If it isn't broken, don't fix it. However, it is broken...
My laptop finally decided about a month ago that it didn't like the PSU cable. Basically I was unable to get the cable to provide power to the laptop, and with the battery already giving up its ghost (note: might be related), there was no option but to repair it.
So, being unable to sleep, I decided to take my screwdriver to my laptop. I knew what the problem should be, a loose power connector, but in order to get to the point of fixing the problem, I had to get the motherboard out. On a laptop, that isn't the worlds easiest task. Ever.
I started off by removing the underside screws, the DVD/CD-RW drive, and the HD. After that, I had to remove the hinge screws, and pop the top panel off. This left me at this stage:
It is actually quite a nice view inside. You can see things such as the Intel CPU (1200 MHz), the S3 Twister HP chipset (The grahpics card, I kid you not), and one of the two sticks of 128MB SDRAM.
From this, you then have to remove the screen, which left me at this stage:
There's a good 7 screws that hold the top part of the facia on, excluding the underside screws (there's 15 of them). Once those were removed, I was at this stage:
From there, I'm just 12 screws away from removing the motherboard. A few of the screws were a bit tight, which required a larger screw driver for them (I'll note that they are all cross-head screws). Once those were removed, I had my motherboard:
The problem is as expected, one of the two connectors for the power jack has de-solderd itself. This is a four layer PCB, so I'll need to find a friend who has the equiptment to solder this.
Here's a closeup of the problem:
As you can see, theres a brown'ed out connector there, which is the problem area. I'll probibally have to clean that up to make a decent contact, and then apply some solder to the area, being carefull not to spill it on the other connector, which is about 1mm away, and we are talking about a 2mm solder area.
So, wish me luck...
NeoThermic
Posted by NeoThermic on 15th January 2006 11:48am »» 0 Comments »» Trackback this post »» Permalink