Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I carried out a very special and long-awaited project. Let’s get started!
For the one or possibly two people who have read almost everything I’ve ever posted, you will know that I had my laptop’s power port break on me roughly a year and a half ago, give or take (I have a vague memory from that time involving a Christmas tree, it’s been more than a year, and likely less than two).
My father and I stripped my laptop down and got it functional again, though when we tried installing it, the cord was extra long and something at the hardware level refused to charge the battery. Ever since then, the BIOS has been beeping at me every boot that the power adapter cannot be determined.
Several months ago, we decided to take another swing at repairing the laptop correctly this time. I pulled out the broken power port and we were able to grab the part number off it. Looking online, we found a match and bought it.
That part took quite a lot longer than it should have. The package had a hand written label that matched the part number, but when I opened the package, yes it was a power port, and the length looked to be about right, but the connector had seven pins to my laptop’s five. We took a closer look at the company who sold us the part and found they were operating out of China when their name heavily implied they were American distributor. My father asked for his money back, but has yet to receive a reply from these suspected small-scale fraudsters.
After another, much shorter round of waiting, we got a genuine part from a real supplier with a real part label this time. The only difference I spotted were different colors on the wires leading up to the pins, though they were effectively a palette swap from the original.
We grabbed a PDF of the service manual for my tablet and my father printed out the top-level instructions detailing the order of our specific tear down job. I got impatient to start, so I started pulling screws.
I did most of the work myself this time. When we got to the power jack, I used the original as a guide to find the proper routing the cord is supposed to take. I took the opportunity to dust off some hard-to-reach places while they were more exposed than not.
During reassembly, I tried to only tighten screws as tight as they needed to be, in case of any additional work in the near future. The most nerve wracking part was while replacing the screen; I kept catching and more than once did I hear what sounded like something breaking. I also spotted where one of the status LED’s was mostly gone from a tiny circuit on the front. Just the tiniest bit of red could be seen where it should have been, but not on any of the other lights.
Final assembly felt like it took the longest. Not only did I forget to connect the keyboard electronically the first go around, but I had already put the top plate on when I remembered I still had four screws to replace below the keyboard. At one point, I accidentally dropped a screw through a broken screw hole. With a little shaking the “loose conductor” fell right out.
Once everything was tightened back up, I put the battery in and connected everything. Moment of truth. The BIOS didn’t complain. Debian said it was charging, but it was stuck at 0.0% for a while. I swapped batteries and booted to Windows, and everything seemed to indicate things were going well.
It was back in Debian when I saw it. Net battery gain on the smaller battery from 51% to 54%. Prayers answered. We explored the idea that the larger battery might have been damaged from being discharged for so long, but I eventually got a similar confirmed charge point on it.
It was only a small formality to unplug my running laptop and use a little of that fresh battery power.
Repairing your own electronics gives you a much better understanding of how everything works. Even if you aren’t interested in what happens within each circuit board, it still lets you diagnose it better in the future.
Final Question: Have you ever repaired any of your own electronics? If not, have you ever looked inside anything just to look?