Laptop

This week I spent time hunting down parts to get my laptop working again. Got a system board and keyboard from eBay, a four-port USB hub, an active PS2-to-USB adapter, and thermal grease from Radio Shack, a Torx wrench tool, thermal adhesive, and a passive PS2-to-USB adapter from Fry's.

The hardest thing about tearing down the machine was getting the instructions condensed from 50+ pages to about six (removing all the images). Other bits involved taking the time to separate and label all the various Torx and Torx-Phillips screws. I've seen this done before, but it was a brief channel-surfing stop on the Speed channel one night last week that reminded me of the value of doing this (I think they had a baggy with piston squirters written on it). And it helped a lot.

The keyboard hasn't arrived yet, so I'm using the four-port USB hub with an external keyboard and the active PS2-to-USB adapter, and an external USB mouse. My initial thrifty purchase of the passive PS2-to-USB adapter didn't work with my external keyboard. Apparently this only seems to work of the keyboard has the circuitry on-board to communicate with a USB adapter. Neither of the two extras I have on hand can do this, so I had to purchase a PS2-to-USB adapter with the circuitry in the adapter itself. The easy way to tell if your keyboard has the circuitry on-board is if it came with a PS2-to-USB adapter.

I started tearing down the machine Friday morning but realized when it came time to remove the heat-sink that I didn't have the Torx wrench or the thermal grease. I purchased both of these from Fry's, came home and finished the job close to midnight (overall investment, about four hours). The next day as I prepared to diagnose a separate issue with Dawn's computer, I realized I had applied thermal adhesive to the heat sink and CPU in my laptop. Ugh. Thankfully, I hadn't mixed the two Arctic Silver compounds to create the adhesive compound. This required another tear-down and reapplication of thermal grease from Radio Shack.

So it's been an educational week with laptop issues. Keyboard arrives Tuesday. I discovered that I enjoy going to the computer lab on campus instead of using the laptop in the library during my days at class. That having a port replicator helps a lot when traditional input devices fail. And how much time and energy maintaining a piece of hardware can take. x_x