Sunday, November 08, 2009

Oh bugger!

Last night, when I was sitting with my laptop perched on the arm of the lounge beside me, Adam asked me where the iPod sync cable was. Without thinking I twisted round to rummage amongst the detritus on the coffee table beside the lounge. Adam yelped and reached for my plummeting laptop, he made contact and slowed the descent, but it was no good. It must have hit at just the wrong angle, I picked it up and this is what I saw:

Tragedy strikes


Luckily we have Adam's defunct MacBook, that is the same model and has a perfectly good screen, to raid for spare parts. We might even be able to swap out the airports in the hope of fixing my flakey wireless problems as well. Assuming we don't stuff up the whole process entirely.

Today I am grateful for a techy hubby, a house full of half-dead computers and more functioning computers than we really need and, above all, complete and recent back-ups which mean I'm not even slightly concerned about the possibility of everything going horribly wrong when we attempt MacBook surgery.

Step one: Obtain weird-arse screwdriver for undoing funky screws, what's the bet Bunnings won't have it?

Wish us luck!

Update: It turns out we didn't have quite the same model laptops and a couple of cables had different connectors. One was the wireless card - easy fixed by swapping his old one into my machine. The other was the inverter. Adam tried doing a bit of re-wiring to attach the old connector to the new cable but when he plugged it all in and hit the power button there was an ominous ffttzz sound and no illumination for the screen. The screen is working - you can see the display if you shine a bright light on it, it's just not backlit. So I'm using one of the big desktop screens for the moment and Adam's going to have another go at the wiring tonight.

12 comments:

yodaobi said...

Already wished u luck!
Screen looks kinda cool tho

ozFinn said...

Hope the surgery goes well... If not I can't see you being terribly upset if you need to get a new one.
I do recall you talking about it not too long ago :)

mimbles said...

Yeah, that was before we spent $1600 on getting the car fixed. But still, it wouldn't be the end of the world ;-)

Louise said...

Argggh. I would be upset if it was me. But luckily I am quite good at backing up and luckily we also have old computers around the house (apartment) so while it wouldn't be the end of the world, I would still be upset and mad at myself ;-)

Mary (MPJ) said...

Oh no! That's what my laptop looked like a few years ago when the kids knocked it onto the floor. :( Good luck fixing it!

Penny said...

curses and naughty words!!!
Yes, I too am glad for geek husband who can do such surgeries...

mimbles said...

rogress report: It turns out we didn't have quite the same model laptops and a couple of cables had different connectors. One was the wireless card - easy fixed by swapping his old one into my machine. The other was the inverter. Adam tried doing a bit of re-wiring to attach the old connector to the new cable but when he plugged it all in and hit the power button there was an ominous ffttzz sound and no illumination for the screen. The screen is working - you can see the display if you shine a bright light on it, it's just not backlit. So I'm using one of the big desktop screens for the moment and Adam's going to have another go at the wiring tonight.

mimbles said...

Or "Progress report" even. Arrgh. I can't touch type and I have to have the laptop half closed so I can see the 2nd screen. It's frustrating.

Shrinking Tardie said...

I gotta agree on the yay to techie hubby's bit Mim. BoyWonder is awesome at making all well in the world - even when my HD died a few months ago (and I, stupidly despite years in the IT industry, thought that backups were something other people needed!).

mimbles said...

It would seem that the ffttzz sound was the inverter meeting an untimely end. I'm off shopping!

Nap Mom said...

Yes! You are blessed to have all of these techie resourcesa t your fingertips. If it were me, I would have been devastated. :-)

Eternal Lizdom said...

Oh no!!! I think I would have cried. And then been mad at myself. And then cried some more.