General (Dell) laptop question

[bill1971]

I'm new to laptops, but have built over a dozen or so desktop PCs.

I was given a stripped Dell Latitude CPi A-Series laptop, w/ a PII 366 CPU. There was no battery, PC Cards, AC adapter, floppy or CD drives, nor a hard drive or memory.
Not wanting to spend much on something that might be "dead",
and more of a curiosity because of my lack of experience with these things, I ordered a cheap stick of ram, which turned out to be a 64MB stick of Dell memory, installed it, and borrowed a PA-2 AC adapter.

Should I be able to POST w/ just the on-board video, the CPU, and the memory installed, like a std ATX box? I was disappointed when I powered on, the power light came on for a few seconds, got the three lights,( power, HDD, battery ), to flash together once,(like a std ATX boot). But I get no screen, the power light doesn't stay on, and it doesn't look like the exhaust fan starts to spin at all.

I don't get any error or beep codes.

So, are laptops any different in their setup, or should I be able to POST, per usual? If the screen is dead, can I hook up a std CRT via the VGA out, and get a normal POST screen, if this thing has any life at all?

Thanks for any info. . .

- Bill

[osprey4]

Here are the user guides. You should be able to plug any VGA monitor into the VGA port and get a picture. This should at least get you into the BIOS.

You can also download the Dell diagnostics, but I suppose you need at least a floppy drive to use them.

[bill1971]

Thanks for the link, O:

I did manage to download the service manual, and I did see something mentioned about the diagnostics in the Dell knowledge base.

So I'm wondering if spending $20 (delivered) on e-Bay for a floppy would benefit me. There seems to be a lot of used parts out there for these models.

I'm just having a little fun learning about these laptops, just seeing what's all involved, and how they're constructed. It's the proprietary nature of them that has had me steer clear of them to this point. I've been challenged to get this thing up and running for about $200, which I can do with used parts, unless I have to buy a new board, processor, or other basic internal components.

- Bill