Thinkpads Forum

EDIT: Title changed because it was too long to contain (pics).

Hello

Some serious help needed from people who can service the Advanced Docks, or have been through the hell of dissassembling and reassembling it.

Well the fan drove med nuts, so i replaced it. Removal of all screws was a hell, and actually getting to the fan is very tiresome.
The black plastic housing consists of a top and bottom.

I have a problem reseating the top again, in the keylock department, the mechanism which is basically moving the hooks locking the laptop into place does not seem to fit correctly in the top cover again. just behind the lock housing that the key enters into. It seems to hit a corner on the underside of where the arrow is on the upperside. Every other region can be easily fitted together with the top - but the key department just doesn't seem to fit.

So, if you have opened you advanced dock, from what side did you mount the top again?
Did you use any tricks like bending and such?

I tend to understand why there is no mainteance manual for this dock - it is beyond normally serviceable, and has so many ugly hacks and tape fixes you wouldn't believe it was made in Japan. Did you know that mains voltage is merely seperated from the parallel port by 1 cm and some tape?

I was tempted to open up my dock, but I chickened out while looking for a way to get it open. I just reached through the fan vent opening and snipped the fan wires... noise problem solved! No heat problems after 1.5 years continuous use...

RonS wrote:I was tempted to open up my dock, but I chickened out while looking for a way to get it open. I just reached through the fan vent opening and snipped the fan wires... noise problem solved! No heat problems after 1.5 years continuous use...

ROFLM*O!!

I took one of these apart once a TRUE PITA!! There are so many "things" that have to line up correctly. NO FUN.

I think it took me several hours of cursing before I got the thing together. Take some pics and post them...maybe we can help.

RonS wrote:I was tempted to open up my dock, but I chickened out while looking for a way to get it open. I just reached through the fan vent opening and snipped the fan wires... noise problem solved! No heat problems after 1.5 years continuous use...

Opening it isn't actually hard. You will need a torx 8 security screwdriver. Bits wont work because the placement of the screw under the PCI-e department cover is deep down in a corner.
The idiotic thing about this dock is that the fan is actually the hardest part to get to.

I'll post some pics in an hour or so.

I finally figured it out, so i thought i would post a guide on this, since it's very hard to get a glimpse at what is wrong from the outside.

Firstly a pic showing the interior of the dock after a metal cover has been removed. Yup, the PSU section is not shielded from the other parts of the dock.
To get to the fan you will need to remove the main board on top, a few screws holding the metal base to the plastic bottom, and them lift the metal base upwards.




Now onto the part about assembling the dock with the top cover near the lock.

1.



So, after reseating the metal cover again and remembering to reseat all the screws again, before beginning to push on the plastic housing again, check that the plastic part is locked onto the slot in the metal part. These parts are not held together permanently before the top cover is completely mounted again. Tilting the dock sidewards when installing the cover can very easily demount the plastic part from the metal part, and typically the dock can be easily assembled either way, because they don't interfere much with the top cover.

2.



The lock section is shown on the pic. See the brown tape? This part of the metal is the root to all frustration. What exactly the point of having it is apparently stability, because the whole lock section is held by two screws in the plastic bottom.
The plastic spike is where the spring mounted in the undock "2" button goes to. To make life more irritating, the spring isn't glued onto the bottom, it's merely plased in a round hole.

3.



Here's the underside of the dock top cover in the undock/power buttons department. The PCB is for controlling the docking/undocking lights, buttons etc. The cable goes to the mainboard on the dock.

The bruised white spot of the PCB is where the brown tape section of the lock is hitting the PCB due to the fact that the plastic on the side automatically pushes it inwards when mounting the top cover. Thus taking off the top cover isn't as tricky as reassembling it again.
The brown tape section of the lock should have been to the left of the lower screw in that pic.

I don't have a pic showing how to mount it inside the slot where it should be, but you'll need to mount the cover as much as possible on both sides. Mounting it from the top is the easiest. Remember to mount the spring on the spike, and then use a flat screwdriver from the outside, point it upwards in the plastic hole and push the metal part with the tape towards yourself, using the outside plastics as a counter weight. Then the top cover will slide on.

I'm glad I chickened out.

Thanks for posting pictures and description -- they will undoubtedly help someone through a moment of intense frusteration.