Keyboards
posted in General |We’re rough on keyboards here. My laptop has been down for a couple of weeks because I spilled coffee on it. Mopped it up quick, but the damage had been done. So I ordered a new one (yay for a hundred dollars) and when we got it, I went to replace it.
I have a toshiba satellite laptop. I’ve had one in the past, a different model, and when I had to replace that keyboard, I just popped out a bezel above the keys, unscrewed three screws and pulled out the keyboard. Replacement was a twenty minute job. That was for the 2455 model. My newer one is a 1955 model.
The bezel above the keyboard was a lot tougher to remove. It was hard enough that I started thinking that there should be an easier way. So I ran to google and found this page (how to disassemble…). Those instructions were to remove all the screws in the back of the computer. So I took out all six of the chassis screws, took out the hard drive and the screws beneath that, took out the battery and the screws beneath that, took out the cd/dvd and the expansion slot and the screws inside those. I stuck them to a loop of duct tape on my desk so I didn’t lose them and labelled them.
I was in kind of a hurry because I was doing it while Miss K was taking her nap. but on the other hand, I was taking my time to make sure I didn’t screw it up. I can’t replace the laptop. The chassis of the laptop was still stuck together, so I took my smallest flat screwdriver and ran it around the case, popping the plastic snaps. It still wouldn’t come apart. So I went to google hoping to find some photos and another description. Instead, I found a review of an earlier version of the same model, the 1955-s803. Which came with a detachable wireless keyboard. My keyboard wasn’t detachable and wireless, but I had these weird little plugs on the side that looked like they were covering something unimportant.
They weren’t plugs, they were tape. I peeled them off, and found little levers. I pulled out the levers and the keyboard practically leaped out of the case. It was attached by a flat data cable, about 9 inches long. Long enough to repair it, and the socket was right there. Feeling sheepish, I swapped the keyboards, snapped the new keyboard back in, and screwed it all back together.
I was three screws from the end when I dropped a screw into the laptop, through the place where the cdrom drive goes. It went in and stuck … somewhere. And Miss K was awake.
While she ate lunch, I took the whole thing apart again, and found the errant screw. Sometimes I can make a five minute job into a three hour project.
