G730

G730

ECS Green 730, G731, G732, G733, G733E & G736

Plus WinBook J4 (G730 - G732)

Note: The Green 735 was an earlier AlphaTop Socket 7 laptop and is not part of this series of laptops.

At present the Green 734 model is unknown to us.

The ECS Green 730, Green 731, Green 732 and Green 736 laptops all share the same plastic case design, however, the Green 733 & Green 733E share a special plastic case with automatic foot extenders and differs from the other models. The G730 - G732 case color available in silver or black. Some Green 736 laptops have special WXGA LCD's (Wide Screen) with side mounted speakers and therefore have special LCD lid plastics, but the main base plastics is the same as for all G730 - G732 black plastic laptops.

Many of these laptops have been sold under various brand labels including Northwood, Excel, HoneyBee and others. The G730, G731 and G732 were also sold as WinBook J4 and the J4 will be the most commonly found used examples of these laptops.The WinBook J4 model name does not define any one ECS laptop model and you must know if you have a G730, G731 or G732 if you need drivers and/or parts.

All versions of these laptops have Intel Socket 478 CPU's, as the laptop models progressed the motherboard front speed bus increased from 400 MHz (G730) to 533 MHz (G731 and G732) and up to 800 MHz FSB (G736) and CPU's with Hyper-threading can be used in later models.

Video chips also changed with newer models. Details follows under each model detail.

Drive modules and other plug-in devices such as modem cards (Except for G736 modem) all exchange between all the various models. The G730 can not use 533 MHz FSB CPU's or DDR memory from later models.

A nice feature found on these laptops is that the LCD lid latches are not exposed "hooks" and so are not as likely to suffer from breakage.

Models were available with black or silver outer plastic case colors. They can also have optional CD player control panel along the front edge of the case. This can be retrofitted to most laptops (G731 does not have this feature) originally supplied without the CD contol panel as the motherboards are the same within each model number.

I've also seen one Australian brand (Excel that had the IEEE 1394 (Firewire) port covered over with a plastic knockout panel. I believe that behind the panel was a working Firewire port. (Hint for those without this port)

Keyboards are found in black and off-white colors and with/without pencil-head mouse buttons. The pencil-head keyboards are out of production and can only be replaced with the non-mouse button keyboards at present. These keyboard all seem to have a high failure rate and so care should be exercised when working with these laptops.

Adding wireless to these laptops canbe a challenge, or some brands of laptops included the antenna wire pre-installed in their laptops. If the antenna isn't installed then nearly complete disassembly of the latop is necessary to install the antenna wiring. The G730 - G733 wireless card is a combo card that is also the modem card. The card is a mini-PCI card which is hard to find. The G736 has a mini-USB (I believe) card that is only the wireless card, but again this card is hard to find.

If at any time you disassembly one of these laptops, you should replace the CMOS battery since the battery is not located such that you can replace the battery without disassembling the laptop! Not a very well thought out design. The CMOS backup battery is a 2032 Li cell that requires the laptop to be nearly completely disassembled to replace. It's located on the top side of the motherboard under the upper main plastic case. Models G730 - G733 all have the CMOS battery in a plastic socket, while the G736 uses a special 2032 battery with leads and connector.

This series of laptops has several design weaknesses.

First off, the power input jack seems to be damaged quite often. This plastic jack is secured to the motherboard by only the three soldered leads and is not reinforced in any manner. So a good blow from tripping over the cord or other methods of doing bad things will most likely result in a damaged jack.

If the laptop is dropped on its back side while the AC adapter is plugged into the laptop then additional damage to some very tiny components, mounted just behind the input jack, will most likely occur. Plus the lower main case may suffer a "punchout" of the plastic around the input jack. At this time the factory is out of black lower cases - I don't know if they will be back in stock soon.

Both forms of input jack failures damage can be repaired, but it does require completely disassembling the laptop and soldering components to the motherboard. Not a FYI task for first-timer soldering skills. I can repair these problems.

Also, the black plastic case laptops seem to suffer from early aging of its rubberized coating, leading to a worn appearance. The silver versions suffer from easy-to-show scratches - common to most light colored laptops. At present, I can supply replacement LCD lids in both colors.

In addition, I've seen several laptops that have had failures of the LCD video cable to motherboard connector connection. I don't know if this failure is caused by overheating, spilled drinks, LCD problems or what ever. One such laptop had its video cable and motherboard connector melted into one big blob. The only repair that can be done is to replace both the LCD video cable and the motherboard. This is a very expensive repair job and so do observe the correct side up when inserting the LCD signal cable's connector into the motherboard connector.

I believe that power is supplied to the LCD inverter (in the LCD lid assembly) whenever AC or battery power is available to the laptop and so do not disassemble the LCD video cable from the motherboard connector without having first taken EXTREME care to know which side of the cable faces up. Plus be sure that AC power PLUS removal of the main battery has been done prior to removing this cable from the connector. Or just leave it alone!

Note: The A927 and A928 iBuddy computers appear to be battery-less versions of the same basic laptop case, but are more akin to a desktop in many ways. They use desktop memory, a different AC adapter and only a few parts exchange other then the keyboards, LCD assemblies and sone plastic case pieces. Conversion from an "A" desktop computer into a "Green" laptop is not possible.

Green 730

The G730 was the only one of these models that used SDRAM SODIMM RAM. The Green 730 also had a keyboard with an embedded pencil-head mouse button and the factory can no longer supply this keyboard. Keyboards without the embedded mouse do correctly replace these keyboards as long as you can live with using the touchpad mouse only.

It appears that some G730's had the ATI M9 (Radeon 9000) video chip vs. the earlier M7 video chip. The WinBook J4 G730's appear to have only come with the M7 based upon their driver download page.

G730 Specifications

Chip set for G730: Core Logic - Intel® 845 - Northbridge - Intel® ICH2 - Southbridge

Video: ATI Mobiliy™ Radeon 7500 (M7) or ATI Mobiliy™ Radeon 9000 (M9)

LCD resolution options: 15" XGA: 1024x768 15" or SXGA+: 1400x1024

CPU: Intel Socket 478 Celeron or P4 with FSB of 400 MHz

RAM: Two 144 pin SDRAM PC133 modules up to 1GB

Hard drive size limitation is not known at present, but it is above 40GB

Setup Data

The G730 motherboard has a DIP switch (S1) that controls the settings for LCD brand and resolution and also clears the CMOS memory. Switch S1 is located under the ON/OFF pushbutton circuit board. Do not adjust this switch unless you know what you are doing.

G730 S1 Settings

	S1-1	S1-2	S1-3	S1-4
CMOS Reset	ON	---	---	---
Chungwa LCD	---	OFF	ON	ON
AU Optic LCD	---	ON	OFF	ON

Green 731

The G731 was the first model to use DDR RAM. The maximum RAM may be limited to 1GB of RAM. (This is untested at present) Hard drive size limit is not known at present.

CPU's are Intel P4 Socket 478 - 400 FSB (Northwood core).

The motherboard has an eight (8) DIP switch (S1) that controls the settings for LCD resolution settings and also resets the CMOS memory. This switch is located under the ON/OFF pushbutton circuit board. I haven't been able to determine the function of each switch due to limited experience with the G731. I believe that bus speed and memory speed could be controled - but that's just a guess.

Do not adjust S1 switches unless you know what you are doing and always record the orginal settings before you start.

G731 S1 Settings

	S2-1	S2-2	S2-3	S2-4	S2-5	S2-6	S2-7	S2-8
CMOS RESET	ON	---	---	---	---	---	---	---
LCD resolution?
LCD resolution?

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Green 732

The G732 uses DDR RAM. The maximum RAM limit may be 2GB. (This is untested at present)

Hard drive size limit is not known at present and may be limited to available drive sizes.

LCD's were 15.0" 1024x768 or 15.0" 1400x1050.

CPU's up to 3.06/533 with HT are supported.

The motherboard has a DIP switch (S1) that controls the settings for LCD resolution settings, the motherboard front bus speed and also resets the CMOS memory. This switch is located under the ON/OFF pushbutton circuit board. Several banks of this switch should not be adjusted for any reason and do not adjust this switch unless you know what you are doing. Always record the original settings so that you can return to a known good setup if your experiments go awry.

	S2-1	S2-2	S2-3	S2-4	S2-5	S2-6	S2-7	S2-8
400 MHz FSB	---	---	---	---	---	---	OFF	OFF
533 MHz FSB	---	---	---	---	---	---	ON	ON
CMOS RESET	ON	---	---	---	---	---	---	---
XGA LCD	---	---	---	OFF	ON	ON	---	---
SXGA+ LCD	---	---	---	ON	OFF	ON	---	---
UXGA LCD	---	---	---	OFF	OFF	ON	---	---

Green 733 &G733E

These two laptops are oddballs in that the plastics were modified when compared to the other laptops in this series of laptops. The rear feet extend as the LCD lid is opened. The On/Off button and other buttons are "jazzed-up" and the overall look of these laptops is quite different that the other laptops in this series.

I do believe that the motherboards for these laptops will fit into the other case plastics - but I've not tried this out.

I also believe that both only support the low-resolution LCD's.

The G733 has a 533 MHz FSB and doesn't not have a mini-PCI slot for WiFi card.

The G733E has a 800Mhz FSB and so can work with the latest CPU's. The G733E has a mini-PCI slot.

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Green 736

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