In further news, all hardware sucks.

[reddragdiva]

I can't open my laptop because one of the screwheads has been almost completely stripped by whoever opened it last. I am very unhappy about this, as I want this laptop working again, as soon as possible, and at present I can't even get into it to recover the hard drive! Has anyone reading solved this particular problem in practice, not just theory?

Second hardware suck is that the printer/scanner only works on the USB 1.1 port on the Mac, not the USB 2 PCI card, so scanning and card reading are dog-slow. It does work properly on the slow socket, just painfully. (The mouse, keyboard and camera all work fine on the PCI card USB 2 ports.) It appears to be a reasonably smart piece of hardware, too, not just a braindead WinPrinter. arkady has apparently had similar problems having to play musical ports with the USB 2 card on her Mac. It's what happens when cheap hardware meets cheap hardware.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Andrew uses a Dremel, admittedly not on a laptop yet. He's very good with it though.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

dremel or file a slot into the screw head? i've done it on other stuff, but never a laptop.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

I too have a Dremel... haven't used it on a laptop yet, but... *eager grin*

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

I dunno if you're talking about head-stripped or threads-stripped. If it's the head stripped, dremel a slot into it as other folks have suggested, or superglue the screwdriver to the head. Either use a cheap one, or else you can un-superglue it later with the dremel. If it's thread-stripped, get a knife under the edge of the screwhead and pry up or sideways on it to get what's left of the threads to bite. All else fails, drill the thing.

[reddragdiva]

Head-stripped. Dremeling a slot into it sounds the least worst approach, and arkady has one ...

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

How's the phrase go? "With a Dremel and a cut-off wheel, EVERYTHING takes a flat-blade screwdriver."

[bramsmits.livejournal.com]

3 options that I've succesfully used on this problem (bad screws holding plastic parts together):

-heat the screw to above the melting point of the plastic bit it's holding. In case of a laptop that probably means a soldering iron rather than an oxy-acetylene torch.
-drill the screw out. If you use a lefthanded drill bit the screw will probably come out as soon as the bit bites into it.
-superglue / jbweld tool to screw

[grumpy-sysadmin.livejournal.com]

I've definitively used the "plastic breaks easily" approach on a laptop (I had about five similar Stinkpads which, at any point, made two or maybe three functional laptops), but I didn't much care about the shell at that point. Dremeling some traction back into the screw sounds like a better approach here.

[grumpy-sysadmin.livejournal.com]

Super glue strikes me as way too brittle for this after it dries... did that actually work? (Glue of some sort, sure, but...)

[bramsmits.livejournal.com]

Technically it was a cellphone rather than a laptop, but for the purpose of fasteners I consider them to be substantially identical.

Yes, the stuff breaks easily. If you're careful you can manage maybe 1/8th turn, by which time the greatest clamping force will be off. After that, the superglue residue wil have made the head and screwdriver surfaces rougher so you can get a bit further on friction. And as the stuff sets in seconds, you can afford a couple of tries. The effectiveness depends on how tight the screw is. For really tight ones you're probably looking at one of the other options. JBWeld (2 component epoxy filler) is really strong (I've repaired cylinder heads with it) but takes about 8 to 20 hours to set. For improved workflow, undo the other fasteners, heat up the offending one and pull the plastic bit over the head. It will leave a neat round head-sized hole that can be easily repaired, or just use a slightly larger washer.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

That's another option I neglected to mention: if you can eBay a busted one (the two common form factors are 'someone dropped it and the panel is fux0r3d' and 'has been stripped for parts', both of which would work) relatively cheap, you gain a certain amount of leeway in how forcefully you pull the thing apart.

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

If you can dremel a slot into it then great. If not I've previously used a minidrill (the sort used for PCB construction) in a jig to drill it out...or even cut a slot into it.

Superglue gel is useful too. Much thicker than normal SG so you can build it up a little more.

[ickle-yuki.livejournal.com]

I found on a few lists etc when looking for help with USB problems, that Mac OS X has problems sometimes with add-in USB or firewire cards.

Seems apparantly, best to get NEC chipset ones as they apparantly have firmware that Mac OS X thinks it is built into the board, or something like that.

I've not had any problems having said that running my printer off the USB port as well as Keyboard/Mouse off it, and that is an add-in USB card, tho it might be 1.1 only that card.

[reddragdiva]

Sounds about right. As I said, it's cheap hardware (the card) meets cheap hardware (the printer). It works fine off the inbuilt USB 1.1 socket.

[reddragdiva]

I did much the same with our stack of Thinkpad 560Xes.