CarlW

Trying to fix the battery in a Galaxy Tab S2 8.0, I broke the LCD. I knew this was a risk, so, some you win, etc. I...

OK, in the absence of anyone else’s input, I took a £100 punt and can report that as far as I can tell, the GH97-17679 type LCD and digitiser assembly appears to work on a SM-T713 model Galaxy Tab S2 8. Hence it appears that the same screen will work on SM-T713, SM-T719, SM-T710 and SM-T715 - and probably other models in the series. I don’t know for a fact that the GH97-18966A/B/C (the letter suffix is just the bezel colour) screen for the SM-T713 is compatible with the other models, but the GH97-17679A/B/C seems to work fine on an SM-T713, and is a lot easier to source.

The handles appear to be available on ebay for $12.99 stateside. (e.g. https://www.ebay.com/i/182289228254 ) Failing that, depending on what it is made of and how it’s broken you could: (1) Glue it - some types of hard plastic can be “welded” with acetone or “hard plastic glue”, or you could use an epoxy. If the glue doesn’t “melt” the plastic then it’s unlikely to last unless your choice of glue and surface preparation is perfect. (1) replace it (or the broken part of it) with something fabricated from materials at hand. (1) 3D print a replacement, or have one 3D printed for you - use the broken one as a pattern and design a replacement using e.g. TinkerCAD (free, online, you just need a browser) then if you have no 3D printer, check out the various 3D design sharing sites (e.g. Thingiverse) which all carry integrated 3rd-party printing services. Personally, I’d 3D print one - with careful design and suitable orientation on the printer, even humble PLA, which is safe and easy to work with, can produce an...

In my experience, the swollen battery affects the trackpad click first, and I've not personally known it affect a keyboard, but that doesn't mean it doesn't. At least you can easily get these macbooks apart to check stuff, though, unlike the later ones. Trivial enough to remove the bottom, and you can generally see if the battery is swollen - to actually remove the battery you need a tri-lobe screwdriver and a healthy disregard for Apple's "do not remove" sticker. These ones aren't glued in so you'd have to be pretty careless to do any damage or risk a fire or anything. I can't remember offhand what you have to remove to get at the keyboard ribbon connector, but disconnecting and reconnecting it *might* fix it - one or other line out on that would affect a whole row of keys. Most likely, though, is water. These keyboards are super-sensitive to water ingress, and that tends to take out entire groups of keys at a time. It seems nigh on impossible to revive a keyboard that's had water get in, and, while...

I guess there might be a dry joint on the connector or something, or perhaps a hairline crack in the board - this might have happened if the crash tore that motor off, pulling violently on the cable, or if you were very careless about unplugging it, possibly - you’ll need to examine the board very closely and trace the signals back from the connector and test with a meter to establish that. Probably more likely though that the FETs supplying that motor have expired because of overcurrent when the motor jammed - again, you’ll need to trace things around and work out what the motor connections are connected to - can’t see anything on top of the board that looks like FETs for the motor channels, each one appears to have a fairly robust looking diode associated (e.g. D2) but those will probably not be broken. Maybe the 8-pin packages underneath the board might be H-bridges or multi-FET packages or something. An oscilloscope would really help to track down the problem, because you could see for sure whether the...

Hi - Not sure specifically about the PS4, but generally, use the tip for mono audio. You could connect the earbud to both tip and the ring next to the tip, to feed both L and R to the earbud, but joining them together might conceivably upset the PS4 (though headphone outputs are usually designed to withstand this kind of thing). The “proper” way to do this is with a small resistor between each and the common line to the earbud, so the L and R channels don’t fight with each other. So, if the PS4 has an option to select mono sound output, just wire the earbud to the tip. If not, it’s trickier - you can do this in-line, or in the body of the plug with some care and some surface mount type or very small resistors: Note that there are two standards for these TRRS mic & headphone connectors, the one shown with the sleeve as the mic is the most common (CTIA standard), and I think the sort used by the PS4. The other standard (OMTP) is older and has the mic and ground swapped, so the sleeve is ground. You list your...

“lifting with the paper” doesn’t really properly describe this. For starters, the “paper” is plastic sticker sheet and glued to the battery, you need to carefully peel it up to get hold of it like this. And when you have, you’ll find that the battery is glued to the metal frame, and will need careful encouragement to let go without bending the motherboard/frame. It says “hand only” to remind you not to try sliding anything - especially any sort of blade - in; the battery “housing” is just a metalized polyester plastic film, and readily torn, and inside the battery is nasty, and if you really abuse this type of battery, they can catch fire or explode. The adhesive that holds it will stay behind on the metal frame. When you place the new battery, place it loosely and attach the connector, so the battery settles into its proper place, then press it against the metal frame to stick it down on the adhesive.

Wolfgang, a new display comes with adhesive, but otherwise, you want a suitable double-sided glue tape of the sort described in a number of these guides, listed on shopping sites as mobile phone screen tape, usually available in 1mm and 2mm widths - just try to pick something that heat will soften else no-one will ever get it off again… If re-attaching a screen, I would be slightly more sparing with the glue than the manufacturers were, especially around the buttons and near the ribbon and towards the centre of the display. Clean the old glue off so it’s not lumpy.

Some of the charging boards for these have a microphone on a ribbon as well, presumably for the versions that also function as a cell phone. Check which sort you need. In picture 1 here you can see the kind of plastic “claws” on the 3.5mm headphone socket that clip the bottom of the board to the frame.

Once the top edge is free, the board will lift away at the top, but still be stuck at the bottom - again, lever it a bit with something thin. The bit that will hang on is the 3.5mm headphone jack - it sort of clips into the frame a bit - be gentle and patient, you don’t want to bend the mainboard.

There are fifteen screws, almost where shown, but not quite - most are around the edges and pretty obvious, two hold the spring-loaded recessed button things (for a dock I suppose) and there’s one next to the camera. To lift the main board out, once you’ve removed the 15 screws, it will seem like it’s still stuck top and bottom. There are tabs at the top, and the connectors hold it at the bottom. Press in the springloaded dock recess button thing from behind to lift the top lefthand corner of the main board enough to get a pick under, and just wedge it like that or get a fingernail under it. Then take a chisel type craft knife blade or something equally thin and strong (I was unable to do this with a plastic spudger) gently lever the top edge of the plastic away from the edge and pop the tabs free. Refer to the picture in stage 5 to see the tabs on the top edge.

This doesn’t show the screen, it shows the mainboard removed, though the small metal cage about 1/3 up from the bottom right, and the camera, should be attached to the main board (leftmost in the picture) and not left behind on the frame. If you look carefully at the main board shown here, which is viewed from the top side (i.e. the side the screen was glued to), you can see the touch button sensor has been torn away and pushed up on top of the battery (middle of the lower edge of the flat metal battery frame) The sensor is meant to be down beside the home button, like the one on the left. It’s really hard not to do this while separating the screen glue, but don’t panic if you do because the ribbon assembly is detachable and fairly cheap (a few pounds UK).

The ribbon cable is in the top left corner of the tablet, and folded - there’s no glue on the ribbon itself, but there is glue along the edge beside it, and glue along both sides of the metal frame you can see here - that glue is attached directly to the delicate LCD part of the display, which will shatter if you try to lift the display assembly while that glue is still attached. There is no glue on the exposed part of the face of the battery (white bit). There’s a thin strip of glue down the length of each long edge, but no glue between those strips and the metal frame - you can see where the glue is, in fact, on the above photo. The top and bottom edges have a wider strip of glue than the sides do. The thing being prised out in the picture is a plastic cover, not the connector itself. It’s wedged in quite tightly and needs to bend somewhat before it’ll pop out exposing the connector, which can then just be delicately separated with a spudger by lifting it up.

So with reference to the second picture here, you need to slice under the screen from the left with a stiff card, starting from about where the person’s left thumb is, and right down to the bottom, going under the screen about 3cm, to just short of a line extending up the screen from the lefthand lower touch button, where the leftmost pick is positioned in the picture. From the right, you need to slice in about halfway across the screen,all the way down to just before the righthand lower touch button. And you need to slice in about 2cm top and bottom, and 1cm for the upper left side and the lower right side (the bits you didn’t slice further under for). Only when you are convinced that the only thing still holding the screen on is the ribbon should you attempt to lift it more than a millimetre on any edge. As I said above, it will bend a bit, but lift any more while the glue on the metal frame is still attached and the LCD, which is much thinner than the digitiser glass, will shatter.

Seconded the above comment. You need to slide thin, heat-stable plastic card under the screen from the edges in, slicing through the glue, paying particular attention to where it’s glued down in the middle/left, near the ribbon. You will very likely damage the home/back button sensors and ribbon, this probably can’t be helped and that part is cheap to replace. You will also damage the lightproof rubber gasket around the front camera, again, can’t be helped. The important thing is not to break the LCD or its ribbon. The plastic cover shown in the next stage with the caption about disconnecting the ribbon will stop your slicing card from damaging the ribbon connector, and there’s no glue on that or immediately to the right of the ribbon. But there is glue on the metal frame beneath the ribbon, and it’s very tenacious glue. There’s another patch of it on the righthand side of the metal frame, which is shorter. The strip on the left is nearly the whole length of the metal bit.

Once you have an opening on one side, study the pictures of the innards, and of replacement screens on ebay, and note where the glue is and where the button and screen ribbons are. You will need to use something like thin plastic card (obviously something that doesn’t soften at 80ºC) to slice through the glue all the way under the screen, being careful not to damage the screen ribbon in particular. This will take a lot of time and patience, and you will need to keep the whole screen up to 80ºC or so (probably OK up to 90ºC) while you’re doing it. You can move the sucker around as you lift it gradually, but be aware that if you lift too far, the digitiser will come up and separate partially from the LCD, which will still be stuck down in the middle somewhere, and the LCD will crack and it’s game over for that screen - you’ll be very lucky to replace it for under £100 UK.