{"id":1714,"date":"2005-09-15T23:39:38","date_gmt":"2005-09-15T23:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-1714.html"},"modified":"2014-01-03T16:48:58","modified_gmt":"2014-01-03T16:48:58","slug":"hot-tools-and-broken-laptops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2005\/09\/15\/hot-tools-and-broken-laptops\/","title":{"rendered":"Hot tools and broken laptops"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m no stranger to fixing computers, but usually I stick to the simple stuff, like swapping hard disks, motherboards, video cards and other fairly high-level components. This evening was the first time I’ve had to use a soldering iron<\/em> to solve a problem.<\/p>\n

My brother’s laptop, a Dell Inspiron 5150, died earlier this week. It just stopped powering up. Occasionally it would come on for a few seconds, and then shut off again. No boot screen, no diagnostics. At first I thought it might have been a power supply problem–perhaps a dodgy connector, but swapping the power supplies didn’t do anything. It turns out to be a much more subtle problem than that.<\/p>\n

Some searching around the web showed that this immediate shut-down is a common problem on the 5150s. At the bottom of the 5150’s case is a screw-down flap that gives access to the mini PCI slot (which usually contains the Wi-Fi adapter). One of the tabs on this flap is just a teensy<\/em> bit too long, so that it pushes up against a chip on the motherboard. If you put any pressure on the laptop, like leaning too hard on the keyboard, or squishing it in a travel bag, then the tab may push hard enough on the chip to leave a small dent, or even to fracture its connections to the motherboard. If you happen to have a 5150 that hasn’t<\/em> developed this problem yet, the recommendation is to take a sharp knife to the tab in question, and cut it down, so that it doesn’t break the chip in the first place.<\/p>\n

But if it’s too late for that, there is a thread here<\/a> at hardwareanalysis.com that explains the problem–and also how to fix it yourself. By stripping the laptop down to the motherboard, you can use a fine-tipped soldering iron to repair the fractured connections. I followed the instructions, and…it works. The laptop powers on and boots up again as normal.<\/p>\n

I was amazed. I’d seen the replies in that thread from people who had tried this and had it work, but the thought of lifting a soldering iron put the fear into me. (The last time I soldered anything was in my 2nd year Electronics class, some 15 years ago, and that was one of the reasons I turned to theoretical physics instead: no lab work.) Fortunately the repair turned out to be a lot easier that I’d feared. Stripping the laptop down and putting it back together again was actually the hardest bit.<\/p>\n

Dell had quoted my brother \u00a3350 to replace the laptop’s motherboard. The soldering iron cost \u00a36. Yowza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m no stranger to fixing computers, but usually I stick to the simple stuff, like swapping hard disks, motherboards, video cards and other fairly high-level components. This evening was the first time I’ve had to use a soldering iron to solve a problem. My brother’s laptop, a Dell Inspiron 5150, died earlier this week. It … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Hot tools and broken laptops”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-techie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}