PC fettling and repairs thread

[DCBassman]

I'll start this with my current project. It's a Dell Studio XPS 1640 16" laptop. Got cheap due to cosmetic nastiness and someone's previous downgrades.
First job, already done, was to up the CPU from a Core 2 Duo T6600 to a T9550.
Next will be a new display. this one works well, but is 1366x768, the one inbound is full HD 1920x1080.
The extraction work for that will entail removing the keyboard, and that needs doing too, along with the optical drive which is actually broken rather than needing upgrade.
Finally, fit new battery, and Robert is your dad's brother.
All parts incoming, a job for when the rain returns.

 

[biggs682]

That all sounds good but no idea what half of it means

 

[MontyVeda]

It's the 3.5mm audio sockets on mine (in fact, every PC I've had)... they're OK to begin with, but after a couple of years... one slight knock of the plug and hey presto, one channel cuts out and needs a wiggle to get it back. What do they make them out of? tin foil?

I'm thinking of putting a decent sound card in just to (hopefully) give me some sockets that i can rely on.

 

[ColinJ]

I'll start this with my current project. It's a Dell Studio XPS 16" laptop. Got cheap due to cosmetic nastiness and someone's previous downgrades.
First job, already done, was to up the CPU from a Core 2 Duo T6600 to a T9550.
Next will be a new display. this one works well, but is 1366x768, the one inbound is FullHD.
The extraction work for that will entail removing the keyboard, and that needs doing too, along with the optical drive which is actually broken rather than needing upgrade.
Finally, fit new battery, and Robert is your dad's brother.
All parts incoming, a job for whne the rain returns.

How much will you have spent by the time you have finished?

Tech moves on so quickly that it is rarely worth putting too much effort into upgrades. More RAM or replacing an HDD with an SSD, yes, but a new screen...?

There is a local IT recycling centre which sorts out old kit and sells it cheap or gives it away to schools in Africa. I took an old PC in which I had bought for £2,000 10 years earlier and the technician said that nobody wanted anything that old so they would strip it down and send the parts to electronics recyclers!

 

[FishFright]

That all sounds good but no idea what half of it means

Just imagine it's Harry Potter with tech nerds

 

[HMS_Dave]

I say go for it. When most of the components end up in land fill, whatever the "recyclers" tell you, it is worth it. It will be able to browse the web, perform office tasks and media consumption in HD, tasks which are what most people do with their machines, so why not.

Keep us updated.

 

[DaveReading]

I'll start this with my current project. It's a Dell Studio XPS 16" laptop. Got cheap due to cosmetic nastiness and someone's previous downgrades.
First job, already done, was to up the CPU from a Core 2 Duo T6600 to a T9550.
Next will be a new display. this one works well, but is 1366x768, the one inbound is FullHD.
The extraction work for that will entail removing the keyboard, and that needs doing too, along with the optical drive which is actually broken rather than needing upgrade.
Finally, fit new battery, and Robert is your dad's brother.
All parts incoming, a job for whne the rain returns.

How do you upgrade the display on a laptop ?

 

[DCBassman]

[/QUOTE]

How do you upgrade the display on a laptop ?

Very carefully! I've sourced a complete lid from Ebay, and I have the service manual for the model, so it should be a straightforward, if tedious, job.
Such tasks are what the term "slowly and carefully" was coined for. Think of a Haynes manual. You want to replace a particular item, and you find yourself flipping from section to section removing other bits first. And then reversing the whole procedure. Just like that!
A much harder job is to replace the actual LCD screen itself. That requires the job I'm going to do, plus a another whole swathe of work to dismantle the lid itself. Not usually much fun...

 

[fossyant]

I've replaced a screen on our HP laptop when it got broken. Fiddly but doable.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

That all sounds good but no idea what half of it means

Seems like a Muggle has wandered into the thread

 

[DCBassman]

I say go for it. When most of the components end up in land fill, whatever the "recyclers" tell you, it is worth it. It will be able to browse the web, perform office tasks and media consumption in HD, tasks which are what most people do with their machines, so why not.

Keep us updated.

In its day, a super whizz-bang machine at that spec level, duking it out with the Macbooks, and sometimes winning. I'll also take it up to 8GB RAM, so it really will be a useful machine. It's already running off a 240GB SSD, so it's no slouch, and it has a Radeon 3670 discrete GPU with its own, albeit small, memory. The replacement optical drive is BluRay capable, although Blu-Ray in PCs running Windows, or Linux for that matter, are rarely able to play Blu-Ray discs due to encryption and licencing. I'm certain it can be done, but too much of a faf, TBH...
When I get to having too many machines around the place, I tend to donate them to whatever is the current need. Gave some very usable machines to the local scholl during lockdowns, nothing whizzy, but able to do what they needed.

Another reason to make this one look good? It has a part-leather lid. Wahey!

 

[DCBassman]

Anyhow, as @HMS_Dave said, far too much perfectly usable tech stuff ends up in landfill. Enough environmental damage was done getting it built the first time round, so let's keep these things going when possible.

 

[ColinJ]

I repaired the backlight on my old Dell, but I wouldn't have spent much on a replacement screen because it was not up to much other than text editing and simple web browsing.

The backlight job was fiddly but I succeeded.

I ended up installing Linux on that laptop but I haven't used it for a while. I must have another play with it some time...

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I repaired the backlight on my old Dell, but I wouldn't have spent much on a replacement screen because it was not up to much other than text editing and simple web browsing.

The backlight job was fiddly but I succeeded.

View attachment 599951

View attachment 599950

View attachment 599949

I ended up installing Linux on that laptop but I haven't used it for a while. I must have another play with it some time...

That shot shows Windows 7🧐

 

[HMS_Dave]

I have a Clevo P370sm with a knackered artifacting GTX 880m GPU card in it which i need to refurb at some point. Not all that long ago the replacement cards were still close to £400 a pop and this machine is capable of installing 2 of these in SLI! Now they're sitting at around £170 ish. With the custom system bios from Prema i can get it to accept a GTX 980m which is a step up but are also over £200... I have tried to "cook" the GPU itself with my SMD rework station but no dice. I do wonder if it is one of the memory modules that is gimped but i don't know... I don't have the necessary skills or equipment to fix things to that extent, sadly...