This cursed Lenovo Ideapad S9e/S10e for the first time

I have been presented by a friend with a cursed Ideapad S9e/S10e. Now S9e is supposed to have an 8.9" 1024x600 while S10e is supposed to have a 10.1" 1024x576 display. xrandr says its display is 1024x600 and 222mm x 130mm (real lcd measurements are 225mm x 133mm, although it lacks the user-fronting bezel).

The friend has, iirc, attempted to mod the motherboard of this laptop into one of PlayStation consoles. Subsequently for giving this laptop away, he reässembled it, with various exterior parts missing or misaligned, in a way that iteratively once gave it less alignment than it got from him in its present form.

Which is why i sure don't dare attempt disassembly for troubleshooting.

The battery that I got it with is nearly dead, only can handle 5 to 15 minutes.

Now, since i got it with an Ubuntu install the version of which i had not bothered to check, I assumed it was after all 64bit. I think i once used to know it wasn't to be. Only after finally managing to find a pendrive (hardest step to sit down to doing stuff with it, even though it was in the first box i took to peek into) and patiently downloading Lubuntu 20.04 LTS (choosing ubuntu flavor, along with considering a server install, was a thing i spent a lot on; and previously I had a long time wondering if i should use newer versions of ubuntu despite jpilot official dpkg packages being for 20.04, and if i even wanted to make things simple in that aspect by using ubuntu), on an installation attempt it turned out it was i386 and not x86_64.

After a long consideration and research of Palm/Pilot package availability in official repositories of OSs that support 32bit i386, i chose NetBSD due to being the only one that really impresses in that.

Now, when it came to installing it, many first attempts failed. The issue was always the same: in random moments, the netbook would power off (making the power-off noise, stopping HDD and fans…) but with the wireless indicator light still yellow.

IMG_20211102_0842.jpg (17KiB)

In that state, the netbook would not react to the power button unless after a power cutoff (both AC adapter and the battery) — diagnosing of which was hard because the power button would sometimes hardly respond in the normal state, so at first i thought it was an issue with the button itself.

It, though, turned out that I can still switch wireless off and on and when switched back on, the light turns pink. Now the hardware maintenance manual for this model says,

== IdeaPad S9e and S10e:

Purple: The wireless LAN and the Bluetooth features are on, and the radio link is ready for use.

Orange: The Bluetooth feature is on, and the radio link is readsy for use.

Blue: The wireless LAN feature is on, and the radio link is ready for use.

Blinking blue: The wireless LAN feature is on, and the networks are being scanned.

== IdeaPad S10:

Blue: Any one of the wireless features — wireless LAN, wireless WAN, and Bluetooth — is on, and the radio link is ready for use.

Blinking blue: Any one of the wireless features is on, and the networks are being scanned.

So that's how I learned mine is S9e or S10e and not S10. And that I have no idea what's going on in that state.

Now after I managed to install NetBSD, I tried using it, and the weird poweroff was happening a lot. But once it happened that I left that netbook powered on unattended for a day or so — and i came to see the weirdest thing happening: in one console, the letter "t" has been being typed in more or less irregular intervals, taking breaks sometimes. And it wasn't happening for long then yet, despite long unattended uptime. When I carefully drifted the touchpad from one window to another, it kept also receiving the "t" keystrokes. At some point I decided to start typing my own "t"s, and after a few the computer had the weird poweroff again, after a day of uptime.

Now the power adapter that I got with it is a Tracer SmartBox 70 X2 / KTM 43299, and it has multiple output voltages listed: 15V/4.7A, 16V/4.4A, 18.5V/3.8A, 19V/3.7A, 19.5V/3.6A, 20V/3.5A. But on it's DC plug there is a silver sticker with "16V", and smaller "M2" below, inscribed on it. I presently lack a cheapest even multimeter to check if it only does 16V, but if it does, then it's a problem since all sources I could find (including the aforementioned Hardware Maintenance Manual for the series) specified a 20V adapter. But, now I already ordered, for 20PLN, an off-lease one that appears to be original Lenovo in the offer.

I still hope I will manage to have it as a reliable workstation next to my bed to handle my HotSyncing needs. But there's a high probability that a new adapter will not solve the problem, in which case I will give that netbook back to the friend, for him to either attempt to fix the hardware issue and give it back to me, or just not.