G760 - G790

G760 - G790

AlphaTop Green 760 - Green 790

Plus Micron Transport Trek2 & NEC Ready 400T Series Laptops

Manufactured by AlphaTop (which was purchased by ECS - The EliteGroup of Taiwan) and sold by NEC and Micron, these laptops at first appear to be variations on the AlphaTop Green 795/Green 797 laptops. (Or maybe it's the other way around?) However, those "cousins" really don't share many bits and pieces with the Trek2's.

I say Trek2 because the Micron laptops vastly outnumber the NEC laptops and so it's easier to call them all Trek2's. I don't have much hands-on experience with the NEC 400T series and so I really don't know which Ready 400T sub-models match up the various Micron Trek2 sub-models. I do know that some of the NEC Ready 400T laptops did have the earlier MMC1 motherboards as found in the Trek2 NBKU370.

I hope that owners of the NEC 400T series will take the time to e-mail us with any details that they might have learned.

Note: None of these laptops are the same as the earlier Trek or Trek Lite laptops, so do not confuse these closely named laptop models.

Pro's & Con's

Several problems are common to these laptops:

The plastic used in the outer case appears to be very brittle and so most LCD lids and LCD bezels will have stress failures at the lower screw locations. The LCD lid can break free from the hinges if the cracks aren't repaired when these parts begin to crack.

Keyboards are a real problem in that no new ones exist and that the keyboard appear to have a high failure rate. I can repair many keyboards that are suffering from a few keys that fail to work, but the cost is high. This is due to the amount of labor involved in opening the keyboard up, finding the broken traces, and repairing them. I can not repair keyboards that are destroyed and or are eaten away by acid found in soft drinks. I do have a few dead keyboards that I use to replace missing keycaps.

Many Trek2 laptops appear to have been sold to the government, upon scraooing them out the government removed the hard drive and the hard drive carrier (caddy) and destroyed them for data security reasons. So there are many Trek2's on the market without hard drive carriers. New hard drive carriers are not available. However, this problem does allow one to pick up an incomplete Trek2 for a few dollars and use it for other parts such as a replacement keyboard.

General Information

The Trek2 underwent upgraded motherboards several times during production, so you need to know which version you have before ordering replacement parts or plan an upgrade. The features and updating limits of each sub-model are quite different from each other and so the model must be clearly understood before any modifications or repairs are begun.

I will use the Micron "NBKU" model numbers to identify the various sub-model features. Some Trek2's may not have the long "NBKU" model on their main label and you should look on www.buympc.com to find out which NBKU model applies to your laptop - you can look up any Micron laptop by serial number if you want to find the original specifications for your laptop.

Other than the motherboard changes the outer appearance for all of these laptops remained nearly the same and all drive modules will exchange between the different versions. Since the drive modules exchange between the sub-models, a late model's DVD drive can be installed in an earlier NBKU 370, but most likely the CPU will not be fast enough to decode the video. Use of a PCMCIA decoder video card (Margi Card) will be needed used properly play a video DVD.

Keyboards and On/Off switch cover, with status LED's, also vary with two or four "tab" keyboard designs. The "two-tab" keyboards are paired with status covers that have two slide detents. Removing the keyboard is controlled by the slide detents and does not require removing the plastic panel.

The second (and more common) keyboard type will have a plastic status assembly cover, that snaps on and pops off, that is used to hold the keyboard in place. This version stresses the ribbon cable that connects between the cover assembly and the motherboard to much more stress and strain - so do be careful when removing the keyboard and cover with these machines. I do not have a source for replacement ribbon cables for this assembly.

Two 144 pin SODIMM memory slots are located under the keyboard and the metal shielding under the keyboard. I will supply memory size limitations soon. Slot size is tight and low-profile modules seem to work best.

The BIOS chip is located next to the memory slots and all versions have a chip that's mounted into a socket. Pulling the BIOS chip does NOT clear passwords. Please don't e-mail me asking for password clearing methods - see Internet for password programs.

Two sizes of LCD's appear to have been use - the 12.1" TFT or the 14.1" TFT. I haven't seen a 13.3" laptop and I haven't seen a dual scan LCD. Several different LCD's brands were used over time so one must know exactly what LCD is in the lid of your machine before a replacement is ordered. Always replace like brand with like brand since not all LCD's use the same video cables.

I'm attempting to offer parts support, but so many parts are truly custom and won't exchange with other "Green" models and so I'm buying parts machines to break-up and offer as used parts. The LCD lids and bezels are nearly impossible to find in perfect condition. The bezels are all broken out at the two lower screw holes and I believe that they must have left the factory with most these parts having been cracked due to a poor design placing undo stress on the bezel plastics.

Battery covers are long out of production and nearly every Trek2 that I've seen is missing this plastic cover. I did experiment with making replacement battery covers from old lower cases that were not usable due to damage that required it to be replaced on a working Trek2. The only problem was that I couldn't sell the end product at a price that I felt that most people would be willing to pay. I used hte long front side and cut and sanded it to match the case surrounding the battery slot.

I have noted that the Toshiba CD-ROM modules appear to have a problem with their operation. The drive will "pop" open during POST and will need to be pushed closed again. Also, after the laptop reaches the desktop the drive will not respond to a opening request from a manual push on the drive door release button. The drive will open from an eject request from the drive properties window. If anyone can shed some light onto the fix and or any owner feedback from any Micron communications, please email me.

Motherboard Jumper Settings

LCD Size	1-2	3-4	5-6	7-8	9-10
Fujitsu 12.1"	Jumper	OPEN	Jumper	OPEN	OPEN
14.1" IBM
14.1" Hitachi
14.1" Toshiba

Because these models were semi-custom the AlphaTop (later ECS) "white-box" OEM support parts supply chain did not also carry replacement parts for these models and I believe both NEC and Micron ordered their repair department parts directly from Taiwan. Please e-mail me if you have new or used spare Trek2 or Ready 400T parts for sale.

Trek2 Sub-models

NBKU370

The earliest model Trek2 (NBKU370) was a Intel PII/Celeron MMC1 CPU motherboard laptop. A faster MMC1 module is hard to find and is expensive at speeds above 300 MHz and used 400 MHz PII and 466 MHz Celeron's modules do exist, but are found only at very steep prices. (Sorry, not carried by me)

More information will be added soon.

NBKU375

The NBKU375 were also PII (or Celeron) CPU machines, but used the more common MMC2 CPU modules. They do NOT use any form of the later P3 or P3 based Celeron CPU modules, including any module with a 100 MHZ front side bus structure. The U375 is limited to using 400 MHz PII or 466 MHz Celerons with FSB of 66MHz because that's the fastest modules produced by Intel in this format.

NBKU376

The NBKU376 also are PII (or Celeron) CPU machines, but used the more common MMC2 CPU modules. They do NOT use any form of the later P3 or P3 based Celeron CPU modules, including any module with a 100 MHZ front side bus structure.

The U376 is limited to using 400 MHz PII or 466 MHz Celerons with FSB of 66MHz because that's the fastest modules produced by Intel in this format.

NOTE: At present, MPC's (Micron PC) website has the U376 listed as having the 100MHzr main bus but every U376 that I've tested will not boot with a P3 100 MHz bus MMC2 module.

The Trek2 U376 has a touchpad mouse plus a pencil-eraser pointer in the keyboard. I believe that the basic keyboards are the same as for the earlier version with the except of the addition of the eraser-head pointer. Selection of which device (touchpad or pointer) is functional is controlled in the BIOS and so dual mouse usage appears to be out.

NBKU377

The U377 version is the only 100 MHz front side bus Trek2 and the only P3 Trek2. The NBKU377 can use MMC2 PII or P3 (PIII) CPU modules with either a 66MHz or a 100 MHz main motherboard bus speed. The CPU heatsink design is also different than what was used in the earlier models.

The lower case was redesigned for the NBKU377 so it is not able to use the earlier model plastic lower plastic case. The plastic CPU cover is also different on the U377 and can be used as quick method to tell a U377 from any of these earlier versions.

The upper main plastic case is also slightly different on the U377, but I believe the earlier part can be modified to work. (Requires cutting off some minor plastic molding on the inner unseen side.

The Trek2 U377 has a touchpad mouse plus a pencil-eraser pointer in the keyboard. I believe that the basic keyboards are the same as for the earlier version with the except of the addition of the eraser-head pointer. Selection of which device (touchpad or pointer) is functional is controlled in the BIOS and so dual device use appears to be out.