Archive for the 'Miscellaneous gear disassembly' Category

I'm definitely not a fan a fan of glossy displays. Unfortunately, glossy screens heavily dominate the market nowadays which is a pain in my ass because it's a not pleasant experience to work with them in bright sunlight. Always working in the dark room is something I was fed up with. I've always wanted a laptop with a matte screen but given the many requirements that I have for laptops that was pretty much impossible and I finally bought my Acer Aspire 8935G-874G100BN laptop about one and half year ago featuring a big ass 18.4 glossy screen.

A while ago I started taking getting a matte screen more seriously and visited the largest laptop shop in my city, Szeged. They let me know that a replacement screen would cost me a small fortune and they eventually concluded that it's not possible for me to get a matte screen. I don't blame those guys because doing such a replacement is a rare feat and not so obvious.

I wasn't about to give up and asked for advice. From this point on, there was no going back. After I disassembled my laptop and got to know that my screen is the N184H6-L02 Rev. C1 model, I was searching for suppliers of the matte version of this screen. Interestingly enough despite some suppliers indicate on the product page a glossy screen, they can provide you a matte version of the same model. Fortunately, Bliss Computers had a last matte model on their stock which I've ordered from them and it arrived to me about one week later.

The replacement procedure is pretty obvious, except one thing. There's a glossy sheet that is part of the case in front of the actual glossy screen. That sheet has to leave forever if you wanna have a matte experience. Removing the sheet involves removing the glue that holds it there and without the sheet the assembled laptop will have a somewhat half-finished, DIY look but nothing too obtrusive.

Enough of words, let the images speak for themselves.

As a final word you may ask whether it was worth paying $115 + $45 shipping for the alternative screen. My answer is that IT WAS A F*CKING BARGAIN! My user experience is so much better this way that I can hardly describe it using words! Some folks say that glossy screens provide sharper contrast but I'm not so sure at all. All I know is that reflection has gone, the image quality is stellar and that my glossy screen is officially for sale.

This device is driven by CM108 High Integrated USB Audio I/O Controller. Apart from that IC it has only a handful of components like the two audio jacks, the USB plug, the crystal, a couple of capacitors and some resistors. The device shows up as "C-Media USB Headphone Set" because no external EEPROM is used for custom configuration.

This is my HDD case which I bought recently. I especially like the design of the case, I think it's very nice. Chances are that manufacturers use the same SATA to USB ASIC in most cases.

Well, it's not particularly an IT device, neither it is contemporary. What's going on then?

I had to fix this VCR of ours because its image quality sometimes got fuzzy. Turned out that a solder joint was broken that connected the tuner plug. The broken joint is easy to see on the relevant picture.

Update (2010-04-22): I've also disassembled the screen.

I've disassembled my laptop a while ago. The CPU core temperature was pretty high, sometimes above 85 celsius. After disassembling and dusting it the temperature dropped by 20 celsius so the operation was a huge success. High temperature has many side effects like decreased durability, increased power consumption, lower performance and who knows what else.

If you decide to disassemble your laptop then I can promise you few things. First, you'll be challenged as laptops are very highly integrated and if you're coming from the PC world you'll quickly realize that it's a completely different ballgame. Second, it's pretty likely that you'll appreciate your laptop more as you'll be able to see the vast scale of integration and all its components.

As for me, I'm absolutely fascinated by the internal design of laptops. I think these gadgets truly symbolize the level of technological advancedment that humanity has reached so far.

I originally wanted to detail the whole disassembly process but I've realized that it'd take too much of my time. Despite of this I hope that you'll enjoy the show. Let's get some popcorn and let the ultimate geek porn begin.

Let's see some video of the actual dusting.

It's interesting how one chip handles 4 types of cards. I wonder whether the various card specs are that similar or whether the IC is that highly integrated.