Category: Geeks r Us
Hey all.
I'm interested in starting a discussion with people who have dabbled in repairing laptops.
More often than not, it's easy to replace memory or a harddrive, but I'm interested in hearing from people who have done things like motherboard replacements or other complex things.
I personally find it easy to do almost anything excluding a motherboard replacement. I find that it's dooable, but I wouldn't really like to do it on anyones machine other than mine.
I don't really have any poticula questions that I want answering, but I thought that this might be a good place to swap tips, or if someone has any questions about laptop repair I would be happy to answer them.
Like I say, I'm not really sure what direction this topic will take, but hopefully someone will benefit from it.
Absolutely any thoughts regarding laptop repair are welcome.
Ben.
Having said this, this could turn into a general hardware discussion if people want.
I like this topic.
I'm much interested in building a laptop myself.
I assemble desktop myself. but no laptop so far.
have you ever assembled a laptop? is that easier as a desktop componants?
I heard a blind girl is doing that in US and she is originally from poland. and she's a totally blind.
so come on guys, give me the tricks and techniques, now.
Raaj.
Well I want to play around with some laptop parts purely to see where they'd go and stuff, but I wouldn't really want to do any replacement except on my own machine at first. I do know that it is easier to build a desktop than a laptop because the pieces are larger and you haven't got anything scaled down to a smaller size as you have with say a netbook/macbook/laptop or whatever. Interesting topic though. Keep it going.
If only I could get hold of some old computer parts to look at and play around with. I know they wouldn't work, but I don't mind. I know where I could find some, but they're used for teaching purposes already.
Hi,
I'd like to shift slightly to the desktop side of things.
Is it possible for visually impaired techies to connect the wires of the case to the motherboard? if yeah, what goes where? I know its a matter of looking at the diagrams for sighted so that they know what goes where on the motherboard, but is this something that can be remembered?
I know how to assemble everything together, just the cables on the case gets me mad.
Laptops are much harder to build than desktops. The geek will often build a desktop for themselves to save on money and or for the experience. However, this rarely happens with laptops.
The main reason for this is due to standards. Where as on desktops you have standards like atx, matx or mini itx for example, these don't exist on laptops. This is due mainly to the many different sizes of laptops - companies are coming out with new computers all the time, and since the internals are in different places from model to model, theres just no way that anyone would ever be able to agree on a standard.
If your motherboard dies on a desktop, it's very easy to find a replacement - sure, there are still things that the board needs to have in comon with the old one, but there are so many different mobo's around that it really isn't that hard to find something that will work. On a laptop though, you would have to find the exact board for that model and sometimes for that revision of the model.
You can get laptop barebone kits, but even then, you can only customise things like the cpu memory and drives, so it's not really worth building one imo since the kits are expencive and so are the parts that you'll be needing.
The reason why laptops are harder to service is that theres no set way of taking them apart. When you take desktops apart, you get used to how to remove things like the cpu, ram and cards etc, so the knolige that you've gained from taking one computer apart can be transfered to another one. You just can't do that with laptops. There are a few things that some laptops share with eachother - for example, you usually have to remove what I call the power strip (The bit between the keyboard and the screen) in order to remove the keyboard and usually, screen removal doesn't vairy that much between laptops, but thats about it.
I've done 1 or 2 complete rebuilds on laptops that I've owned, but I wouldn't say that I'm good at it or anything. I can do a desktop in minutes excluding some of the lights on the front, but laptops take me much longer.
Hope this answered your questions both of you.
Sorry this is a bit dis jointed, I'm hung over.
Ok. Front pannel connectors on desktops.
These are real buggers to do. There isn't a standard for the order of the pins on the board for things like power, reset and all the lights and to make things worse, the cables on the case more often than not feel exactly the same.
Stuff like usb and audio are dooable however. You'll be wanting to look for a rectangular group of pins which more often than not will have one extra pin on the right, assuming that the board is orientated so that the back panel ports are to your left. The case will have too fattish cables coming out of it, one of which will connect to the rectanggal of pins. If it doesn't fit, flip the cable around and try again. If it still doesn't fit, do the same with the other cable. There keyd, so you won't be able to connect usb to audio by mistake. You might have to be a bit firm when trying to connect them, but I've found that there pretty strong, and so long as your pushing virticly as apposed to slanting the cable slightly, your probably not going to break anything.
Power connectors aren't as easy. 9 times out of 10, again, assuming that the board is orientated so that the back panel ports are to your left, on the bottom right of the board, you'll see a large group of pins (Larger than the usb and audio connectors). These control the power button amongst other things. Notice how each pin feels exactly like every other one? Yeah, it's nice isn't it. Lets assume that you have everything connected and ready to go, but you can't turn the board on. You have a couple of options here.
The screwdriver method:
While the board is powered off, memorise the location of the group of pins that does power. Start to move a screwdriver along all of these pins and get a feel for how far you'll have to move the screwdriver to cover all the pins and how far the pins are from your arm. Do this a couple of times and every now and then, check with your other hand that your actually touching the right group of pins.
When you feel confident that you can touch all of them without being guided by your hand, switch the wall socket on, there by giving the psu power. Obviously this isn't going to turn the board on (Although sometimes it does). Now, run the screwdriver over the pins. You might have to do this for a while, but this is only because your not getting all of the pins. Once the screwdriver touches the power pin, it will power the board on as if you have pressed the on button.
The hard method:
Look at the cables coming out of the case. You have the usb / audio ones and then some thinner ones. There are 2 different types of connectors on these. The ones with the smaller connectors are usually lights and aren't really needed. The ones with the bigger connectors (and that have 2 wires as apposed to 1) are the buttons. Now, you have to pick one of these bigger connectors and methodicly start connecting it to the group of pins, pressing the power and reset buttons every time until it turns on. Sometimes these should be connected verticly but sometimes horrisontally - e.g. the 2 pins that the connector is covering are next to each other or above each other. Just keep on doing it until it turns on. It sounds like such a pain and it is, but once you've done it for a minute or so you get quite quick at it.
Hth.
Also, if the group of pins for power and lights have an enclosure around them - e.g. there not just bare pins on the board, sometimes, if there is a gap in the enclosure, the pins near it are going to be the ones that turn the board on.