Chosen Solution
Hello all, I have an asus zenbook ux305CA. The motherboard on the machine failed about 2 years into ownership. The symptoms of the failure were fail to attempt to post and failure of any of the LED lights on the external machine to light up when connected to power. It seemed to fail randomly one day, though I did spill a very small amount of water on the keyboard prior to it failing. I replaced the MB with a replacement from EBAY. However, the replacement board had two missing flaps on ribbon connects. The two connector for the keyboard and mouse. So, I tried my best to transfer the flaps for the ribbon cables over to the new board but broke off the hinges on both of them due to their fragile nature and my lack of knowing how to remove them from the ribbon cable connection on my old board. I stuck the ribbon cables into the connectors and the flaps over them the best I could. The laptop power button (to my disliking) is a part of the main keyboard on this model and not a separate button. The laptop booted on it’s own after I first plugged it in, and the trackpad worked, but I could not type at all to log into windows. I shut down the machine and opened it back up trying to rig a fix for the connection for the keyboard. I tried to some silicon putty to lodge between the case and the connection which seemed like it should put a good amount of pressure on the cable to hold it in place, but no joy. Looking closely at the connection, it seems like it is fairly solid in spite of the flap being broken. I tried to think of another way to rig something in there but haven’t though of much that could work. I’m wondering if somehow the laptop’s keyboard has also failed or if it is just the connection. Now, of course the laptop won’t power on since the power button is on the non-functioning keyboard. I think I could get it to boot again by resetting the cmos and using an external keyboard, but I use this laptop to go to work and that is not a practical solution. Does anyone know if there is a way to test if the keyboard is bad other than trying to order a new one? I guess I could try to get my money back from the ebay seller since they sent me a faulty MB, but they did sell it for only $70 and it’s usually around $200, so I would still have to cough up some cash to find a better board. Here is a link showing a teardown of the laptop and here are some close up pictures of the suspected bad connection: http://www.myfixguide.com/manual/asus-ze… [img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/m7wbnrglqv2idh…[/img] [img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/pm11gr1i099qx3…[/img] [img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/y3beewb9jioqw9…[/img] Any help or ideas appreciate. Thank you.
The pictures show a Zero Insertion Force connector. The part you call the flap is used to put tension on the cable connectors. The trick is to align the cable end so that it fits squarely in the connector, if the cable is a bit off then the pins do not match up. If the flap is broken off completely then you might be able to use thin light card stock to help hold it in place. You can add tape, but look for tape that maintain adhesiveness without leaving a gooey mess or dry up like duct tape. Glues are not a good idea in this area because it could act to insulate one of the pins in the connector.
