U105 cheap off Craigslist- See the guts as a result

Lot o' fun. I posted this on notebook forums as well.

Hey everyone. I bought a Toshiba U105 the other day from Craigslist and I thought I got a deal since it was only $650 with the dock. Of course the seller was in a hurry to get somewhere and so was I so I didn't spend a lot of time looking it over which was my mistake. Anyway, the seller told me that there was an issue with the wifi and he couldn't get it working and he just wanted cash to get a desktop ASAP. In my haste of getting such a great deal on a 2 month old laptop, I didn't look it over carefully if at all other than to see it was good working condition other than the wifi and screen was alright.


My bad.

Once I got home after the other appointments I had were over, I looked at it carefully. I noticed that the hardware switch for the wifi was missing and I could partially see into the guts of the laptop. I didn't have the heart to snap a picture of it at the time and to tell the truth, I'm pissed at myself for missing something so obvious. The interior switch was still there though and I used a plastic force to turn it off and on - no problem. So I tried hooking it up to the network and the wifi kept going in and out when I was only a few feet from the router even. I tried all the Atheros drivers I could find and it was still bad. The atheros in my MSI 1032 is awesome, so I just couldn't believe it was the mini pci card itself.



The laptop is still under warranty for 10 months, but I new the switch missing was going to cause problems for Toshiba - questions I couldn't answer about what happened to it. So, in a fit of despair, I decided to open her up and see what I could see instead of paying a qualified repair technician to do it.



Structurally, opening the libretto was a snap. 10 screws easily accessed from the bottom. Now, as everyone who has ever opened up a non whitebook computer knows, the hard part is usually the wire connectors and they were a pain. I got them all detached from one side and the laptop was in two parts:



The screen and keyboard side:





The motherboard and other component side:





At this point I had noticed a few other problems:



#1, there was something looking like fibrous tape partially sticking out from around the headphone port

#2 The center of the motherboard was not sitting very well on the chassis. It was bowed slightly upward in the middle.



Time to dig deeper.



So I removed the screws retaining the sound board and what looks to be the bluetooth on the left side of the motherboard picture above. Sure enough, there was a little bit of tape hanging out and I was able to push it into place, no problem.



So I wanted to find out what was bulging the motherboard a bit. I removed the three screws holding this in.



Here's the motherboard side without the motherboard:





Here's the motherboard on the flip side with the fan removed:





Sure enough, the cmos battery, I think, was not seated well in it's little pocket. I tucked it down neatly and used a bit of electrical tape to make sure it stayed in place during assembly. It fixed her right up.



I figured since I was already in, I would go ahead and remove the heatsink and fan and see what the thermal situation looked like. As you can see from the picture above and the picture of the heatsink below, there was a gob o' thermal paste.





So, I decided to remove the gob. I cleaned it up pretty nicely:





I replaced it with artic silver and put it back together. So, now I had:



1) fixed the tape coming out around the headphone port

2) fixed the motherboard so it was seated better in the case

3) replaced the gob of thermal paste with some nice artic silver and cleaned things up.



So, we get back to the original problem... The wifi. Those astute readers with good vision may alreay have seen the problem. The wire from the antenna had broken off of the u.fl connector that attaches to the mini pci card! You can see it in the first picture as the broken white wire on the left side. I tried to jury rig it back to the u.fl connector and reattach it to the mini-cpi card, but no joy. They are pretty delicate little connectors. I've tried to find u.fil connectors for sale online but they are difficult to find. I think I'm going to purchase a piggyback with a u.fl on one side, cut off the u.fl side and splice it to the existing antenna wire. I am also going to try and contact National Parts Depot and see if they can get me the wifi hardware switch so I can add that back in (and maybe a replacement antenna).



All said, it's been pretty nerve wracking. I have not yet reattached the two halves and started the laptop up yet to make sure I haven't fried anything. I want to fix the wifi wire first and see if I can get the hardware switch from national parts depot so I don't have to reopen the laptop again later. I've got my fingers crossed but who knows. Anyway, if anyone's got any suggestions I would love to hear them.



In the end, I'm sure the previous owner knew more than he was letting on, but still I should have caught it. Maybe I should have just bought a PC card wifi adapter instead of potentially killing the whole laptop, but I just couldn't stand not looking into it.



I'll keep you all posted.[/div]

 

very interesting.
pulling apart a laptop can be really tough.
couldn't you buy a wifi card and switch it out?
should be less than $50

 

Yeah, I mentioned that somewhere in that mountain of text. It would have be easier and safer, but something like that just eats away at me. I want to fix it just to have the satisfaction that I got a good deal after all. If I can fix the wifi cable and the switch for cheap, then I can walk away with my head high thinking I got a good deal - provided I don't fry anything.

It's been nervewracking but fun in a weird sort of way.

 

Good news. I can get the wifi kill switch for only $10. But it may take 10 days to get it and it costs $8.50 for shipping! Oh well, I went ahead and ordered it. I couldn't order a wifi antenna without purchasing a bunch of other parts for $135. I passed on that.

I found a company called Jefatech. I bought a 6" u.fl to u.fl connector. I might be able to replace the entire antenna cable. If not, I have two chances to splice. it. I also bought two external antennas. One I'll hook up via the u.fl aux connector on the libretto and the other I'll use on my MSI 1032, or if I like it, my recently ordered refurbed 9400. I think there were places selling it a little cheaper, but it was the only place I could find the u.fl to u.fl connector.