White prong broke any advice

So i pulled out the optical drive and the white prong thing the cable is going into broke and dell is down so I cant talk to anyone to get it fix. The part looks like its a dollar piece max, anyone know if I can order that anywhere

 

by broke, do you mean a piece came off or the whole piece came off?

 

The white piece that holds in the cable the one part snapped off and wont stay in now. I tried superglue but that was an epic fail

 

I had the same problem when replacing my hard drive with the Momentus Hybrid SSD/HDD. Went to ease the white clip that holds the DVD drive's cable on the motherboard and one half of the clip snapped off, fortunately the other clip on the opposite side is holding. I would also be interested to hear if there's a way of buying a replacement of this.

 

As stupid as it may sound , they may want to replace the motherboard for that litttle thing...

Just to verify, is this the prong you are talking about?



I'm going to look around to see if I find a piece.. I have tons of little laptop things (Not like that exactly) laying around.

 

Dell is back up I'm talking to them right now

 

ya that is the piece

 

Ok, be sure to tell us what they say . I'm in a similar situation. Edit: Unless of course you're talking to them about a different topic, if so then ignore me.

 

Dell told me they are still down

 

are you ment to lift that white clip up to release the rybon cable ?

i just pulled the rybon cable out of the white clip lol

 

yea you can lift it by pushing up (SOFTLY) from both sides with anything.... It loosens so that the cable can come out and re-inserted easily.

 

the issue is where can I get the replacement without waiting for dell is that a common piece in laptops?

 

Hey Jetbo...apparently that thing is called a ZIF connector.

I saw in another forum that you might need to get a new mobo since the connector on the bottom is soldered to the board. I'm thinking if it's just the top part though you might be able to replace it.

Anyway, knowing the actual name of the part might help you in finding either a replacement, or at least explaining to dell what broke. I looked around a little but haven't found much yet. Wish you the best man.

EDIT: It looks like Tyco might be able to help you:
http://www.tycoelectronics.com/catalog/products/en?n=106589&q=zif

 

I'd imagine unless you have pretty good smt skills, that's not a replaceable part. buying a new zif connector is only helpful if you can pull off the old one and put on the new one without damaging the pcb. Don't get me wrong, it's doable with just a normal soldering iron (unlike a bga for example) but still it's not for the uninitiated to soldering.

 

its just the white plastic piece the connector is still there

 

I did the same with fumbly excited fingers when installing my SSD, I just pulled a bit too much on one of the legs of the push down connector and then 'oh snap'. I was lucky in the fact that when i bunged the connector back in (with fumbly excited fingers) it seemed to hold the cable in place. If I manage to find a replacement ill be sure to let you know.

 

cool thanks like I said bad time for my impatient self to have dells systems go down lol