Fixing a dead laptop

[xmastree]

I just thought I'd share this with you guys, It may belong in the laptop forum, but since it's not ubuntu (or even linux) related I'm posting it here.

A friend of my wife's has a dead laptop, and my wife volunteered me to fix it. Ok, so I'm pretty good with hardware, but I've never even owned a laptop, rarely used one and never been inside one...

I guess that makes me the ideal candidate then. :rolleyes:

It's a Toshiba Tecra 520. P166, 32MB, 2GB so it's not exactly state of the art, but I couldn't resist the challenge...

The lapdog (http://www.xmastree.34sp.com/laptop)

A couple of those pics are clickable for even more gory detail.

Suggestions/comments welcome.

[infoseeker]

I am REALLY surprised that thing still works :)

[xmastree]

I am REALLY surprised that thing still works :)It is pretty remarkable, isn't it? I suspect all the trashed parts are for that larger battery, which isn't a big deal anyway.

[infoseeker]

My only concern would be soldering on that pcb as the board is most likely a multilayered board and you will have to be very careful when doing solder work on it.

Nothing ventured is nothing gained ;)

[xmastree]

Well, I've worked in electronics test/repair for many years, so I'm not afraid of soldering. Although this has taught me that, at 45, my eyes aren't what they used to be. :-(
For instance, it took me ages to find the power switch. It's marked On but to me that looked like a key (think capital O followed by capital F rotated 90deg CW), and since nothing seemed to happen when I pressed it, I dismissed it at first. What I didn't realise was that if the CMOS checksum is wrong, it takes a while to respond to that button.