8 ms·
Repairing a tiny ribbon cable inside a 28 year old IBM ThinkPad 701c
- whythre 4y agoImpressive work at such a small scale. I used to work with small ribbon cables frequently, but it was usually some scraping and reshaping to fix deformities- nothing as audacious as this grafting!
- CTOSian 4y agoIt may be possible to use conductive paint instead of soldering, of course this depends if there is allowance to keep the damaged part flat. I did this on a keyboard membrane, had some damage caused by water. You need to apply the paint slowly via a toothpick, then kapton tape on the top.
- somat 4y agoA deserved "Well done" to the author, a good end to a tricky job. I wonder if it is possible to solder the two halves of a flex circuit directly together? That is, is it possible without the junction wires? Scrape the top of one, the bottom of the other, apply solder pads to both sides then align the two and reflow the solder.
- megous 4y agoThat's how these are sometimes soldered to the PC board. Eg. https://pine64.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/PinePhone-USB-C-Board-1-1.jpg https://pine64.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/PinePhone-USB-...
- myself248 4y agoTheoretically yes, but it's harder to control the heat for the duration you need to do that. The flex substrate is pretty melty. I would try it with a shovel tip and a whole lot of spares to get the technique down, but if I only had one shot, I think I'd go with the author's technique, one wire at a time. Perhaps with less gap between the ends, though.
- neuralRiot 4y agoI’ve done this many times and in smaller ribbons with narrower traces, this is a FPCB the substrate is kapton and it should whitstand soldering temps pretty well the trickiest ones are FFCs (the white ones)
- jgrahamc 4y agoThe gap was to make up for the amount of ribbon I'd damaged along the way. I didn't want to shorten it too much!
- causality0 4y agoAmazingly that ugly thing has no short circuits and there's a connection on all six tracks. Clearly, that's very fragile so I mixed up some epoxy glue and covered the whole thing up. If you're going to do something similar I would suggest not relying on just epoxy. Consider adding something like a strip of denim as backing support.
- jtwaleson 4y agoAwesome work, happy to see you’re putting them to good use ;)
- dm319 4y agoAnyone know if it's possible to run a modern distribution on this? I had a bit of difficulty running full-fledged Linux on a Thinkpad X60 due to it being 32bit. Linux mint debian edition came to my rescue, but I wonder if you'd need linux from scratch or something like that.
- winrid 4y agoYeah, but it'll probably be more useful running Windows. At least it can play games. :)
- jtwaleson 4y agoIt’s a 486, you will probably be able to run a lightweight Linux distro but it will be sloooooow.
- doublepg23 4y agoI don’t think most distros compile for i486, minimum is i686 (not too familiar with the jargon though, before my time). Even the kernel itself was going to trash i486 support entirely. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-i486-Linux-Possible-Drop https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-i486-Linux-Possible-Drop
- guessbest 4y agoThey'll have to run it with a 2.2 era kernel. Everything after that ran dog slow on these machines.
- cpach 4y agoNetBSD should work according to their docs: https://www.netbsd.org/ports/i386/hardware.html https://www.netbsd.org/ports/i386/hardware.html
- nix23 4y agoOr OpenBSD: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Download https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Download
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- archarios 4y agoI have an OP-1 that could use similar love on the ribbon cable. pretty nervous to try it though..
- djmips 4y agoHave you considered designing a replacement? See my other comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35113950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35113950
- jcul 4y agoI like that international object sizing tool, great idea.
- jgrahamc 4y agoI put the PDF here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zuhtb2eALTqONJEe4yeeajX7ltSyliuP/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zuhtb2eALTqONJEe4yeeajX7ltS...
- joering2 4y agoSuch a banged up machine but 28 years that's understandable. This made me dream, for a moment, that somewhere out there there is (perhaps forgotten?) box with this exact laptop that has not been opened just yet. Can you imagine having a blast from the past by actually being a person that unsealed this 28 years-old box for the first time.. using your nostrils to pull in that distinct smell of a brand new parts being assembled together... wonder how much a box like that unopened would cost...
- jtwaleson 4y agoThey exist! This YouTuber was lucky enough to have the experience and he made an unboxing video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRVJCtREW38 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRVJCtREW38
- banana_giraffe 4y agoHuh? That video is a review of a borrowed unit. > And a big thanks to Sam for letting me borrow this fantastic machine for this video
- bombcar 4y agoSniff around companies and universities that have IT departments that old - often they have shelves of NIB stuff that never got used somewhere.
- 0_____0 4y agoFiberglass scratch pen works great for removing resist from small areas. Not sure how it would work on the presumably polyimide coverlay but it works great on soldermask.
- djmips 4y agoThere is another way. Design a replacement, maybe find a script like so: https://github.com/oliveroliver/ffsc-generator https://github.com/oliveroliver/ffsc-generator Have a PCB fabrication house make you a the flexible PCB perhaps: https://www.pcbway.com/pcb_prototype/What_is_Flexible_PCB.html https://www.pcbway.com/pcb_prototype/What_is_Flexible_PCB.ht...
- pugworthy 4y agoOr, just grab your soldering iron and some epoxy. I think the point was that he did it as a bit of a hack. And looking at the condition of those notebooks, that's probably appropriate.
- djmips 4y agoSure, I understand and appreciate the resourcefulness of the repair as much as anyone. I just wanted to let people know that making a new one is a viable option both in repair and new hobby designs. It hasn't been that long that it's been fairly easy to do.
- jacquesm 4y agoI make repairs to cables like these with a very simple method: glue the two pieces together with superglue and some overlap, a few mm will do. Then use conducting glue (with silver particles in it) to restore the connection. Use a tiny brush and a microscope to apply the glue. If the currents are low (as they usually are with cables like these) this will work just fine and give a quick and long lasting result.
- arthurcolle 4y agoHaha I can picture you with your glue gun diligently applying layers
- jacquesm 4y agoWith your last name it is I that can imagine you diligently applying layers with your glue gun ;) Anyway, I use a tiny brush, but you have to be careful not to make shorts.
- gus_massa 4y agoCan you post some photos? [Just to be clear, it's not a "pics or it didn't happen". I believe you, but I'd like some photos.]
- jacquesm 4y agoNext time I do one, sure. The stuff I use is meant to repair rear window defrosters, Loctite 3863.
- arcticbull 4y agoThe cleanest way DIY way I've seen is the way TCRS handles flexgate ribbon repairs. [1] Cut both cables. Scrape the coating. Tin the copper on both sides. Slightly overlap both cables. Tack them down, and create a solder bridge. [1 around minute 25]. Span the gap with small wire [1 around minute 29]. Finish up with conformal coating [1 around minute 57]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGKucaMJEAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGKucaMJEAc
- geenew 4y agoI fixed an old model M with a bit of telephone wire and tape; a connection had shorted out, and I just bridged it. The fix worked reliably for years.
- pbj1968 4y agoI’ve just done jumper wires from pcb to pcb in situations like this. Six wires? Not even worth trying to salvage that ribbon cable.
- jgrahamc 4y agoI would have loved to do that but the other end of that cable is attached to the TrackPoimt which is plastic welded into the keyboard mechanism. Didn’t have much choice and I wanted to be able to remove the keyboard for maintenance if needed later.
- Slighted 4y agoMan that must've been difficult. Great job on it!
- bambax 4y agoA fun and admirable project, if a little pointless. I could never use a trackpad (even a brand new one) with any kind of reliability. I have an old, tiny, wired Logitech travel mouse for this -- it's itself a kind of museum piece, but it works.