Dissassembling an x41 to work on power jack

[keithsketchley]

To repair the power jack connections on my basic version of the x41, I had to take it completely apart to get at both sides of the connections and replace it if needed.

Parts and Tools:
Replacement power jack in case needed.
Fine soldering tools (iron, solder, etc.).
Heat conducting paste, in case you want to renew that stuff.
Double-sided thin tape.
Cyanoacrylate glue (aka SuperGlue – thin, quick-drying).
A bit of foam to seal outer edges of fan assembly.
Phillips screwdrivers (Philiips 0 and 1 sizes, as there are two sizes of screws here (the display has smaller sizes needing 000 and 00 screwdrivers)).
Flat blade screwdriver, small (to prod and pry).
Wider prying tools, preferably plastic.
Small brush and toothpick to get lint out.
Alcohol to wash a few things.
Contact cleaner spray may be useful for the high-use connectors (power and base) and the lid switch (which can get sticky from dust).
Camera (to photograph location of parts like metal shield and ds-taped black pieces) and felt markers (red & blue to mark screw locations through mainboard by function), since the goal was to reassemble it as well (markers make it quicker to locate screws at each stage.
Note pad and pencil, to note factors like which internal screws are long.

[keithsketchley]

Now to the work:
You have to take the display assembly off, but that can be done by removing screws from hinges and back end of top, unthreading three antenna cables, detaching display connector from motherboard, and prying up the back end of the top. Note or mark the cables if the tags aren’t on them. (Nice touch by IBM designers to tag them – there are man and aux WiFi cables plus BlueTooth. Bad design that cables have to run all over the place, and the BlueTooth board must be removed to get at its cable connection.). You don’t have to go into the display, but make sure the cable roller is in place on reassembling.

Remove HDD.
Remove keyboard of course, and mark those screw locations on top (they are marked on bottom of case but it is easier if you can quickly see which holes are which from the top).
Remove top by taking out the other screws visible from the bottom of the case.

Remove several screws holding mainboard to bottom, including one through far corner of cooling conductor assembly (it and the others have obvious copper pad on the mainboard). You do not need to remove the drive carrier slide assembly nor PCMCIA cage screws.

The centre power conductor on mine did not have a good solder joint to the mainboard, I finessed that, and pried the outer contact toward the centre one with a small screwdriver through the cavity in the back.

You might want to remove the cooling conductor assembly and put a thin amount of heat conducting paste on the CPU and 915 chip. Mine had white tape on one and something like gel on the other, but both were drying out. (Be careful not to bend the four-pronged aluminum plate on the other side of the mainboard, as the captive nuts in it must go back into holes in the mainboard.)

There is foam at each outboard corner of the fan assembly, to seal to the case – could be renewed/enlarged.
There is some kind of ducting near the cursor control, with two upturned nozzles and the other ends facing the keyboard more or less. I blew lint out of them.

[keithsketchley]

More:
Two plastic pieces are held in with thin double-sided tape that had dried out, a fiddling job to cut pieces from a roll and apply, making sure the slots/holes for locating tabs are open (punching the tape for those seems to be adequate).

Check the speaker for pieces of staples its magnet may have attracted (carefully use the toothpicks to scrape those off).

My case was cracked in two places around the PCMCIA slot, due to inadequate edge margin to the hole and stress of handling.

The x41 simply does not have the design quality I expected of IBM Thinkpad computers.

Photos:http://www.keithsketchley.com/heatpipe.jpg shows the fan with interesting heat conductors. The CPU is under the cast X, the graphics chip under the copper part.
http://www.keithsketchley.com/zifslider.jpg shows the locking slider of one ribbon cable connector in the open connector.
http://www.keithsketchley.com/pwrjackb.jpg is one view of the power jack, which is middle-mounted style (housing solder tabs are mid-way on it).

The x41 has 512MB of RAM soldered to the board, a much more compact packaging than the removable module that can be added, but not as flexible of course (though the combination of its o/s and design specifics limits useable RAM to something like 1.5GB IIRC).

[RealBlackStuff]

Apparently you can put in a 2GB RAM module, to get (only) 2GB of usable RAM.

[keithsketchley]

Apologies, one of the URLs for my pictures is wrong and I neglected to upload the file for another.
Correct URLs are:
http://www.keithsketchley.com/zifslideo.jpghttp://www.keithsketchley.com/heatpipe.jpghttp://www.keithsketchley.com/pwrjackb.jpg

Also I recommend inspecting the RH USB jack.

[mediasponge]

I recommend removing things in the order specified in the HMM (Hardware Maintenance Manual). You do have to remove the keyboard before the LCD, for example. The main battery is the first item on the list. One place I deviate from the HMM is in leaving the CMOS battery attached to the MB unless it really has to go. There are pictures in the HMM showing the location of every screw that has to be removed. It's really not a frightening job to get the motherboard out on one of these. Nice work on the power jack.

[keithsketchley]

I haven't found the HMM to be very good, but it is a start.