Laptop ZIF Connector replacement

**DejaVu** · 1st April 2016

A client has asked me to have a look at his laptop and replace the keyboard... Easy enough, ordered the keyboard. Still the same symptoms.

On closer inspection, the ZIF Connector is missing a few pins. The result of Orange being spilt on it. Being acidic, it's literally eaten away the metal pin!!

uploadfromtaptalk1459521718190.jpg

Easy to replace? Cheaper to replace mainboard?

Found the board for �119 and the laptop new was �250. The board is a ZS051 LA-A996P. Other than this, it's perfect and less than a year old.

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**riget** · 1st April 2016

Not easy to replace no, easier to replace board yes, cheaper? Depends how a repair went, if it was me I'd have a go at a repair.

**akimba** · 5th April 2016

Got to be really handy at soldering I would replace board and yeah will be expensive as main part of Lappy :-(

**Mystical_2K** · 5th April 2016

if you are any good at soldering and have a steady hand (and a very small soldering tip) then you could probably fix it with very little work (but very fiddly)

**Over Carl** · 5th April 2016

My suggestion would be to scrap the thing. If you charge for a repair, it will be your headache if your repair fails to make a good contact after a few days/weeks/months. So then you will have to strip it all down again, probably won't get paid anything for 2nd, 3rd, etc attempts - that is assuming if it comes back you are able to repair it again.

If anything, just use it as a desktop with a regular keyboard. If it was worth say �1000, then I would agree it is worth trying to repair, but to do this job properly you would need to find a replacement connector, then find someone capable of replacing it - that would probably cost you more than the replacement mobo, and with the price of the mobo vs price of new laptop it doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

**piggzy** · 5th April 2016

I tried replacing one of these on a tablet couple of weeks ago. Fuck me it was a pain in the arse. In the end I gave up and binned the fucker.

**DJ OD** · 5th April 2016

Fuck. That...

DJ OD

**evilsatan** · 5th April 2016

If it's less than a year old then return under warranty and see what they say? If not there will be board repairers out there who should do it for less than a replacement mobo.