Analysis of Compal integrated camera problem

I finally decided to take a day and figure out what is the matter with the camera of my laptop. It's a JFL92, but the same probably applies to the IFL90 (Sager 2090) and the like (see this thread). The problem manifests as the angle at which the display is open affecting whether or not the camera is on. For me, it worked with the display either at an angle much less than 90 degrees or much more than 90 degrees (neither of which is satisfying).

In the other thread, people hypothesized that maybe the laptop was incorrectly putting the camera to sleep, but this is not the case. The real problem is the design of the cable that connects the camera to the motherboard. It consists of 4 wires: one fat, silver one and 3 really, really thin ones (2 are red, 1 is black). This cable passes through the left hinge of the laptop and all the way up the display. The problem (either an intrinsic design flaw or the fault of whoever assembled the thing) is that over the years, the thin wires will be rubbed by the display and eventually break.

To get at the cable, you will need to remove the strip which contains the power button and separate the display from the lid of the laptop. You will also need to remove the keyboard. The important thing to note is that you don't need to fully disassemble the laptop: don't unscrew the display from its hinges and don't unscrew anything from the bottom of the laptop. I hope removing the battery and unplugging the machine goes without saying, but I write it here in case people who never worked on electronics before read this. Look at a disassembly guide if you need more details on how to get at the cable (or ask here).

All 4 wires are encased in a single black rubber cable and that thing looks fine, but this is deceptive: I cut it apart in the region where the cable passes through the hinge and one of the thing wires was practically torn apart. The reason it still worked at certain angles was because the loose ends were being pushed together. The wire was black in my case, but it could just as easily have been one of the two red ones.

So, what can be done about this? The easiest thing is to just get a new cable, but I have no idea where to buy such a thing (if you are reading this and you know who sells these, it would be nice if you posted it here).

The alternative is to repair the old cable. You will need to strip the wires near the break -- as I said, they're really, really thin so this is a pain in the neck. If you have a good set of tools, you probably have a wire stripper that works on wires that fine. If not, you can make do with either a very sharp razor blade or use wire clippers to strip the insulation (since I'm across the ocean from my tools, this is what I did, but it's tricky -- I lost two pieces of wire in the process). Once you have stripped the wires, either solder them together or (for lack of a soldering iron and/or skill) just intertwine them and twist. Either way, wrap the whole thing in masking tape and then use more masking tape to realign it with the other 3 wires. There is enough slack for this trick to work even if you lose some length in the process (but of course it is better not to).