Fixing a Gateway SA6 with No Power and Cracked Screen (In Burnaby)

This Gateway SA6 was brought to me from a lady on 15Jun2013. It belongs to her brother. She wanted to replace the cracked screen and add back the battery charger.

Back at home, when I tested it with a universal AC power adapter, it did not power on. With it filthy body and LCD frame broken off a piece on the lower right corner, I hesitated to buy screen and battery charger for fixing it which might have other hidden problems inside.

I called the lady to inform her the power on problem. She told me that she saw it working in her brother's home. I was busy for work until end July that I had time to disassemble it. I checked the power jack connector and found that the middle leg was disconnected. I soldered all legs but it still did not have connection. I checked the back of the power jack connector. The wire to the back was broken. I found a copper wire of the same diameter and soldered one side to the back of the power jack connector and the other side to the motherboard. When I plugged in the battery charger, the charging light went on and I could power up the motherboard.

When assembling the laptop, I cleaned up the laptop parts with rubbing alcohol, removed the dust inside the fan and re-applied new thermal compound to the CPU. After charging, the battery ran for around 5 minutes. I tested the power up several times. At one time, the LCD screen backlight was off after the Gateway logo screen. I worried that the screen backlight was bad. I tested it over 10 times with AC power, the backlight was normal. When I tested it on low battery again, the LCD backlight was off which removed my worry that the backlight was bad.

For the missing piece of LCD frame, I cut a piece with same shape and glued it on the LCD frame. It looks better. For safety, I ordered a genuine battery charger on 31July2013. The owner picked it up in Dec 2013.