Acer Aspire 5600 Series DISASSEMBLY AND REPAIR

Acer Aspire 5600 Series with a bad LCD

Today i have this laptop with a faulty screen. So at least i was betting that it was the screen that was faulty since i could get a good video signal output through the VGA port, but before disassembling it i had another thing in mind.

I should try to shake slightly the cable that connects the main laptop assembly with the screen as it is very much subject of violence through all it's life with screen open\close cycles. For this i only had to remove the top faceplate with the power button which was remarkably hard to remove, probably the hardest one ever. That or i just wasn't doing it right :)

Turns out that wasn't it, so i really had to disassemble the screen. I would only want to do this as a last resort.

After removing the screws around the screen (that are usually covered with small plastic dots), i had to remove the lcd screen brezel using an old credit card so that i wouldn't "hurt" the soft plastic.

Twenty screws later and a few sweat drops, i had the lcd freely standing on my bench. Time to inspect it.

Model number just in case i need a replacement.

 I started peeling the duct tape around the edges in order to find the chips-on-film display drivers. I suspected it could had some bad connection between them and the LCD.

And here they are. Three of them at the left side of the screen.

A closer look.

With the LCD connected to the screen i tried to move them back and forth really...i mean REALLY gently, and guess what..

I was able to get a full picture on the display. But in order for that to happen i had to keep constantly pressing the chip-on-film lcd driver in that position.

Nothing a small roll of duct-tape filling that gap couldn't handle.

And here it is with everything in place. Bare in mind, this LCD is permanently damaged (probably due to some drop or physical violence) so this fix isn't permanent at all. I expect the problem to reappear and to get  worse and worse eventually leading to a screen replacement. But this is better than nothing, and there is a slight chance that this will last for long this way. Time will tell.

Everything is assembled and working. I really hope this lasts for a while, as someone seems to need to play some Counter-Strike on this :)
Nice wallpapper by the way.

MacBook Pro A1260 TIP

MacBook Pro A1260 with damaged GPU

 If this happens to your MacBook Pro and you know that your GPU is a Nvidia 8600m GT, have no fear! Also, don't try to fix it, don't do anything!

This is caused by the GPU due to a packaging defect. The symptoms are artifacts on the screen and no DVI output. Apple takes full responsability for this and will replace your whole motherboard for free!

Here is a quote from the apple support site:

"In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within four years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty."
 
You can read more here http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377 . Actually i would advise you to print this before going into an Apple store.

 

Do this before it is too late! You have four years counting from the original date of purchase!

XFX GeForce 9600gt Alpha Dog Edition autopsy

XFX GForce 9600GT Alpha Dog Edition from 2008\2009

 

 

This must be the first unboxing of an already used and dead item on a blog i guess.

 My beloved graphic card that gave up the ghost a week ago because of a stucked fan. It's a Geforce 9600GT overclock edition. It performed nearly neck to neck to the geforce 9800GT, and i got as a RMA replacement of my former Geforce 7900GT (second hand) that decided to add funny artifacts all over the screen when i was playing something. So this 9600GT must be my first hand graphic card that died on me.

This is a picture taken in 2009 a minute after it was unboxed for the first time. Bellow you see a Geforce 3 ti500 (king of graphics back in 2001) as a size comparation.

Here i removed the cooler faceplate and you can see that the fan has been scratching for a while on it.

 After pressing on it i could see that the fan bearing was all weared out as i could make the rotor bounce back and forth quite easly.

Ouch. Burned plastic near the fan. This puppy must have been heating quite a lot before dying.

 I should remove the cooler now for further inspection. For this i had to remove four screws on the back of the card.

 This card uses a black pcb and even so it has quite noticiable burn marks between the ram chips.

 More of the same here. This card is completly unrepairable now.

 Most voltage regulators were completly shorted although i measure them in circuit, so the circuitry around them could be shorted, or both. This justifies why the computer immediately shutted down when i tried to power it up. The PSU short-circuit protection kicked in just in time before anything else was damaged. Replacing the voltage regulators would be pretty futile as the memories are burned for sure and who knows what else is burned here. Besides each voltage regulator should be at least 1 or 2 euros, plus a new cooler, and the risk of it not working in the end make this repair not worthy at all. Out to the recycle bin you go! :(

 Oh this is the key for the 3DMark Vantage that came with the card. It's yours!

 This card shortlived as i would expect more years out of it. Why would you ask in a day and age where this sort of item becomes obsolete within 2 years? Because computer hardware remains with me as long as it works and it is still useful. I retired a Pentium 3 with a voodoo 5 one month ago as the motherboard and the memories were getting completly faulty giving me errors and all sort of weird symptoms.

Well now i have the perfect excuse to get a new graphic card :)