Cause of Problem with Connector for Flexible Cable [COLUG]

[Andrew J. Barr]

Jim wrote:
> "Andrew J. Barr" wrote:
> 
>> Jim wrote:
> 
>>> What the heck did the previous owner^H^H^H^H^Hgorilla^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Howner 
>>> do to break the sliding locking piece? 
>> I'm not entirely sure, but knowing this person, I'm not entirely sure I 
>> _want_ to know. I do know that they both ended up broken because of an 
>> attempt to repair just one of them, but how this even became a situation 
>>   in need of remedy in the first place is beyond me.
> 
> Probably caused by pulling on cable without unlocking the connector first, 
> caused by that special combination of impatience and ignorance. 
> We all have various shades of ignorance, but when working with 
> delicate stuff, impatience is just plain stupid. 
> 
> Of course, impatience and ignorance have their benefits. 
> Particularly, that you got a free laptop. 

And now it's a free *working* laptop. A friend of mine from high school 
came over this morning and we were planning to work on it and see what 
we could do. I didn't expect much to come of it, because neither of us 
have any serious experience with electronics, but through a combination 
of thinking outside the box and dumb luck, we managed to figure out a 
combination of what might be called "dirty hacks" that make the 
connections required--the keyboard and touchpad now operate normally. I 
had the idea to insert some small strips of printer paper below the 
ribbon cable to push it up against the connectors (which I correctly 
believed were on the top of the socket. This worked, and for good 
measure there are a few small pieces of duct tape up over top of the 
connection to keep the assembly in place (and besides, what fix is any 
good without duct tape?) I've had the machine running Debian lenny/sid 
for a few hours now, and I've not come across any bugs or unaccessible 
hardware--kudos to the bcm43xx people for supporting the Airport 
Extreme, especially. It connected to the WPA-Enterprise network in my 
house with NetworkManager on the first go and seems to work great. The 
only thing that *might* not be working is the illuminated keyboard, but 
I'm not entirely sure this machine has that feature. For a while, the 
powerprefs app (which configures pbbuttonsd) seemed to think not (those 
tabs were disabled). What's more I can't find the light sensor anywhere.

So the question now is, is there any reason for me to bring it to lunch? 
Keep in mind curiosity is a valid reason, I don't mind showing it off if 
anyone is interested. I haven't made many changes (yet) to the stock 
etch install beyond upgrading to sid and a bit of experimental for GNOME 
2.18. Compiz isn't working yet, application windows don't update 
correctly...I have yet to investigate. However it does seem that 
hardware-accelerated 3D is working correctly.

I've gained all new kinds of respect for Linux and Debian in particular, 
I have the same environment and applications that I know and love on a 
completely foreign hardware platform...that's quite an achievement, in 
my book.

Andrew
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