A friend handed over a "dead" Asus T200 Transformer tablet/notebook recently. He said: "It is broken. Use its components if you want and throw away the remains!" It looked in good condition, so I checked the Internet about possible remedies. Many tablets can be restarted from power off or sleep state by using the "Power" and "Volume Up or Down" button press. I tried it, and hey, the computer powered up. So easy (but I would not be writing it if it were so easy; read on!).
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| Asus T200 - many have power up problems. |
Anyway, after the usual bragging about how sensitive my hands were etc, and saving his files, after a few days, surely it started to power up with more and more difficulty! Rituals of power button combinations, adapter connected/disconnected and all sorts of stuff. Eventually it was dead as a stone. As a last resort, I opened it up, disconnected the battery for a while and re-connected. However it did not help. Dead as a stone...
Then I started looking around the circuitry with a magnifying glass. After a while I noticed a telltale sign of corrosion around the connector of the power daughter PCB (the power and volume buttons are here). For those who are not familiar, corrosion looks like tiny green residue around gold plated contacts. Removing the connector, sure enough, there was corrosion in one line of the ribbon cable. The connector is outlined in the photo below. All that was required was to remove the cable by prying the black tab on the connector up, cleaning with alcohol, and re-inserting. The computer has been working fine since then.
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| Check for corrosion on the power daughterboard connector and cable. |
There is much discussion about how to solve dead T200's through software, but this looks like a very real and repairable hardware fault. How to open your T200 etc. can be found on the internet and I wont repeat it here. Just remember to charge it before it can power up!
So, although the T200 is now an old computer, it is still capable of daily tasks like teleconference and web surfing. If you have one lying around, it may be salvaged.
