Recelnty a friend asked me to repair his laptop.  The problem was a faulty floppy drive which I ended up replacing using a USB external drive, but not before I tore into the computer to make sure that the drive was beyond hope.  Once I had the computer far enough apart to examine the floppy drive, I found that with a little more effort, I could take the whole thing apart and examine the insides.  I repair computers regularily, In fact, I run a small business doing so.  One of the questions that I get frequently asked is, "What, exactly, is in a laptop?"  Well, here's your answer:  

Here is the laptop mostly dissassembled.  The major sections can be seen here.  They are from left to right; top to bottom: 1)   External case 2)   CPU fan and chassis 3)   Drive assembly 4)   Floppy drive 5)   Monitor 6)   Motherboard and bottom case 7)   Led indicator board (LED:  Light emmiting diode, a kind of light) 8)   Modem 9)   LED housing 10) EMI Shielding for GPU  (GPU:  Graphics Processing Unit, AKA video card;   EMI:  Electro-Magnetic Interfearance, this is why sometimes your TV looks screwed up when your refrigerator kicks in, chielding helps prevent this) Also featured in this picture, although somewhat unintentional, are the tools that I used to perform the work:  A leatherman, standard screw driver set, and mini screw dirver set.

One important thing to note in these images is that the entire case is lined in aluminum.  This is because a laptop is extremely suseptible to everyday radio waves.  It also generates a large amount of radio energy it's self.  If you look at the bottom of any laptop case, or any electronic case for that matter, you will see a sticker that says that the divice complies with FCC class A or class B limits for a computing device.  This is a standard set by the FCC for the amount of radio energy that the device can radiate, and how much radio energy it can take.  Radio energy being the same stuff that a radio, cell phone, or television uses to receive it's signal.  The laptop needs the aluminum to allow it to pass this test due to it's radio characteristics.  

This is the CPU used in the laptop.  It is a celeron generation 1 333-M.  Celeron generation 1 is the first generation of celerons that Intel made.  They feature a 64KB L1 cache and no L2 cache.  Cache is what a CPU uses to easily access sections of memory.  In a typpical compter, the memory is actually one of the slowest devices that the CPU regularily communicates with.  Cache allows the CPU to remember the last few things that it accessed because it will probably need these things again.  Like playing an MP3, you repeat the same algorythm for every frame of the song.  There are 23.7 frames in a second.  The -M means that it is a mobile chip.  Mobile chips usually under clock them selvs to help reduce heat, and also do a lot of other things to conserve power, such as shut down the processor for brief periods of time.  I put the pencil in the picture to give the relative size of the chip.  The black portion in the center is the actual wafer, or silicone.  Everything else is casing to allow the space for all 435 pins.

  This is the top side of the mother board.  It has not been completely disassembled due to the sensitive nature of the board (and the inherant laziness of the person doing the work.)  This side shows most dominantly, the PCMCIA card recepticle.  Also, the video RAM,  sound card, and UART/EPAT controller are on this side.

Key components, in order of appearance, left to righ, top to bottom: 1)  Power controller 2)  Monitor power interface 3)  UART/EPP controller (UART:  Universal Asyncronous Reciever - Transmitter;   EPP:  Enhanced Parallel Port, this chip runs your parallel port, serial port, Infra red dvices (if you have any), keyboard, and mouse.) 4)  Monitor jack. 5)  Parallel port 6)  Memory (64MB) 7)  Serial port Next level: 1)  PCMCIA interface 2)  Hard drive connector 3)  CPU socket Next Level: 1)  Sound card, filters, and amplifier (Volume control is here also) 2)  Internal mouse / keyboard connector 3)  Sound controller

4)  CD-ROM / Floppy drive interface 5)  CPU Voltage regulators

The bottom side features: Top Right: 1)  Memory expansion module (Capable of handling up to 128MB SD-100) 2)  GPU Mid right: 1)  CPU heatsink brace 2)  North bridge 3)  South bridge 4)  PCMCIA controller 5)  Audio interface jacks Lower center: 1)  BIOS boot rom. 2)  Battery connections

Here is the reason for my toil.  The CD-ROM drive, a 24x max cd-rom reader, and the hard drive, a 6 Gigabyte 3600 RPM drive, ATA 33.  Also, the Floppy drive is pictured here.  Rest assured, it was broken long before I started tinkering.  The top shield of the drive is in the center.

Here is the laptop modem.  It uses a connectotr commonly referred to as compact PCI, or CPCI.  Many modems and laptop network cards use this same connector to interface to the laptop.  This allows a manufacturer to give the option of having either a modem or a NIC for a laptop.  A modem for the traveling type, and a NIC for the avid business worker. Also, since PCI is a multiple port standard, many newer mother boards have several of these connections so they can support multiple NICs, modems, or even give the user the option of what to use.  The chipset is make by connexcant.  This is a quite popular chipset, and is still in use by many laptops today.

Here are the coolant components, and bracing components that surround the CPU to keep it cool and in place.  The CPU to a computer is a vital as the Brain is to a person.  In a laptop where heat is not as easily radiated, cooling is doubly important.  This particular setup uses a heat sink, cooling fan with temperature sensor, and a shim covering to dissipate heat from the CPU.  The shim does not cool as much as it makes the fan more effective my directing the air flow into and out of the laptop and across the heat sink fans (not shown).  The heat sink has a rubber like permanent potting compound to aid in heat transfer form the CPU, note that it covers only the center area of the CPU.  If you look closely, you can see a permanent indentation in the compound from the center of the CPU.  The metal bar with the fan is to lock the heat sink down to the CPU and provide cooling for the rest of the computer case.

This is the Laptop Monitor.  I did not disassemble it due to the extremely sensitive nature of the monitor components, which can break down under the the light force of a finger touch.  The LED board and LED housing reside just below the monitor and give the status of NumLock, CapsLock, Scroll Lock, power, battery, and external power.

The keyboard usees a modified version of the PS2 interface.  It utilizes all six pins to accomodate the mouse pointer.  The buttons are on the case and report to the computer using a seperate controller, in much the same way that the external PS2 mouse is seperate from the internal, yet they can all work simultaneously (for those of you who love to have mouse and keyboard wars).   This is a standard key board and will work in most laptops that it can fit in.

Well, I hope that you enjoyed this.  I know that I enjoyed being able to photograph the "guts" of what some people believe to be one of the greatest enigmas of our day.  If you ever have computer questions, feel free to contact me at webmaster@biache.sytes.net

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