Wanna hear a funny story? Yes? Good. A couple of months ago, I purchased a Acer Chromebook C720-2800. — Why are you laughing? That’s not the funny part yet. Yes. Really. Now, back to my story. — It is one of those rare ones that have 4GB of RAM and most places sell them at an alarmingly high price. Luckily, I found one being sold at MSRP.
Now here’s the funny part of the story: One day, I plugged in a USB flash drive and it wouldn’t work. Dammit. It turns out that I bent one of the pins inside the female USB port. The worst part of this whole thing was that this was the sole USB 3.0 port.
My options were either to ignore the problem, cry or fix the problem.
First, I tried to ignore the problem, but I kept having to use the port and not being able to reminded me of the problem. Hence, option 1 failed.
Next, I cried. Figuratively. Yes. Believe me, there were lots of figurative tears.
Finally, I hunkered down and planned out how I will fix the issue. Here are the steps that I envisioned having to take:
| 1 | Disassemble the Chromebook |
| 2 | De-solder the borked USB port |
| 3 | Solder new USB port |
Simple enough, right?
I, then, scoured the Ebays (yes, I’m trying to set a trend with that phrase) for hours and finally found a USB port that would fit.
As the port was coming from China, I had a lot of time to plan. Which is, of course, why I put all the planning off until the USB port replacement came in the mail.
I proceeded to disassemble the Chromebook, removed the motherboard and gave it a good go at removing the broken USB port.
Here’s the result:
HAH! Stubborn thing was a nightmare to remove with a low voltage soldering iron and a solder suction thingy. I had to go to the neighborhood Radioshack (Please stick around for a while longer… pretty please) and picked up a higher voltage soldering iron, but still ended up tearing the old port to pieces. Also, the through-holes were still gunked up.
I finally bought a heat gun from the Radioshack. Within 5 minutes, I had the gunk cleared out, stuck the new port in and laughed loud like a mad scientist because the thing actually fit nicely. BuwahahHAHAHA!!!
So, it looks like nothing happened.
Funny how good that actually feels. “Like nothing happened.” Missioned accompished. Probably not so much of a funny HAHA story, but more a funny unfortunate one.