Robert L Cochran wrote:
I've fixed the problem. These very thin, almost filmy or 'tape-ey' ribbon cables have connectors with little slides that pull up to release the ribbon and push down to snap it back in. My touchpad works fine. I did break off the battery door in my clumsiness, but it's a cheap price to pay for the valuable lessons I gained in working with laptops.David Liguori wrote:
I have taken apart a fair bit of the laptop's surface components: the speaker plate, the keyboard, and the upper frame with the touchpad. The lost screw has been found, jammed between two capacitors on the motherboard. It has been extracted and returned to its home the drive cage. However, I still wasn't using my head very well, and the very thin ribbon that connects the touchpad to the motherboard tore off from the motherboard connector when I removed the upper frame. The ribbon is so thin and narrow, it is more like a film. Does anyone know how I can reconnect it? Otherise I am out a touchpad, I guess.
Robert L Cochran wrote:
When I installed a new hard drive in my aging Sony Vaio PCG-F350 laptop this evening, two tragedies befell me. The worst...shudder!...is that I fumbled one of the 3 mounting screws for the hard drive cage on the motherboard, and I can't find the darn screw. It's somewhere in the guts of the laptop, possibly around the region of the touch pad. So far, the motherboard hasn't shorted out or shown strange problems. But the hard drive light stays on all the time now -- unusual -- and I had to turn off acpi in the 667 kernel. Can anyone suggest how to find a screw dropped in a laptop's motherboard area?
Clear out an area where you can definitely see and hear the screw fall. Dismantle the machine as far as possible and give it a good shake, in all different directions and orientations.
A corollary to Murphy's Law says a screw will always fall so as to cause the most damage. If you haven't been bitten by this yet, you will. So I too recommend not powering up the computer again until you find the screw.
-- David Liguori
Thanks for the help!
Bob
I'm now downloading 194 Fedora Core 3 updates which I'm sure will take all night and then some to install on this machine.
Bob
