Laptop Modifications

This last week I got another old laptop. My older brother gave me an old Compaq laptop that could not get power at all. Well, although I have no experience whatsoever with electrical engineering, I decided that it would be fun to try fixing the laptop.

After disassembling, I found the culprit. The power connection had a dodgy soldering job done on it. So I desoldered it using a desoldering pump(my wife helped to hold the motherboard and she had a great time doing so). I connected all the cables again, and now it works great.

One thing that is important to note is that the cables in laptops are incredibly thin. If you put a crease in these cables, then don’t count on them ever working again. If you have put a crease in the cable already, then there might be some tricky way to get it working again using some sort of conductive material to create a bridge between the creased joints. An easier option is to see what you’ve damaged, and think about whether you can connect the item through an external port. For example, you may have need of a floppy drive that you just busticated. In that case, just get a USB floppy drive. If your keyboard no longer works, try connecting to it externally through a USB to PS2 adapter or even by connecting a USB keyboard on its own.

You may also consider using your PCMCIA card slot for adding functionality back to your laptop.