06/01/2012

Eee PC 1015 disassembly


As previously mentioned, I'll not take apart my ASUS U43 unless I absolutely have to. However, one of my friends had an Eee PC with a possibly broken DC jack, so we decided to have a look.
Luckily, the Eee PC is quite popular and there are a few Youtube guides:
The example above was very helpful once we had understood that the first thing to remove is the keyboard and its black plastic enclosure. It is held by plastic clips in the battery enclosure (0:28 in the video) and at the rims on the side of the case and above the touch pad (you might need a spudger to pry them open). The next layer is a plastic plate with the touch pad embedded at the bottom (see 0:52). There are openings through which the keyboard and touch pad ribbons can be disconnected (the clamps are either flipped up (1:11) or pulled outwards (0:42)). Afterwards, we unscrewed all visible screws (again, check the video for screw sorting (1:09)) and pried open the clips holding the plastic plate to the front of the case (1:33). This gives access to all of the hardware. To take out the motherboard, unscrew the wifi adapter at the bottom left, disconnect the ribbons on top of the hard drive and the screen connector (top left, near the screen hinge) and take out every screw on the board except the ones holding the copper cooling element, as well as the 2 screws holding the hard drive down. Motherboards are probably not the best things to practice soldering skills, so we left the DC jack problem to someone more experienced. However, here's a handy guide. All credits go to youtube user Fessor6262 and laptoprepair101.com.

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