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I'm proud of this
Dec. 26th, 2012 12:54 pmI just fixed Cassie's monitor.
She has an external monitor that I used to have before I went all-laptop. It still worked fine but the power button was broken.
Once I got inside (kind of a pain in the ass; no screws, just snaps that I had to pry apart) I saw why: it was the cheapest, worst designed power button ever. Surface mount switch that was pushed by a little gray plastic thing, which was held on by two thin rods of ABS. They had to be thin so that it would be springy, but ABS isn't naturally springy and will become brittle and snap if you bend it a lot, so this button was destined to break. Argh. Anyway, it was a little board with a connector (4 wires) to it, so I pulled that off and took it back to my room.
Okay, so. This is gonna be ghetto. I first tried soldering wires to the pads that the switch was on, but they were too small. I then tried uncovering the traces and soldering to those, but same deal. Then I said "screw it, the rest of the hardware on this little board probably just makes the button light up anyway" and soldered directly to the pins on the little connector. There were black, red, orange, and brown. I figured the way to do this would be to tie either orange or brown to either black or red. I got it, predictably, on the fourth try: red to brown.
So, now I knew this was gonna work. I crammed it all into the case and stuck everything back together. And of course the joints broke. Did I mention these were really tiny pins? So now I was getting pissed off. I threw away the little board entirely, cut off the connector, and soldered a button directly to the red and brown wires. Now there's just a button hanging out of the hole, but it works. And we didn't have to replace a $200 monitor because a 5ยข button failed.
I'm a little proud of that.
She has an external monitor that I used to have before I went all-laptop. It still worked fine but the power button was broken.
Once I got inside (kind of a pain in the ass; no screws, just snaps that I had to pry apart) I saw why: it was the cheapest, worst designed power button ever. Surface mount switch that was pushed by a little gray plastic thing, which was held on by two thin rods of ABS. They had to be thin so that it would be springy, but ABS isn't naturally springy and will become brittle and snap if you bend it a lot, so this button was destined to break. Argh. Anyway, it was a little board with a connector (4 wires) to it, so I pulled that off and took it back to my room.
Okay, so. This is gonna be ghetto. I first tried soldering wires to the pads that the switch was on, but they were too small. I then tried uncovering the traces and soldering to those, but same deal. Then I said "screw it, the rest of the hardware on this little board probably just makes the button light up anyway" and soldered directly to the pins on the little connector. There were black, red, orange, and brown. I figured the way to do this would be to tie either orange or brown to either black or red. I got it, predictably, on the fourth try: red to brown.
So, now I knew this was gonna work. I crammed it all into the case and stuck everything back together. And of course the joints broke. Did I mention these were really tiny pins? So now I was getting pissed off. I threw away the little board entirely, cut off the connector, and soldered a button directly to the red and brown wires. Now there's just a button hanging out of the hole, but it works. And we didn't have to replace a $200 monitor because a 5ยข button failed.
I'm a little proud of that.
