Lesson #hundredandsomething. Only interesting to geeks.

W1 said this may be interesting. I think she's just tired of me not blogging. Either way, it probably won't be an interesting post unless you're into technical crap. No, really, like totally into boring technical crap.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Here is how a 30 minute computer job becomes an all afternoon event.

A guy at work makes the comment his test machine has an error stating his copy of Windows 7 is not genuine. He also mentions on the bottom of the system is a hand written notice stating "1280x576 Resolution. Win7 not supported".

I knew exactly the machine he was speaking of. Because it was my handwriting. Half way through the testing cycle they decided to no longer support that resolution. Why? To make my life Hell is my only guess. So, to get Win7 on those systems requires jumping through hoops, and Norton Ghost. I informed him I had another system that I could just reimage.

I set up the new system and he said "Oh, I also need a WWAN card swapped. Can you do that too?" I replied "No problem, this is one of the few units I can take completely apart. I've had a lot on practice on them. It'll probably take me about 30 minutes." (I have learned over time to use words like "probably", and "should" when telling people how long their computer work will take.)

I took the machine apart in no time. I mean like 5 minutes tops. Everything was going smooth. I pulled out the WWAN card and put that system back together. All was going well as I opened the new machine. It was a much nicer looking, newer revision. I installed the card but that's where the trouble began. There were no wires for the antenna. At that point I could have closed it and gave it to him, but he would get hardly any signal at all. It would definitely had been noticeable.

I looked on our "scrap" shelf and found a broken one with the proper wires. Success, all I would have to do is swap out the screen. 4 screws and we're good to go. So I thought. When I went to pit the new screen on it wouldn't fit. It was an older model and the brackets were cut different. Well, no problem, I can just change out the hinges.

I won't get into those issues, but I finally got them swapped. But now I notice the microphone connector is different. So I commenced to getting the metal prongs out of the plastic adapter. Then I swapped it with the right connector. But it looked like the metal prongs were touching. So I tried to remove them and reinstall them. And I pulled the wire out of the connector...

And downstairs I headed to the soldering lab. As I'm resoldering the 2nd wire the needle nose pliers squeeze too hard and the metal piece goes flying across the lab. Never to be seen again. After searching around, I found a CMOS battery. The motherboard connection fit in the same connector as the microphone. I finally cut the wires and soldered them to the ones connected to the screen. And put the system back together.

So what started as a 30 minute job ended up taking about 3 hours. In the end he had a white system with a black top. The hinge wasn't 100% so you have to give it a good push to open all of the way, and the keyboard is puffed up just a tad on the right side due to the extra wire. But the shit works, and I got to solder and tinker. All in all it made for a decent Friday afternoon. I can guarantee there are other parts of my job I don't enjoy as much.