Anyway, what happened was the little jack where the adapter plugs into broke off. And since my battery does not hold a charge, my laptop pretty much died because it wasn't plugged into the wall anymore. Since it is no longer under warranty, Brian and I undertook the daunting task of trying to fix it.
Here's a picture of my laptop in pieces.
We had to actually take it apart more because we couldn't remove the broken existing jack without taking the motherboard off.
Here are all the screws that used to hold my laptop together.
After 3 or 4 hours of taking the laptop apart, we were ready to attempt to fix it. We went to Fry's and Radio Shack to try to find a jack that was the right size, but to no avail. It would just be too easy if we could find the right part at the store. So in the end we went with some jack that Brian had in one of his junk boxes. After removing the broken jack, we soldered two wires into the motherboard, and then pulled them through the open hole in the back of the laptop where the adapter plug usually goes. We then tried out Brian's new heat shrink gun to try to protect the wires, and then soldered the ends onto the jack.
Here is a picture of the final product.
We did end up adding some electrical tape around the jack and the bare wire for more protection, and so I don't get shocked.
We turned it on and . . .
It worked!
For the most part. We discovered that the Q, E, I, S, H, and ENTER keys were not functional. We took it apart again and checked the keyboard connection, but they still didn't work. We did bend the keyboard quite a bit to get it out in the first place, so that might have broke it. But we just plugged in an external keyboard, and it does just fine. Hopefully it will run okay for a little while longer. I don't want to invest in a new one quite yet. I'm getting my new camera first!
4 comments:
Well done breathing new life into a dead laptop! Most people would just use it as an excuse to buy a new laptop.
You two are so practical. I'm trying to make an old bar code scanner last until the end of the school year. I unplugged everything today and then reattached it. So far it is doing okay today. Mom in Oregon
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
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