Repairing the SATA slot on a HP Compaq 6710s laptop

About a month ago I found an ad for a HP 6710s, with a Core2Duo T7100 CPU, 2GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive, WiFi, BT, DVDRW LS, and a carrying bag. The seller mentioned that there was some kind of a problem with the hard drive slot, and sent me a photo of the problem (the image on the left is that original photo, I just added the red highlight circle).
I purchased this laptop for about $170.
The problem was that while inserting the hard drive, the previous owner broke off the plastic framing of the SATA connector, and also broke off one of the pins. This defect basically made the laptop useless as there is no way to make sure that the hard drive will align well with the exposed pins, and moreover, there was no way to know if the hard drive would actually work as one pin from the SATA slot was missing.


(Click on the images to view them in full size)

As you can see the pins from the image on the left, the SATA Connector pins are exposed, and one pin is broken. The pins originally were wrapped with a plastic shield that served both as a protector and as a rail that ensured correct alignment of the Hard drive’s connectors with the pins on the motherboard. This plastic housing also ensured that enough pressure is applied so that the hard drive’s pins have good connectivity with the pins on the motherboard. Without a functional SATA slot, there is no way to use the laptop.

So, we are facing two issues: the broken plastic shield, and the broken pin.
The broken plastic shield problem is not so difficult to solve. I used an acrylic based glue (a.k.a. Super glue) and glued back the torn off plastic wrapping. On the image on the right, you can see the aftermath of the operation, where the SATA connector is restored back to its original form. But before we get to the phase of the superglue and sticking back the plastic housing, we need to see what this missing pin actually does.
Since we’re dealing with a SATA slot, we should know a bit about it. Unlike the IDE/Parallel ATA slot, this technology creates a data stream i.e. a line of bits, therefore the name of SERIAL ATA. So all it takes for a SATA drive (in theory) is just one wire to transfer all the data, unlike the PATA that uses 40 pins interface. The SATA slot has two groups of pins: the smaller one that is the DATA part, and the larger one that is the POWER part. So, small group for data, big part for electricity.

Let’s now get back to the problem. As you can see, the missing pin is fourth from the top down (look at the red circle in the previous image on the left) on the Power group. Now let’s take a look at the hard drive’s connector and locate the matching pin to this missing one on the SATA connector.


(Click on the images to view them in full size)

Looking at the hard drive reveals the cause for the broken off pin. The image on the left indicates the matching pin on the hard drive with the missing pin’s position on the SATA connector, while the detail on the right points as to what damage was made on the hard drive’s plug when the pin from the SATA connector broke. The previous owner obviously pushed hard enough to break both the plastic shield and make this large dent on the hard drive socket itself. One hard push and he had to give up his laptop for a bargain price. But let’s move on.
In order to find out what this fourth pin does, I took the laptop’s hard drive and with a multimeter measured the resistance between the fourth pin and the surrounding pins. The interesting thing was that the fourth, fifth and sixth pins had zero resistance between each other. This means that this group of pins actually worked as a single pin. A bit more snooping resulted in figuring out that the 4-6 pins group was grounding. This snooping was to simply check which wire goes where, on a Molex to SATA power connector adapter, but that's beside the point.


(Click on the images to view them in full size)

The above images are from the internal side of the hard drive’s printed circuit board (PCB). The image on the left shows the two connectors: the Data (on the left, the smaller one) and the Power (on the right, the larger one), with the red arrow indicating the fourth pin matching the missing one from the motherboard.

The key to solving this fix is the image on the right. Notice that the pin group 4-6 (highlighted in the red circle) is interconnected. All three pins are short circuited via the PCB wiring, which means they all function as one pin, as mentioned earlier. As this is in the Power group of pins, and on top of that, pins 4-6 are grounding, there will be no problem to simply ignore the missing pin 4, as pins 5 and 6 will do a sufficient job of grounding. So the fix then is only to glue the broken plastic wrapping, as mentioned previously, and that is it.
For over a month now, the HP 6710s works flawlessly, and I’m actually typing this text on it. The repair for the SATA socket took less than 10 minutes, and that got me a perfectly working laptop for a bargain price.

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Maxim1532a - Maxim1987 issue on Toshiba M35 Motherboards

My fix for the non-responsive Toshiba M35 continues to produce happy readers. I'm glad for that.
This morning I got a question:

I had reassemble my m35x-s329 and found that the power chip using Maxim-max1532a ETL instead of max1987. Can I just replace by max1987 which is easier to found this specific on the market..
ID motherboard K000019630.

Unfortunately for all of us Maxim/Dallas Semiconductor left us out in the dark on their MAX1987 power driver chip, so we can only derive conclusions of its functionality/characteristics. On the other hand, there is sufficient info on the MAX1532a, and as I understood the document, it is a power driver, used on P4 and P4 Mobile CPUs, produced sometime 2003, provides 1, 1.2, 3.3, 5V, and also has "high voltage" module for the more demanding components. WOW. That is something we didn't really know. Thanks Maxim/Dallas. In my search for more info, i also found one document that mentions both the Max1532 and the Max1987. But that's basically all it does. It mentions them.

So, let's get back to the initial question: Can the Maxim1532 be used instead the Maxim1987?
The logic may suggest that these two bunnies are interchangeable. But that's only guesswork, a hunt in the dark. The input and output voltages are the same: you get the same 18V DC, same battery, same (?) CPU, RAM, Chipset etc. so judging by the "black box" approach, if the same stuff enters both black boxes, and the same stuff comes out on the other end of both boxes, chanses are the black boxes are identical. For an old laptop, I'd say heck, try it! If it burns, it wont be a big deal as its a cheap thing anyways. But I'd not do it if it was used in a pacemaker, so I offer no warranties on this advice.
If you DO however choose to test the compatibility the hard way, I suggest removing the modem board, RAM, CPU, HDD, DVD... anything that is removable, so if things to get hot, you wouldn't waste the peripherals and the CPU/RAM. Attach only the switch board and the CPU fan, to get a feedback if it spins up. Then, plug in the CPU and try again. If it works, great. If not... no big loss as you already had a malfunctioning power driver.
In case if you want to purchase it, I found this site where you can order it.
Whatever happens, let the community know.
Thanks again to all of you who read, fix and share experiences. By the way, if you do visit this blog often, scribble a note on the other posts as well, just to know that somebody out there other than Google sees my stuff.

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RoHS is guilty for the Toshiba M35X and HP NC6000 laptop dead motherboard

Due to a surprising popularity of my text on fixing a Toshiba M35x motherboard problem, I decided to update you all on the situation with the laptop and some other points brought up by folks who used my tutorial.

In the past several months I received many “thank you” posts, and I’ve also received some comments that prompted me to update the previous post with some extra info.

First of all, I’d like to thank everybody who publicized my fix on other websites. Some of them properly quoted my text and passed credits to me, while others unfortunately did not have the courtesy to mention that http://imateski.blogspot.com is not their blog. Sad, it’s their loss of integrity. I’ve also learned that Toshiba has some problems with law suits over the M35 series which means this is a major deal… folks suing the company because it produced a bad product. I’d rather sue them because their support technicians are too lazy to work at problems and figure out how to justify their high salaries… but that’s what I’d do. Apparently Toshiba thinks it’s better to pay fines instead of hiring some competent folks… like me for example :)

Further on, I want to thank folks who commented with constructive questions and comments which prompted me to do some search to see where my text is mentioned, and to my surprise, one of the comments on my blog pointed to an ebay, and I also found a pirated copy on Scribd. Good thing Scribd has a good Copyright response team, which took about a day to address the issue.

Now, about the updates…

First, one of the comments pointed out that the same fix worked for HP NC6000 and NC 8000 laptops also. While searching through other sites, people report of using the same fix on Toshiba Satellite A70, m115, and alike. I've also found out that some people used this tutorial to repair Gateway laptops. I guess the tutorial in general works on any laptop produced after 2000.

The second thing I’d like to share is a bit of theory behind this problem.

As we all know, the world is moving toward green technologies, and one of them is the enforcement of the RoHS certificate, which basically means Restricition of Hazardous Substances. For electronics, this means no Lead in the solder alloys, which means no flexibility for the solder joints. For some chips, this is a good thing, but for the Maxim chip design, its not so good. For general understanding of how RoHS and lead-free alloys affect the electronics industry read up on Wikipedia’s article. It’s quite good. For a more scientific explanation of the effects of Lead-free alloys on chip-PCB contact tensions, read this article. To summarize them both, the failure of the Toshiba Satellite M35 and Satellite A70 series, as well as HP NC6000 /8000 is due to large surface tensions between the chip and the motherboard. Due to poor elasticity of lead-free soldering alloys, the solder joints crack and slowly oxidation builds up which leads to electronics failure. This is why I suggested using a hot air gun for resoldering the Maxim chip, but unfortunately none of the electronics service shops wanted to play with the motherboard. Resoldering with a plain solder iron can only mend the problem, it cannot fix it permanently. I just had the Toshiba M35 in for repair again, probably due to lead-free residues between the motherboard and the MAXIM pins. If it were totally removed, both the chip and the PCB could be cleaned off from the lead free alloy, and resoldered back with the plain elastic Pb60Sn40 solder alloy (60% Lead, 40% tin). Alas, we do what we can with the resources we have. I resoldered the chip again, and sent it back, free of charge. Heck, it only takes about 30 minutes of work.

And one last thing, just for the fun of it, here are two links to images that illustrate the problem with pins not covered with solder alloy, found in the Wikipedia article, and here is a photo of how the solder looks with Lead free, and normal solder alloys.

Jesus is coming, be prepared.

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