace the motherboard or power supply). But I agree that the ones that aren't 'easy' are often painfully difficult to do anything to.

It's not that they don't understand "good hardware design"; it's that things like end-user servicability and expandability are low priorities compared with cost and ease of manufacturing.

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, I cringe every time someone shows up here with what I call Proprietary Comps. So far I have managed to handle all and thank goodness I've never seen the one you refer to. Jim

 

[batmanuel]

That's just poor hardware design on the part of Gateway. Not all all-in-one PCs are as bad, though. The old iMac G5s were a LOT easier to get into to change the user serviceable parts like the RAM and hard drive. The new Intel iMacs are supposed to be a lot worse to deal with, though, so I'd definitely recommend that anyone who is now tempted by the idea of dual-booting goodness get the Apple Care.

 

[jmdeathsquad]

we have all Dell optiplexes where I work, and they're all pretty easy to work with. Though I've seen some older gateways that were really bad setup. You basically had to disassemble it to even replace the cd-rom. I guess its a gateway thing hehe.

 

[Maxspeed996]

ya , I remember Emachines even made a unit , I can't remember what it was but they tried to emulate the Apple g series PC's with the colored see through plastic monitor enclosure , except they had the speakers , and everything all in the monitor enclosure.
I worked on it for my sisters boyfriend...and it was the first time I'd ever ran into one of those..P.O.S. is all I have to say. that thing had to be laying in pieces just to get to the hard drive , let alone the floppy or cd/dvd drive...