July 26, 2006
Trauma: MAC
Filed Under Writing |
This is the inside of my PowerBook, guts exposed like a patient on the Discovery Health Channel’s “Trauma: ER.” What on earth possessed me do such a thing to my Mac? Well, let’s blame it mostly on Delta Airlines, and partly on the broken latch that closes the laptop. I guess I can blame it partly on myself, too… now I know to never pack my laptop in my check-in baggage. Hey, it was a long flight…my brain was fried…I was delirious and had tons of carry on souvenirs…but I digress.
The latch above the screen costs about $50 to fix. But the latch below the trackpad, which by the way is the only part of the latch that possibly could break, costs about $450 to repair. Apple doesn’t make a replacement bottom latch; you have to purchase the entire bottom casing and have it repaired by an Apple technician. Ridiculous, right? I thought so, too.
I searched online to see if anyone else had run into this, and found the same information Apple gave me; I would have to replace the entire bottom casing to fix the latch. Ouch. So I broke out the screwdrivers. And the pliers. And the tweezers. And the superglue. And a hairpin. As you can see in this shot of my new customized desktop.
Step One: Know trouble when you see it
My wife walked by as I started to tinker, and asked what I was doing. “Getting into trouble” was my response. In hindsight, I probably should not have done what I did. Who knows what I was exposing my precious hard drive to, not to mention the motherboard? I’ll blame the decision to open her up on too much coffee. Yeah, that’s it, coffee.
If you try this fix, I hold no liability as to what happens to your computer by following these instructions. I have no experience repairing electronics, but I do have experience taking things apart and getting them back together and working. Most of the time. I’d suggest keeping track of your screws, so you know what goes where when it’s time to reassemble.
Step Two: McGuyver rules
First, I undid a ton of screws. Three on each side, two in the back, two on the top. Four across the bottom back. Two inside the memory panel. And finally, two inside the battery panel. The entire top panel (keyboard included) pops up with a little force, and this part (see below) just flings into outer space. Relax, you can easily find where it reconnects.
The flinging part:
And where it reconnects:
This is a closeup of the broken latch:
I tried to superglue the original latch back together. The small piece that protrudes is the part that broke, and it was still inside the casing. The piece was too small and flimsy for the superglue to hold. Then I tried to superglue a small piece of metal to the back of the latch casing, but the metal piece (a portion of a wall-portrait hanger) was not flat enough to make a good bond, due to all of the bending I did to get it shaped just right.
That’s when I decided to remove the hard drive to get access to the latch assembly. This was scary, but at this point I was too far in to turn back. A few more screws had the drive out of the way, and the back casing of the latch was completely accessible.
The hard drive removed:
The latch from behind, with the hard drive removed:
I removed the small spring that pushes the latch into place. I created a clip that would fit under and over the latch, clamping itself into place. I fastened the clip out of a barrette, but it would not stay. I cut off the bottom part of the clasp, and found that the metal was much smoother and better formed for a superglue bond, so I glued it on and what do you know, it stayed in place! I put the keyboard in place to do a quick test and the latch worked! Wow! Did I just do that?
The new clasp:
The new clasp in place:
Step Three: Don’t drink coffee before you do this
Seriously. Shaky hands do not help when you’re dealing with tiny screw, wires and intricately placed electronic components. I wish I would have heeded this advice! My hands were shaking all over the place. Taking it apart was easy, but getting it back together on a coffee buzz was not fun.
The hard drive was difficult to get back into place. I finally got it just right and realized I was missing a screw. Of course, I figured it was under the hard drive. I took it back out, and there it was. Shaky hands made it almost impossible to get that particular screw back in place. After 10 minutes of fidgeting with tweezers, pliers and a tiny Phillips head, the hard drive was back in place. The rest of the screws went in easy. There is that one part on bottom of the keyboard that I had to reconnect, and that was about it.
After I put in the last tiny screw, I booted up with that lovely Mac startup sound. I was worried the screen wouldn’t come on, and after 10 tense seconds of black screen, it finally popped on. Whew.
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A little about me
Jon Hebert works as a web & graphic artist, and plays as a musician and artist in Mandeville, LA. Read more...
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