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Re: old laptops
I own a HP that I picked up 2 years ago.
The power jack started being very picky about working at only certain angles. I knew it was starting to separate from the PCB, but I just ignored it hoping it would go away.
It didn't. It was just getting worse, since to get it to connect I had to strain the jack more and more. Eventually, I felt it getting hot, and knew it was time to do something. Since I was a college student with no money and no way or working with out my computer, I couldn't send it off to HP to be repaired. Either I was going to fix it, or start a fire trying.
I took it down to one of the schools electronics labs after hours, let my self in (I was a work study for the lab tech), and spent the next 4 hours very carefully taking my precious laptop apart. It litterly took me that long to figure out how to get her apart with out ripping up a ribbon cable or something. Once I had her disassembled, I saw the problem. The AC power jack was only soldered onto the PCB and had no sort of strain relief. Any time the cord was moved while in the jack, all that side motion went right into the little solder pegs. They were just about to break off.
I managed to resolder the pegs on the AC jack, and then used some hotglue to firmly attach it to the PCB and provide some strain relief. I checked the rest of the jacks, and noticed a few were starting to come loose, so I glued those down to. I haven't had a problem since.
As nerve racking as soldering on my laptops mainboard with a gunky old iron was, it was kind of fun to take a look at how it was put together. Laptops are really very clever examples of heatmanagment. The CPU was right in the center of the body, but the heatsink had to be right on the edge. So it has a big copper bar running from the CPU to the heatsink as a heat path.
My point? uh... Don't try this at home? I got lucky. A single mistake soldering on that board and my laptop would be beyond repair. It was a pretty stupid tihng to try. Avoid the problem entierly, and pay attention to the AC plug, and insert it straight and don't let it get sideloaded.
-Andy A.
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