Getting hands dirty

Its been a while since I played with any core hardware. I've been postponing my temptations to get a beagle (now more options of hawk/leopard) board since over a year for reasons best known to me in my sleep. ;) I've been itching to get my hands dirty with one thing or the other. Last I held my soldering gun was when my ADSL was screwed up due to line static. I went around checking the cause for noise in the internal wiring and hunted it down to the rosette box. I tried bypassing that seeming balloon and that needed manhandling of the delicate telephone wire onto a rugged external line. I managed to solder it out. Its a penny job if you look at it, but the pleasure of holding the solder gun with the 60-40 melting is indescribable. :)

This time around, I was pissed off with how my Toshiba A100 laptop dies off due to overheating. Since the past 2-3 Ubuntu releases, long usages have been shutting off the laptop with the touchpad almost burning. I've tried to get a laptop cooling pad in vain, but what use are external set of fans when Toshiba overheats to death on its own? Its a shame. Vista, the junk that came loaded with the A100, used to keep the laptop booted for longer hours than Ubuntu as per my usage. That, however, doesn't solve my problem. My earlier experience with trying to pull the DVD drive off the laptop or pulling the HDD didn't seem userfriendly with the Toshiba. I'm a fan of Japanese products, but all the Jap products I've used are really service unfriendly! Sadly, I tried my hands to get to the internal fan yesterday not wanting to travel to a service centre which is quite far from here, not to mention that I hardly trust any of those people to do a good job and in time.

I've this addictive habit of taking a task to its very end knowing the risks at most times. So I opened the laptop which was a painful effort. I almost assumed that I will break a couple of plastic locks and then they won't fit back easily needing a bit of gluing together. To my surprise that didn't happen, but I was shocked out enough to write off 45k (cost price) worth of my laptop because the fan was way difficult to get to and all the cables between the top and bottom of laptop came off loose! This design sickens me to no end. All the cables are half my finger's length-- no exaggeration there-- 3 buses on the main board were held on to the connectors with latching locks. (Sadly, these connectors are new to me). It scared the hell out of me when they came off due to some tagging on to them when pulling the panels apart. Not only is the distance insufficient to put them back together but now I need to push the bus in the lock putting my thick hands between the panels and then push the lock to latch in the bus with the other hand. Crazy freaks! 3 of them!! Putting them together brought out other end of one of these sick buses. That was pathetic. After I got them together, somehow, there were 2 more button type grounding-like pins. What were they thinking making those dumb gold pin button connectors? To put these back on and keep them in place while playing with other connectors was an add-on pain. When I got all this together, I was good to go... Oh! I did not mention the reason I opened the laptop was the fan, which got taken care of. Before this mess of wiring got put together, I'd pulled off the fan and pulled the parts apart, blown away a ton of dust and washed the fan, save the coils. :)

Hmm, I was saying I was good to go... or so I thought. While closing the panels together I saw that there was this flat connector which I suspected to be the display cable. Now, believe you me when I say that this Toshiba design bottoms off even those sick main board connectors! This weirdo cable was half my nail's length from the panel, loosely changing its angle, and I'm supposed to fit this onto the main board while closing the panel! Barely a forcep's flat side was reaching into this gap! No press fit this one. I closed the panels praying that maybe they are press-fitting each other... high hopes. :) The laptop booted up, but without display, a much expensive problem to fix. Well, at least I was sure that its the display cable. I tried much and gave up yesterday. Now, I'd a bigger problem to look at: find a good service centre and somehow convince them to take an open laptop without display for a fan problem! An impossible proposition, very expensive, if possible. Just for a fan, I was quoted 2k+approx 1k labour. 3k there. Add the cost of explaining an open laptop without display! Hah! I realized I wrote off 45 grands, possibly.

Today I took the issue in broad daylight. Why the hell is the cable so short? I got no answers, not even dumb ones. I opened more parts around the cable to no avail. Then I decided to pull onto the cable with all my forcep-strength. I got another half a nail's length. Whoa! More pulling risked the cable/connector/display.. God knows whats at the other end of that cable. With multiple forceps, crushed fingers and God's will I got the connector in. And the A100 is working... to what cooling benefit I do not know. If I find a powerful fan, I will likely open it again. :D


Why such excruciating details, you may ask and I'll say fair question indeed. How else do you expect me to share my pain of accepting burning 45 grands due to many sick unthought designs into an otherwise good Japanese brand called Toshiba?! :D

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