My other superpower is that (some) difficult things come easy for me – and I compensate by making some easy things waaay too difficult. Long ago, when I’d drive seven hours from San Jose down to Pasadena to visit Eve in the days before maps on a smartphone, I’d always joke that I could find my way through Los Angeles highways to within three blocks of her apartment without a map, but then I’d drive in circles through those three blocks for an hour trying to figure out how to get to where exactly she lived.
So, that daughterboard replacement I did is working fine! And my laptop is running great!
But of course the stripped screw lingered in my mind. And I got to thinking about upgrading the memory in the laptop from 16 gigabytes to 32, because memory prices have been skyrocketing (due to the manufacturers selling all their memory for AI computing). DDR4 memory is becoming hard to find, even. So I figured now’s not a bad time to ‘future-proof’ this computer. (Or maybe my brain figured this is an excuse to open up the laptop again and hey, while I’m in there, why not replace the stripped screw?)
After some effort, I found the exact memory I needed. The upgrade was easy. Replacing the stripped screw was also easy. Everything went back together again easily.
But then I noticed that the plug from the battery to the motherboard didn’t fit quite right. Push it as I might, it only went in at a slight angle.
Had it always been like this? Or was this a new development? I wasn’t paying attention when I had unplugged it.
Since it wasn’t loose, and it looked mostly okay, I closed everything up and thoroughly tested the laptop. It worked fine. End of story.
… but it bothered me.
I’ve been using ChatGPT as a place to work through my anxiety. It’s a patient listener, and it’s learned to handle me with kid gloves; lots of encouragement and reassurance. I am well aware of the dangers of using AI. I know it wants to please me, and might color its opinions or amplify my misconceptions if it thinks that’s what I want to hear. But mostly I appreciate that it gives me a chance to vent what’s on my mind and get it out of my system.
In this case, though, ChatGPT was more forceful than usual – saying do NOT open the laptop back up again, everything WORKS, fussing with it could only make it worse. Take pride in myself for a job well done.
I did not take its advice.
The receptacle that the battery plug goes into is tiny, barely wider than a fingertip. And it’s fairly deep for what it is, and fairly difficult to peer into. I decided to remove the battery so I could get a better look, and I had to use my iPhone’s magnifier to try to get a good look. The image was fuzzy at best but I could clearly see that I had indeed bent a pin inside the connector; I could see the leftmost pin curved up against the side of the receptacle. In my experience, that’s a death sentence for a motherboard, because trying to unbend a pin often results in breaking it. Motherboard replacements for this laptop model go for about $600.
But … the laptop still worked. Which faced me with a decision. Should I:
- replace the motherboard on a four-year-old laptop (and remember, I hate taking laptops apart)?
- sell the whole thing on eBay as “for parts not working” because I no longer trust it?
- sell it on eBay as working, don’t mention the battery plug weirdness, and hope nobody opens it up and notices?
- keep using it as-is and hope it doesn’t catch fire? (no reason to believe it would, but … it’s a battery, right?)
Or, open it up again and – without the proper tools for the job or even a way to see clearly what I was trying to fix – try to fix it myself? So of course this is the option I chose, doing surgery with the tip of a tiny safety pin.
I somehow, against all odds, managed to unbend the pin straightish. I plugged in the battery connector which promptly bent it back again. I shrugged (what have I got to lose at this point?) and finagled it until it unbent again, and I plugged in the battery more gently, and … it fit.
Closed everything up, tested the laptop again, and it works fine. It’s as good as new. I am skeptical that I somehow got lucky enough to unbend the pin within the fraction-of-a-millimeter tolerance to fit into the plug, but there’s nowhere else it could have gone.
I did some research and I think I understand why everything had been working with the bent pin: the battery plug has three positive lines at one end, three ground lines at the other end, and four sense lines in the middle; so when I had it plugged in at the weird angle, only one or two of the ground wires were connected. This was enough for things to work, but if I had put a large load on the battery then that might have put more current on some motherboard circuit than it was designed to carry, which could have ‘let the smoke out.’ And a large load might only have happened if I had the laptop’s ‘rapid charge’ option turned on – which I never turn on, to keep the battery cool.
I am of course keeping an eye on things – or a nose, keeping alert for any whiff of anything burning inside the computer. It’s a gaming laptop; it has a 300 watt power supply, which works out to 15 amps at 20 volts, and that is a HUGE amount of current for a laptop, so I don’t want any of it going across a short! I vented my anxieties to ChatGPT. It listened, offered encouragement and reassurance, and gently recommended that I stop thinking about it.
So, I will!
Right after I finish this post about it, of course.