56 Silicon chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au
worked and then spread glue over the
entire plug and socket assembly so it
couldn’t move.
With this method, the elephant in
the workshop is the trouble I would
be in if it ever became necessary to
get it apart again, ie, if something else
should go wrong with the laptop.
Once the plug was potted, it
wouldn’t be coming off again and,
due to the way the connected cable
interacts with other removable parts
of the laptop, that would make disas-
sembling the machine again virtually
impossible.
I decided to put these issues to the
client, who had already been half-re-
signed to getting a new machine any-
way, given she thought this one was
dead.
I called her and told her what I’d
found, and after discussing the op-
tions, she was happy for me to go
ahead and try to repair this one, with
the full knowledge that it might not
work anyway, and even if it did our
future repair options would be severe-
ly compromised.
Repair time!
With the go-ahead given, the first
thing I did was straighten the pins
out. While I have plenty of micro-
tools for this kind of work, I always
gravitate back to using my array of
dentists’ tools.
These picks, probes, burs and scal-
ers are excellent for electronics work
because they are strong, resilient to
fluxes and solders and very hard. I use
them for everything from mixing glue
to cleaning circuit boards.
Don’t be afraid to ask your dentist
for old ones – they chuck theirs away
regularly, usually regardless of con-
dition because they get brittle with
repeated sterilisation (among other
things) and become a bit dangerous
to use. My dentist has a carton of old
tools and I never leave empty handed
(it is also nice to get something, other
than working teeth, for all that money
dropped there!).
The tools are usually cleaned in the
autoclave before being disposed of any-
way, so there are no worries about them
being dirty. I had to promise my dentist
that I wouldn’t use them on my or any-
one else’s teeth, and surprisingly, that’s
not a tough promise to keep!
The extremely sharp probes that typ-
ically strike fear into the hearts (and
mouths) of patients are ideal for this
pin-straightening business. I used one
to gently coerce the dodgy pins back
into line. This worked better than I
expected and all the pins were equal-
ly-spaced and still well-connected
to the motherboard once I’d finished
probing.
The crack in the resin part of the
socket now looked to be just a hair-
line and the plug fitted back onto the
socket relatively securely. I assembled
the laptop parts on the bench and sat
the battery onto the motherboard’s bat-
tery connector.
When I pushed the power button,
the screen lit up and the machine tried
to boot, but because I had no hard drive
in it, I merely got the usual “no system
disk” message.
With that working, I removed the
battery and other bits and tried the
plug again; it was still too easy to dis-
connect. Usually, it is held quite firm-
ly by friction, but now it wasn’t even
holding stable with the plug pushed
on as firmly as it would go. I taped it
down, mixed up some epoxy resin
and ‘tagged’ it with a good-sized blob
at each corner.
When set, the plug was held in so
it wouldn’t come out, yet was acces-
sible enough so that if I needed to re-
move it again, I could break the glue.
I reassembled the laptop, and with
everything attached, it booted into
the operating system and worked as
expected.
The keyboard no longer had the
hump, and there was still some wig-
gle-room should we need to get it apartagain. The owner was happy, I was
happy this fix would last, and every-
body wins. Sometimes it is worth hav-
ing a go anyway, even if the outcome
looks bleak.Cleaning motherboards
B. W., of Warriewood, NSW lives
near the coast, and a common problem
with electronics (and especially com-
puters) in these humid areas is corro-
sion and a build-up of dust and other
gunk on the circuit boards.
This eventually interferes with the
operation enough to cause failures.
The solution is to give them a good
old clean and check them over for any
other problems while you’re at it...
I have five PCs making up a broad-
cast HD editing system. The oldest, a
2003 model with a Gigabyte mother-
board and an 8-slot NAS with 16TB
of storage has worked flawlessly for
12+ years, but recently it started get-
ting slower and slower.
Finally, it refused to switch off; then
when I forced it off, it wouldn’t power
back on. While all the power supply
output voltages seemed OK, the moth-
erboard lacked 12V in some locations.
It was time to bite the bullet and
pull out the motherboard. Living on
the coast, many times over the years
various bits of electronic gear have
chucked a wobbly or just stopped and
the reason is usually dust, fluff, hair
and other fine debris that gets depos-
ited on the PCBs, stuck down with a
salt-laden conductive deposit from the
sea breezes we often get.