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Upgrading the Epson P2000--Part 2

John Hollenberg

New member
I decided I couldn't wait until after my trip, so set about upgrading the Epson P2000. Results so far:

1) 8 screws on case came out very easily
2) Back of case came off without problems after pressing in eject lever for CF slot
3) Speaker wire easily detached
4) Some difficulty figuring out how to remove brown plastic piece holding data cable, as I wasn't familiar with this setup. Ended up pulling the whole piece out instead of just pulling it up. The cable came out, at first I thought I had broken it. Then realized that this was the way it worked.
5) Didn't look carefully at video, at first was trying to remove cable connecting to small circuit board that plugs into hard disk. Discovered on watching the video more carefully that the circuit board had the connector for hard disk pins on the back of it and that the whole board had to be pried up a little on each end until it was loose. Have to be careful of one tiny brown ribbon cable on the side which is in the way.
6) Removed screws holding hard disk in place
7) A little difficulty removing hard disk with tiny brown ribbon cable still attached, but moved it gently to the side and all went well.

Total time to this point: 30 minutes

The cloning operation went smoothly, except that I had 30 GB of data on the Epson P2000, which added an extra 30 minutes to the cloning and restore operation.

Reassembly went very smoothly until I came to putting the ribbon cable back in with the brown connector which had popped off the board. Finally figured out that the connector had to be installed in the "up" position, data cable inserted, the brown connector firmly pushed down to secure cable. Double checked to make sure it was inserted the proper way to make connection. During my confusion earlier in this step may have crimped data cable a bit.

Put battery back in, fired up the Epson P2000 before complete reassembly to make sure everything was working OK. Screen came on with logo, hard disk heard to spin up, but wouldn't boot and requested a reset. Reset did not improve the situation.

Removed hard disk and decided to put original hard disk back in to see if problem was due to incorrect cloning or damage/incorrect reassembly. Still wouldn't boot. Total time to this point: about 3 hours.

Had to leave for work/trip.

Working hypotheses:

1) Connecting up hard disks with external USB changed something on the disk so partition not active (unlikely, but possible)
2) Data cable that was slightly crimped by improper re-inserted may have had one of the wires in the ribbon cable damaged (current favored hypothesis)
3) Tiny data cable (brown, on edge) which had to be pushed out of the way way somehow twisted or damaged (possible, but less likely)
4) One of circuit boards flamed from static electricity (possible, but has never happened to me before in many years of fooling with computer stuff)

Conclusion: Not technically difficult to do the swap, but final result as it stands now is less than optimal. The P2000 has one foot in the Silicon Landfill, but I have by no means given up on it.

To be continued in a couple of weeks in part 3.

--John
 

John Hollenberg

New member
Asher,

Fools rush in...

Seriously, I can't understand why it isn't working. Even my favored hypothesis doesn't seem very likely to me. I need to inspect the cables, see if replacements are easily available, and watch the video carefully to see if I missed anything. While the work was a bit more delicate than other stuff I have done, it wasn't difficult. I didn't think I damaged anything during the operation. The few people who had their unit DOA on DPReview were ones who had mistakenly cloned from the new disk to the old, thus erasing their data. My data (and the operating system partition) is still there on the old hard disk and everything looks fine. Perhaps I will post in the DPReview thread to see if any of the experts can suggest a possible cause for the problem.

If I am ultimately unsuccessful in reviving the P2000, my plan is to buy the Hyperdrive for $150 and stick the new hard disk in there. I don't really need the viewing screen and the Hyperdrive is supposed to transfer a lot more on one charge, which would probably be more useful for me. I could also write a mini-review of the Hyperdrive then. How is that for rationalization?

PS Is one of the free gifts an Epson P2000? :)

--John
 
Last edited:

Rick Hay

New member
Epson P2000 operating system

Has anybody got a link to an image of the P2000 operating system, mine is down after corruption cased a crash. Has made a search but nothing useable as yet.
many thanks for your help
 
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