Inspiron 5160 Saga
So my Dell laptop is crapping out. I’m having some luck with electronics lately (did I mention the turn signals on my car went out today? I’m guessing blown fuse, didn’t have time to look). Anyway, the power supply is breaking loose of the motherboard. It’s a common problem on that model motherboard. My options are pretty much 1) send it to some company that charges $180+shipping to repair the a/c plug. 2) buy a refurbished motherboard from Dell for $250 (the cost new isn’t worth mentioning).
I decided to go with option 3, fix it myself. The a/c plug got so bad that the laptop no longer worked off a/c power. So I tore the thing apart, got my soldering iron out and went to town. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a ton of free time during the week to do this, so I went the lazy man route. I didn’t completely remove the motherboard from the case. Thus, I could only reasonably access the a/c plug from one side. It seemed to be held in place pretty nicely, but once I re-assembled everything, the thing was noticeably loose, still. However, it does work off a/c power again. It’s back to the previous state where you can wiggle the plug and the power will cut in and out.
So, I guess over the weekend I will be tearing the laptop apart again. This time I’ll do it right and remove the entire motherboard. I really didn’t want to disassemble the heatsink and everything else involved. I suppose it will be worth it to get it done for nearly free and quickly.
The laptop a/c plug officially died Tuesday night. If I sent it out today for repair, I would get it back Tuesday at the earliest and I would be $180 + $40-50 in shipping poorer. Let’s see if I can get this fixed by Monday for under $15 (I had to go to Radio Shack, because my low-watt soldering iron is lost in storage).
