Classmate Disassembly

[Trent B]

If it works in realplayer that may explain it, it seems to me that movies for realplayer seem to dislike working it almost all other players.

[ChristopherBuck]

I disassembled ours earlier this build season. To get to the screws behind the keyboard, you must unclip and remove the keyboard. There are two white clips that must be "retracted" at the bottom of the keyboard. (By retracted, I mean pushed back forcibly with a small precision screwdriver or wago.) Once the keyboard is unclipped and lifted, it will still be connected by an inflexible ribbon cable of sorts. This is detached by lifting the clip at the motherboard-end of the cable vertically.

[mobilegamer999]

Purely Curiosity here but, why are you wanting to take the netbook apart? put in liquid cooling system for awesome overclocking ?

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by ChristopherBuck

I disassembled ours earlier this build season.

What steps past that did you take?

I need to remove the bottom casing to get at and fix the power connector.

[Jon Stratis]

The keyboard tray can be removed without forcibly retracting those clips... Remove the battery, and there are two sliders - sliding them to the side retracts the clips.

There are a number of screws hidden beneath the keyboard tray, and even more beneath the battery. If one thing is for sure, they did NOT build the classmate to come apart easily for service!

[BrandonG]

Kind of relating to this, has anyone found a bigger replacement for the SSD in the classmate?

[ChristopherBuck]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

What steps past that did you take?

I need to remove the bottom casing to get at and fix the power connector.

There are a bunch of screws and other components that need to be removed. It gets a little complicated, so I made a quick walk-through video today. I am in the process of encoding and exporting the video; I will post back when I get it uploaded to youtube hopefully tomorrow morning.

EDIT: uploaded - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCvm5KS9k-s
hope this is helpful

[Mark McLeod]

Just wanted to thank Christopher for the video.

Our Classmate power connector is now repaired with a heavy duty replacement and the Classmate works fine.

I didn't even have any screws left over from reassembly...must have done something wrong...

[Mark1082]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Just wanted to thank Christopher for the video.

Our Classmate power connector is now repaired with a heavy duty replacement and the Classmate works fine.

I didn't even have any screws left over from reassembly...must have done something wrong...

What heavy duty replacement did you use to fix it? My teams classmate died this weekend to the point where if you typed on the keyboard the wrong way it would shut off. I'm just not sure what part needs to be repaired/replaced.
Thanks,
Mark

[Mark McLeod]

Don't replace parts if they aren't causing a problem.
Try the simple things first.

Is your power meter showing problems?
Very low battery reserve will cause the Classmate to operate very, very slowly, as in click and wait 10 minutes for the action to complete.
That could be caused by a damaged battery that's easy to replace, but it'll show as red in the battery meter if that's an issue.

I've seen netbooks with bad sectors on the Classmate Flash drive clobbering the operating system, such that it has to be reinstalled.

Memory card can be reseated easily if it's a recurring memory fault killing your machine.

[Mark1082]

I think its an issue with the power connection. The drive team had been saying it was shutting off, and I noticed at one point that when our driver station board was placed down on the table that caused it shut off. We always kept the battery on charging between matches and it wasn’t low. There is no BSOD or Windows error, and when the classmate is on, there is no performance issue, it runs as expected. I would expect a memory issue to fail the post when it reboots or cause a blue screen, but I will double check to make sure its firmly seated. And just by lightly tapping the classmate I can cause it to turn off.

[Mark McLeod]

See if tapping the power connector alone causes it to shutdown.

The replacement part we used was Digikey # cp-051BH-ND
2.5x6mm
If you have a professional (or can borry one) ask them to handle it.
Professional tools make it much easier.