Laptop repairs · Feb 28, 04:10 PM
A while ago my several-year-old laptop started to get a hinge problem. As well as losing the smooth action that a new laptop has, it seemed to have a few degrees of movement that were completely loose. Thinking I was doing the right thing, I tightened the hinge bolt but weeks later the hinge failed completely.
The lid of the laptop has a plastic cover but inside there is a metal frame that goes around the actual display. The frame is pressed metal and in the corner there is a cast part that is riveted to the frame. The cast part has threaded holes for the hinge to bolt on to. What had failed was the riveting, and that accounted for the slight movement in the screen. Eventually the rivet heads broke off and the cast part was attached to the still stiff hinge, and pressed against the plastic casing making it bulge as the lid opened or closed.
I tried superglue to hold the cast part on to the frame but didn’t have much hope it would hold for such a stressed part. I really needed a replacement that was already properly riveted together – this meant a whole new lid assembly. Searching online I found the part was a Dell F6902, and luckily there was one on sale on eBay for £20 delivered. I bought it.
One thing I love about Dell is that the repair manuals are all online – this is completely unlike other manufacturers that don’t publish them, or worse still go out of their way to design with glued parts, special screws and so on. I found the manual here: Dell Inspiron 6000 Service Manual
With the manual’s guidance it’s fairly easy to remove the parts needed to safely replace the lid, and now I have a good-as-new laptop hinge again. Here are the pictures:
Mouse over the small images to see them full size
The scary part is when the display panel is loose, the back is covered in ‘fragile’ and DO NOT TOUCH stickers.
The new hinge is a great improvement.
While I was in a repairing mood I looked at another laptop, the Inspiron 6400 which looks similar but is completely different inside. This one had a damaged USB port – from bashing it around with a mouse connected. The user reported that both the ports were not working.
A close exam showed the problem – the connector was damaged and the pins bent and shorting to the case. I moved the pins with a pair of tweezers to ensure that they weren’t shorting any more. Then to protect the broken port from use, I made a small plastic cover and glued it into place. I couldn’t find a replacement socket on the internet easily, and didn’t want to risk soldering it to the board when there were three other working ports. I hoped that fixing the shorting pins would allow the other ports to work again.
Mouse over the small images to see them full size
It’s messy but will clean up well when the glue is dry. The cover should stop any further attempts to plug things into the socket.
<<<The twilight zone of firmware hacking · Google's Chrome Browser on Linux>>>