S3900 & S4000 Q&A

1. If you want to know the proper battery maintenance:
2. If you want to set up Power Savings in CMOS & Windows:
3. If you wonder about the 2 partitions in your hard drive (HDD):
4. If you have trouble to adjust the contrast of S4000T TFT LCD screen:
5. If you want to use 1024 x 768 resolution on LCD display:
6. If you want to know the VGA chipset in the notebook:
7. If you want to remove the hard drive from the notebook:
8. If you suffer erratic trackpad movement:
9. If you want to flash the System BIOS:
10. If you see FDD shows in the summary screen when booting up while FDD is not installed:
11. If you hear beeps when you turn the notebook on:
12. If you want to know the compatible PCI Network Card to S4000 Docking Station:
13. If your CD-ROM doesn't work when docked in the docking station:
14. If you want to purchase FDD for the S4-DOC (docking station):
15. If your Audio & PCMCIA do not work after installed Win OSR2 v.4b:

1. If you want to know the proper battery maintenance:
   S3900 comes with a Metal Hydride battery & S4000 comes with a Lithium Ion battery. Most of the batteries, especially the Nickel Cadmium & Metal Hydride battery, have a memory effect that might cause a battery’s life to decrease. It is recommended that you drain your battery on a regular basis or when you notice your battery operations time has decreased.

   Your Sceptre Notebook can operate using power from the AC adapter, or using power stored in the primary internal battery. When the NB is either turned off or suspended to RAM, the AC adapter will automatically begin charging the battery is less than full-charged. A discharged battery will take about 2 to 3 hours to fully charged.

   Charging a battery is simple but there are several factors that one has to bear in mind when charging a battery :

   Period of Charging

   It’s always recommended to charge a battery for 3 hours or more. If the NB is turned on while charging, a minimum of 3 hours or more is required. It’s is possible to charge a battery while the notebook (NB) is turned on but it will trickle charge much slower than it is turned-off.

   Battery Icon Indicator Status on NB

   Charge the battery until the battery icon indicator on the NB System LCD panel displays 4 full vertical bars, as shown below :

   

   When the battery appears fully charged, remove the AC adapter cable from the NB for about 1-min and replug the AC cable back to the NB. Let the battery re-charge for another ½ hour until the LCD battery indicator displays 4 bars. If you do not have to use the NB while the battery is being charged, do no use it. A possible termination of the battery charging could occur if the NB is power on.

   Draining the battery

   After a period of use or if you are getting shorter battery hours from the battery, it’s recommended to completely drain off the battery because of memory effects on the battery, especially for Nickel Cadmium battery. There is a utility called Rundown.Zip. This program tests the battery condition and completely drain it for fresh re-charging. Make sure your Power Savings in the CMOS setup is disabled & also run the Rundown from MS-DOS mode.

   iv.) Rundown.Exe program

   Once you get the file from our web site www.sceptre.com/ftp.htm, unzip the Rundown.Zip. Copy the file to C drive of your NB. Unplug the AC adapter & type Rundown and Enter. Rundown program will continuously run until the battery is completely drain off. Results of the test will be store in a file call Rundown.003. The numbers in the file indicates the # of hours the battery lasted.

   Re-Charge the battery after doing Rundown test. After charging the battery, make sure your Power Management setup is enables in the CMOS setup, DOS & Windows. All these procedures should optimize your NB battery charging condition.
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2. If you want to set up Power Savings in CMOS & Windows:
   Make sure your Power Savings in the CMOS setup is always enabled. Refer to the page 5-12.

   For Windows 95 users, under Control Panel, you can select the Power Icon to setup your Advanced Power Management (APM). By default, the APM is set to Advanced. This is the optimum setting.
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3. If you wonder about the 2 partitions in your hard drive (HDD):
   There are always 2 partitions on your HDD. The first partition is for Windows ’95 operating system, and the second partition of 40 meg is for the Suspend-to-Disk (STD) partition. When you enabled the APM in the CMOS setup, the NB will save your data either to the memory or to the hard drive.

   To avoid inconvenience to user, we’ve created the second partition for the STD partition. If you don’t have a partition for the STD, you’ll get an error when booting up the NB. The recommended size for the STD partition is 40 meg.
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4. If you have trouble adjust the contrast of S4000T TFT LCD screen:
   For the TFT LCD, the contrast is set to factory-default. You cannot adjust the contrast on the S4000T TFT LCD. Even for the brightness control, you can do slight adjustment only. Increasing the brightness of the LCD will shorten your operations time of your battery.
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5. If you want to use 1024 x 768 resolutions on LCD display:
   You will only see ¾ of the whole screen on the LCD. You’ll have to toggle back & forth to see the whole screen. 640 x 480 resolution will shrink your screen size by ¼. The optimum resolution if 800 * 600, which is the default resolution of the LCD panel for the S3900 & S4000 NB.
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6. If you want to know the VGA chipset in the notebook:
   The NB is using the Neo-Magic NM 2070 chipset. If you need Windows 95 VGA driver, you can download it from our FTP site.
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7. If you want to remove the hard drive from the notebook:
   First, remove the 2 screws located on the bottom left corner of the HDD’s module. Then, slide out the HDD cover to the left. Using the lever, pull the HDD out from the connector. To re-install the HDD, reverse the above procedures.
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8. If you suffer erratic trackpad movement:
   Make sure you hands are not moist or wet. Install the Trackpad mouse driver from the Windows '95 drivers diskette, provided with the NB. If the Trackpad is still behaving strangely, call up Sceptre Tech Support for other solutions.
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9. If you want to flash the System BIOS : 
   The latest System BIOS can be found in our FTP site. The file is called SBIOS108.ZIP. Download the file with the latest date code & unzip it to a diskette. When you boot your NB, press SHIFT & F5 keys (together) to bypass the Config.sys & Autoexec.bat file. Insert the disk into drive A. Type update & hit Enter key. Follow the on-screen instructions. When the NB is re-booting, press F2 to go to CMOS setup. Set the CMOS value to default. Save the changes & exit.
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10. If you see FDD shows on summary screen when booting up while FDD is not installed:
    Not to worry about this. The System BIOS set the FDD A: as default even if the FDD module is not installed.
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11. If you hear beeps when you turn the notebook on:
    It could be your System BIOS chip, which is corrupted. Remove the Bios & refresh again. You need to use the EPROM burner to re-flash again. The BIOS is located under the DC-DC board. You need to remove the whole cover.
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12. If you want to know the compatible PCI Network Card to S4000 Docking Station:
    Compatible PCI Network Card: Intel 82557 10/100 PCI Ethernet/RJ45, Drink DE530CT/t+, Ether PCI

    Incompatible PCI Network Card: 3 Com Fast Etherlink XL 10/100 PCI Ethernet Adapter Rev. A (cannot detect card in DS)
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13. If your CD-ROM doesn't work when docked in the docking station :
    In order to operate the CD-ROM while docked in the docking station, you will have to boots up the notebook in undocked mode. After finished booting in Windows 95 then dock the notebook to the docking station.
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14. If you want to purchase FDD for S4-DOC (docking station):
    The modular floppy drive for the Notebook can also be use on the Docking Station. Simply connect the parallel port end of the FDD Cable to the parallel port of the Docking Station.
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15. If your Audio & PCMCIA do not work after installed Win OSR2 v.4b:
    Audio: The ESS1688 Audio driver that was installed by OSR2 is not compatible with the S4000 NB. On the device manager, it will have the yellow exclamation mark on the Audio driver. To resolve this problem, open the Control Panel & Add New hardware. You can now add a new sound card driver. For the Audio driver, use the Windows ’95 driver disk that comes with the NB. When Win 95 ask for the driver, select have disk & load the driver from the disk. Once that is done, reboot the NB. Go to Device Manager under System. Delete the first Audio driver that was installed by OSR2. That driver will still have a yellow exclamation mark on it.

    PCMCIA Driver: The PCMCIA driver installed by OSR2 is not compatible with the S4000 NB. The NB will not be able to initialize the PCMCIA slot. To resolve such a problem, copy 2 PCMCIA driver files (Pccard.vxd & Socketsv.vxd) from the Windows 95 v.4A (in C:\Windows\System\) or download Vxd.zip.  Overwrite these 2 files in C:\Windows\System directory.
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