Need parts G53SW: Broke the SATA controller ribbon & clamp

Hi all,

I have a G53SW that started sounding like a diesel engine after about a year so I took it apart and cleaned out the fans. When I was attaching everything back up I broke the small, teethed plastic clamp that holds the ribbon cable from the SATA controller to the motherboard in place and this rendered my laptop unusable as I couldn't get the pressure on the ribbon cable needed for a connection to be made, meaning the hard drive wouldn't spin up.

After trying to hold the cable in place with electrical tape and by stuffing it under the small "socket" type bit with a screwdriver to put enough pressure on, it worked for about a day but then it must have slipped when moving it as the hard drive wouldn't spin up again.

Stupidly, after this I tried super gluing the ribbon cable in place, this not only didn't work but killed the ribbon cable (I mangled some of the exposed wires on the cable).

So, now I need to replace the ribbon cable (should be easy right?) and get another tiny plastic clamp (not so easy??).

Who knew such tiny, cheap pieces of plastic could render my >£1000 laptop dead :-(

I've been searching around, emailed Asus Support and asusparts.eu about my problem and they can't seem to help unless I RMA but I don't want to have to spend about £80 and send it off for 10-14 days for such a small and easy to fit component.

Does anyone have any idea where I could get a new ribbon cable and new plastic clamp? If the plastic clamp is impossible to get hold of, because it is bespoke to Asus or something then does anyone have any other ideas of holding the ribbon cable in place?

Thanks for your time,

Carkey

 

Bumpy? Anyone?

 

You could buy a second HDD caddy from eBay to put instead of optical drive. Costs like 10$ or less.

 

One of my friends broke 3 out of the 4 ribbon retention clips on a compaq lapotp. The only thing i could do was strip the wires of each cable and solder them to the board. It's not fun but it can be done. Otherwise i would look on ebay to see who does motherboard repair. You should be able to find someone who can replace the ribbon retention connector on the board.

If the part on the board isn't broken and you just broke a side of the clip then you can just get another dead motherboard and use the top of the clip to fix yours. You should be more careful with those clips, they're in every electronic device now in some form or another.

Here's a replacement hdd interface board and cable, you could probably use the new one and steal the connector off the old one to fix the one on the board.
Asus G53S G53SX-DH71 15.6" Hard Drive Board + Cable 60-N7CHD1000-B01 | eBay

Good luck

 

Thanks for the replies C4RN1 and James D.

@James D, maybe I'm just ignorant to what you mean but it is the sata boards connection to the motherboard that is the problem not the sata board or hdd itself.

@C4RN1 Ah wow thanks a lot for that link, that seems like the best bet to me, I would try and solder it on myself but this looks like a quicker fix (only price-wise I live in the UK so it might cost a bit).

And yeah I've never come across those retention clips before because I've never worked with laptops but I assumed it would work like the keyboard and touchpad ones do of sliding foward to unlock the ribbon cable so I tried doing that with it and that's how it snapped

Anyway, thanks for all the help and I'll probs buy that replacement sata controller from ebay!

Cheers again,

carkey

 

Yeah they're in everything, xbox 360's in the dvd drive, ps3's for the power and dvd ribbon cable, all laptops, digital cameras, cell phones, lcd screens, ipods, and psp's. The ones in the psp's really aren't user friendly, you can snap and break those even if you know how they release.

Anyway you should be able to use the top part of the clamp if nothing else works for you. The top part will just put enough tension on the cable so it will make a good contact with the pins on the connector.

 

Ah wow I didn't realise they were so prevalent.

Anyway, what do you mean the "top part will just put enough tension on the cable? What top part?

When I look at it the part attached to the motherboard is white and you can see all the little pins "inside" it and the black retention clamp fit into the top of this white "socket". If I put the ribbon cable I still have into the white bit, there's about 1mm of space above and below it and that's why it doesn't attach.

Sorry for the late reply, I've been very busy for the past few weeks.

Thanks for all the help so far,

Carkey