What did I break?

I was replacing my palmrest and keyboard on my asus z63a last night and wow was it tough. This is what it looked like when it started


And when it was almost finished


The problem is a I broke a connection along the way.



I accidently Pulled the cables out of the White piece instead of pulling it all out as one piece (No Idea what these parts are called) I do have an extra white piece on my old palmrest




When I plug the laptops AC connection in, I get the charge light for a few seconds then it turns off.

Can anyone help me, or lead me in the right direction. Am I screwed?

 

Going to need better pictures to identify the parts, but this is what I can tell from what you gave.
The piece you pulled out is what I would call a female crimp socket. They take each wire and use a mechanical tool to crimp on a tiny little piece of metal to the wire and in some cases they will be soldered. This crimp socket plugs into a mating header with male pins. Check the surface mounted header that is located on the printed circuit board in your picture and make sure you didn't damage it. Does it move, do any of the solder points look broke. It looks like you damaged the female crimp socket, and it is good that you have another one. Take a very careful look at the end of the wires you pulled out of the socket. If they are mangled or broken then things get complicated. If not, you might be able to put them back into your old existing crimp socket. You'll need a sharp needle like object. The wires are designed to be removable from the socket, but not easily. You should be able to look at the old socket, (remembering the exact order and orientation of the wires in the socket), and locate where you will have to press, or lift on the socket to release each wire. They are each individually constrained in the socket. Once you have removed the old wires attach the new wires by pushing each wire into the socket the same way you pulled the other ones out and reattach to the male header.

let me know if this helps or if you have any other questions.

 

Thanks for the quick response. The female crimp socket seems to be in tact, there is a black, brown, and red wire. The mating header is still stuck on the printed circuit board and is broken (as you said, good thing I have another) I cant seem to pry it off the board. Here is a better picture



Should I take it into a repair shop, or do you think you can walk me through this? Your post really helped. Thanks!

Miro

 

i say someone who is good with soldering and crimping. otherwise, dont chance it, repair shop.

 

You'll need someone who can carefully remove the already-crimped female pins from your damaged cable, remove the intact white piece from its pins, crimp on new pins for you, assemble with the white piece, and as long as none of the connections on the male end are damaged, you should be fine.

Someone who does a lot of electronics work, or a repair shop.

 

Repair shop. an unexperienced user can easily fry the chip when soldering by applying too much heat for too long (which can easily happen). Don't chance it.

 

Definately going to the repair shop, thanks guys. Is this an expensive procedure? I don't want the guy to rip me off as I've never been to a repair place before.

 

Did you purchase the W3N palmrest from the Asus eStore?

 

Yes I did.

 

Nice! I was thinking about doing a complete Z63a -> W3N conversion in a couple of weeks. I hope all of the parts fit!

 

First things first, if you not comfortable working on this yourself, by all means repair shop is the way to go, shouldn't cost much at all.

However, the crimps on the exposed wires look good. I'm a little concerned that in one picture you show a 3 wire cable and in another a 4 wire cable. Any clarification on that?

Definitely don't want to do any prying. Going to need a nice in focus close up of the connector on the board to be sure, but if the plastic housing that you removed the wires from is still connected to you laptop you DON'T want to pull up on it but rather to the right. It should slide left to right in the picture you sent. It definitely won't take much force it should just wiggle right out. If it does not then something else is wrong. Remember, there are two components here, one is physically connected to you laptop, and the other should slide right out. Do not exert any force on the component permanently connected to your laptop.

 

Hey Miro, I forget where you are from.
Been a while since I've posted here.

If you are in Toronto, I can point you to a place I used to work at.

One of the techs there is really good at soldering and all that jazz.

He fixed my father's karaoke machine for our bar and this was just by observing the circuit board and deciding he didn't like the soldering job on one of the chips then resoldering it on.

I didn't even tell him the source of the problem, because I had no idea.

Anyways yeah he also fixed my old XFX 7900GT. I broke off a capacitor and he put it back in a few seconds.

Let me know!

Cheers,
Mike

 

This seems right, Thanks for the input.

The three wire cables plastic housing was damaged. The four wire cable was from different connector on my last palmrest, but the plastic piece that should slide in looks the same.

I've tried to pull it to the right and its not sliding out, thats why I accidentally pulled the cables out thinking the plastic piece would come out with it.

 

UPDATE: Got it all fixed for $40, thanks guys