Tried to replace my laptop battery and ended up bending the connector pins

Was prying at that tiny white ribbon cable for 20 minutes in my kitchen before my neighbor knocked and said I'd been swearing loud enough for her to hear through the wall, has anyone else mangled a ZIF connector and somehow still gotten it to work?

2 comments

2 Comments

craig.grant6h ago

Buddy of mine did this with an old Dell XPS, bent like 3 pins on the keyboard ribbon. He used a mechanical pencil with no lead to carefully nudge them back into place one by one, working under a lamp with his reading glasses on. Somehow after about 45 minutes of sweating and holding his breath, it clicked in and worked like nothing happened. I'm pretty sure he said a prayer to the laptop gods before plugging it in though.

grant.luna5h ago

Oh man, I've been there! I mangled the touchpad cable on my old ThinkPad and thought I was done for. Used a pair of tweezers and a sewing needle to gently coax those tiny pins back into place. It seriously felt like surgery, but after like 30 minutes of shaky hands it just snapped in and worked perfectly. Definitely held my breath the whole time haha.