Sony Vaio Laptop

      My roommate gave me a Sony Vaio Laptop (Model# PCG-7Y1L) he had slated for the recycling center after I mentioned I was starting to get a bit more serious about a life long hobby of mine - taking stuff apart. I figured this would be a fantastic first post of hopefully many disassembley projects. I have a little dream of turning the fantastic beauty and intricate precision found in the innards of electronic products into art pieces, but for now at least this blog won't cover those endeavors. Instead, this is simply a (relatively) detailed documentation of step-by-step disassembley.

the calm before the storm...

I started by removing the battery - I will be recycling that. I have no desire to get lithium-ion battery juices on my desk. Surprisingly though, the second piece I removed slid right on out without a fuss - the CD ROM drive (above). That turned out the be a treasure trove all in itself, so I'll document it on another post entirely.

  

A removable panel on the underside reveals the RAM where it is easily accessible for users to upgrade.

Once a screw on the underside was undone, the keyboard could be popped off, and a ribbon disconnected to remove it entirely

 

Notice the FOXCONN imprint. Guess we know for sure where it was made...

Once the rest of the screws were undone, the top shell of the lower half came off, revealing the glory within.

The hard drive. Another opportunity for a separate post.

 

The underside of the mouse pad.

The top of the mouse pad. Once the thin aesthetic layer was removed we see this - the bare capacitive panel. Beautiful. (The flecks you see are remnants of the adhesive.)

It was glued onto the plastic shell itself, but somehow I managed to get it out. This is the separated mouse pad (underside)

The sticker is covering the wireless card attached directly to the motherboard. The wires you see attached run to an antenna which ran around the border of the laptop screen.

A few more screws removed as well as some ribbons and wires unplugged freed the motherboard. The chip you see is the wireless card.

Next I worked on removing the screen from the bottom section which turned out the be rather complicated. You'll notice the hinges - they were surprisingly strong.

The removed boarder of the screen section reveals a small chip encased in some sort of plastic.

The actual LCD screen removed from its shell - the screen has long thin boards along two sides with ribbons along its entire length. I didn't dare go any farther as the screen may contain some sort of unfriendly ooze.

The combined pieces of a laptop (minus the disc drive and HD). Its impressive the amount of computing power we can get out of that relatively little motherboard and the myriad of tiny chips soldered to it.

 There you have it! Stay tuned for future posts where I disassemble the hard drive and disc drive, which turned out the be far more interesting than the laptop itself. Talk about finely tuned machines...