exxos blog - random goings on

[exxos]

You could stick them on the inside of your roof and get some decent free insulation out of those boys!

Yeah. Fill with insulation... who needs egg boxes...etc

[exxos]

What a bloody nightmare. Like 3 hours to change a bloody laptop battery!

So new battery came and fitted it. Superquick job to do.. Or least it *should* have been.

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So it was totally dead other than the battery light on the front

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So taking it back to bits again..

First up the ribbon cable fell out of the connector.

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This cable was just loose inside the laptop.

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Then while trying to hold the keyboard up and fit the cable in, the top fell off the top of the connector which turn into a nightmare.

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Finally managed to slip back into place by the power of swear.

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Found out this was actually the power cable for the on-off switch. Which explains why didn't turn on after reassembling it the first time!

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Keyboard connector back in.

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Power cable back in. The clip does not seem to like totally flat for some reason either. Though it is correctly clicked into place believe it or not.

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Then the CD-ROM cover fell off.

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Then realised after putting the cables back the right-hand corner was not clipping down back into place there was some metalwork totally bent up after I tried to get the vaccine without fully removing the keyboard (because I could not get the screw out)

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Trying to get the screw out again.. Now with the CD-ROM removed for a bit easier access.

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The metal was totally bent at this point

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So here lies the problem. The brass thingy which the screw goes into was actually holding in some unnecessary metal as well

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In the end I just decided to cut the metal parts away and have done with it!

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Keyboard finally free!

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Top view of the stupid metal part.

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Finally managed to get the screw out by holding the thing with the cutters and getting the screw and getting done that way.

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It's freeeeee.

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The keyboard side of the metal bit which was in the way.

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Now the replacement battery came with a handy spatula. Not sure this was the intention but it was very useful while putting in the cables

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CD-ROM drive back in.

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Now it is bizarre because one screw hole actually seems thicker than the others.

In hindsight I wonder if this was the problem originally when I change the battery last year I think I could have got the two ends screws mixed up because they basically looked all the same length and size but I think this could be why the other side jammed because I fitted the wrong screwing there but you really had to look at them to see any sort of thickness difference

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And finally!!

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I think when this laptop finally gives up the ghost I am buying a framework so I don't have to go through all this BS again!

[Steve]

I got myself two Lenovo ThinkPads in the last few years, an X230 (small, portable) and a T440p (larger screen) because they're still very powerful, lots of upgradability and the best thing yet - both have removable batteries. I got the large 9 cell batteries for both. They're very cheap to find refurbished and I highly recommend them if you don't want to spend too much money to have an easy to service laptop.

[exxos]

I got myself two Lenovo ThinkPads in the last few years, an X230 (small, portable) and a T440p (larger screen) because they're still very powerful, lots of upgradability and the best thing yet - both have removable batteries. I got the large 9 cell batteries for both. They're very cheap to find refurbished and I highly recommend them if you don't want to spend too much money to have an easy to service laptop.

Cool cheers.

My laptop is old. Actually have 2. The Asus and Lenovo G550. The lenovo has a simple swap battery.

[exxos]

Well that's annoying. The battery issue is still there. It discharges slowly until it gets to about 38% then drops to 6%. Though it never did that in windows. So it's a bit of a coincidence that the battery issue started when I put mx Linux on it. So I'm wondering if the Linux battery monitor is buggered now

Edit
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1306638 ... ot-windows

[Badwolf]

In the end I just decided to cut the metal parts away and have done with it!

The repair step of champions which that dastardly woke-PC-eco iFixit bunch never mention!

BW

[exxos]

The repair step of champions which that dastardly woke-PC-eco iFixit bunch never mention!

Indeed. Metal in my way, remove it, now not in my way

My new Dremel should be here tomorrow. Can fix stuff a lot faster then

[rubber_jonnie]

That's typical for a laptop repair these days, I'm just working on yet another one and the number of screws is just ridiculous.

I replaced the keyboard in my XPS 9560 a couple of years ago, and I had to pull everything out to get to the keyboard, and then the keyboard was something like 20+ screws.

Also don't like the internal battery shenanigans that they do these days, a full disassembly to get to it is so dumb.

Even my Mac Pro just needs 8 screws to get to the battery.

[exxos]

I did some late-night research and the people on the Internet were saying "it's a bad battery change it" etc. Then the other half of people arguing that they had multiple new batteries that exhibit the same problem.

So the people wasn't arguing basically said charge it up to 100% and leave it on charge for a day. Then discharge it fully, turning off all the warnings and automatic shutdown etcs.

So I left it on overnight and all morning on charge. Then I ran some strange 3-D rendering stress test in a browser to max out the CPU. This time it went from 14% to 6%. Whereas before it dropped from about 40% to 6%. So definitely a huge improvement there.

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I'll just let it charge up to 100% again now and just leave it at that for now as it's good enough for me. I guess the old battery does technically work also, so I'll just keep it in my parts draw for now.

[exxos]

100 Falcon RTCs waiting to be soldered..
100 Falcon RTCs waiting to be soldered..
and if one Falcon RTC should accidentally on purpose get soldered..
There be 99 Falcon RTCs waiting to be soldered..
99 Falcon RTCs waiting to be soldered..