Geek Status -- ACTIVE!
Yay! It was a fun day!
So my friend R has a laptop which has had 'power issues' It wouldn't charge. Now he's a pretty sharp guy with electronics so he had already tested his laptop PS with a volt meter and it wasn't putting out like it should so he bought a replacement. Well that wasn't doing the trick either and eventually the laptop stopped charging. Well he went online and looked around on some forums and such for information about this problem and found that his laptop was bad for power connections. He also found the exact part to replace the power connection with and ordered it. Its been here for like a month now. He was going to do it but was a little leary about taking the laptop apart and tried but wasn't familiar enough with them to be comfortable doing this kind of repair. I have repaired several laptops, its something I picked up while working at another company who was too cheap to replace their old laptops. So long story short I get the laptop today and he brings me the part. Ok the power connection on this laptop is on the back of the motherboard so this means its a full disassembly to get to the motherboard and then the part in question to de-solder it off the board. Well the disassembly took about 20-30 minutes. Like I said, I've been doing this for awhile. Most laptops are all built the same in general. There are a few departures from the norm sometimes but most of the time everything is the same. This laptop didn't disappoint. So after I got the motherboard out and looked at it I noticed that a lot of the screw eyes were cracked. and the power connection was cracked and they were all in the same direction. My theory is that someone tripped over the cord and pulled out off the table or something high like that and it landed FLAT on its edge. The trip cracked the power connection and the impact from the fall broke the screw eyes. Nothing really bad just an 'AH HA' moment. The door over the PCMCIA slot also just fell off during disassembly. No it wasn't because of the disassembly because the other door stayed on.
Now here is where I hit my first hiccup. The soldering iron is OLD or more to the point the point is old. And needs to be replaced. But I don't have an extra one at the moment so I had to make do with what I have. I will also be picking up a micro soldering iron for detail work like this. So after I finally get the old part out and the new one in a couple of hours has elapsed. I mean it was a complete pain to get this little dinky part in. Once in I left for lunch to let everything rest and cool. Reassembled the laptop when I got back and currently it is running updates and everything is working correctly. The battery is now fully charged so I would say everything is working like it should.
No worries.
So R is very happy his laptop is working again and is very thankful that he didn't have to buy a new laptop.
So my friend R has a laptop which has had 'power issues' It wouldn't charge. Now he's a pretty sharp guy with electronics so he had already tested his laptop PS with a volt meter and it wasn't putting out like it should so he bought a replacement. Well that wasn't doing the trick either and eventually the laptop stopped charging. Well he went online and looked around on some forums and such for information about this problem and found that his laptop was bad for power connections. He also found the exact part to replace the power connection with and ordered it. Its been here for like a month now. He was going to do it but was a little leary about taking the laptop apart and tried but wasn't familiar enough with them to be comfortable doing this kind of repair. I have repaired several laptops, its something I picked up while working at another company who was too cheap to replace their old laptops. So long story short I get the laptop today and he brings me the part. Ok the power connection on this laptop is on the back of the motherboard so this means its a full disassembly to get to the motherboard and then the part in question to de-solder it off the board. Well the disassembly took about 20-30 minutes. Like I said, I've been doing this for awhile. Most laptops are all built the same in general. There are a few departures from the norm sometimes but most of the time everything is the same. This laptop didn't disappoint. So after I got the motherboard out and looked at it I noticed that a lot of the screw eyes were cracked. and the power connection was cracked and they were all in the same direction. My theory is that someone tripped over the cord and pulled out off the table or something high like that and it landed FLAT on its edge. The trip cracked the power connection and the impact from the fall broke the screw eyes. Nothing really bad just an 'AH HA' moment. The door over the PCMCIA slot also just fell off during disassembly. No it wasn't because of the disassembly because the other door stayed on.
Now here is where I hit my first hiccup. The soldering iron is OLD or more to the point the point is old. And needs to be replaced. But I don't have an extra one at the moment so I had to make do with what I have. I will also be picking up a micro soldering iron for detail work like this. So after I finally get the old part out and the new one in a couple of hours has elapsed. I mean it was a complete pain to get this little dinky part in. Once in I left for lunch to let everything rest and cool. Reassembled the laptop when I got back and currently it is running updates and everything is working correctly. The battery is now fully charged so I would say everything is working like it should.
No worries.
So R is very happy his laptop is working again and is very thankful that he didn't have to buy a new laptop.