And I consider other similar ones to be one of the most ingenious inventions of mankind. Is it bad to make a connector consisting of 40 wires in a minute and a half? There is an opinion that this is very, very good. In addition, the flat cable (which has a distance between the wires of 1.27 mm) has a core cross-section of about 28AWG, which, translated into normal language, is 0.075 mm 2 in the worst case. This theoretically makes it possible to pass a current of up to 0.45A/0.75A through one core (for a calculated current density of 6A/mm2 and 10A/mm2, respectively), but in reality, one individual cable core practically does not heat up even at a current of 2A. But even 0.45A is a very good figure, especially for “logical” circuits.
Due to the convenience and speed of production, I use this type of connection in almost all of my crafts. After the WF-xx connectors and other similar ones, a flat cable is just a song. Therefore, it would be nice to be able to make connectors from it.
Crimping the cable with an IDC connector
Probably, special equipment for crimping IDC connectors (crimpers) are best suited for making flat cable connectors. However, I personally don’t have this (although I’ve been using ribbon connectors for more than 10 years). The point here is not the price (which, by the way, is quite small), but a matter of elementary forgetfulness. When you don’t need a crimper, you naturally forget to buy it, and when you need it, you have no time to buy it. Well, until next time. Of course, if there was no way without special equipment, it would have been acquired quite quickly. But it turned out that to crimp a flat cable with IDC and FDC connectors (and I, like most radio amateurs, do not use others) you only need an ordinary vice.
Let's consider the process of crimping a flat cable with IDC and FDC connectors using the example of IDC-14 and FDC-14 connectors. To work, we will need the cable itself with connectors, a vice and crutches in the form of an IDC-40 connector, cut from an old IDE cable for a computer hard drive:
As will be clear later, it is not necessary to use the IDC-40, just as it is not necessary to destroy the working cable for the screw. It’s just that I use the IDC-40 connector (this has happened historically, since IDE cables at work are like dirt). By the way, you need to take the connector without the top bracket, i.e. the one that is pinned in the middle of the train:
So let's start with the IDC connector. First you need to disassemble it - remove the top bracket:
Then we insert the cable between the protruding contacts of the connector (the so-called “dovetail”) and the remaining plastic latch and squeeze the resulting structure with our fingers to fix the cable in the connector. After this, you need to align the cable - the angle between it and the connector should be as close to 90 degrees as possible:
If the cable is not aligned, this may result in a short circuit between its cores (this happened to me first). Better yet, immediately train yourself to connect the first wire of the cable (the one that is marked) to the first pin of the IDC/FDC connector (usually marked with a triangle). This will help avoid confusion and incorrectly crimped connectors in the future.
Next, we drag it all to a vice and lightly clamp the connector with the cable into it. Just lightly: there’s no need to tighten things up just yet. After this, you need to move the connector closer to the center of the vise jaws. Well, then you can complete the crimping with peace of mind - just squeeze the IDC with a vice until it stops:
That's it, the crimping process is complete.
However, after this, a small stub of cable usually sticks out of the connector. If you want beauty, you can cut off this stub with a stationery knife or, as a last resort, with ordinary scissors:
Well, the final touch - to reduce the mechanical load at the junction of the cable and the contacts of the IDC connector, you can install an upper bracket on the connector. To do this, wrap the cable, put on the bracket and squeeze the resulting structure with your fingers:
The bracket snaps into place quite easily, and there is no need for a vice - finger pressure is enough.
Well, now you can congratulate yourself - the cable is crimped with an IDC connector:
In conclusion, I would like to add this. While the additional top bracket makes life easier for the crimped connector, it also adds quite a bit to its overall height. In a number of crafts, this is unacceptable, since the maximum height is limited by the selected device body, and the connector with the top bracket simply will not fit there. In this case, it is quite possible to do without a bracket, only the IDC connector needs to be plugged in and pulled out of the board very carefully. The general rule (not only, by the way, for a flat cable) is not to pull the wire, apply all mechanical loads only to the connector itself.
Well, a small update. As knowledgeable comrades correctly suggest, I did not touch upon the topic of “cross” connections at all. Why they are needed at all is a separate conversation, and not particularly important within the framework of this note. Roughly speaking, a cross cable is the same crap as described above, only its two adjacent wires are “messed up”. A typical example of cross-connection use is connecting an RS232/RS485 converter to execution modules instead of a microcontroller. In this case, the RXD and TXD lines should be magically swapped. A more detailed consideration of this issue would require a separate note, so here I will simply show how to make such cross loops.
So, the initial data is the same - a piece of cable and an IDC connector. Suppose we need to “confuse” contacts No. 1 and No. 2. No question - we take the cable and pick out the corresponding wires from it by about 4-5 cm. Well, then we turn these two wires over and stick to the same logic - we insert the wires into the connector, crimp it in a vice and cut off the excess cable:
As a result, we get a crossover cable, similar, by the way, to the “classic” - an inverted cable for floppy drives. Well, we move on to the next section of this note.
Crimping the cable with an FDC connector
The process of crimping a flat cable with an FDC connector is completely similar to the process of crimping with an IDC connector. There is only one difference - unlike IDC, the FDC connector cannot be stupidly shoved into a vice, because this will bend all the contacts of the connector (these are the ones that are soldered into the board). And here crutches come to our aid - in my case it is an IDC-40 connector cut off from the IDE cable.
So, we insert the cable into the connector in the same way and align it. Then we take the crutch and insert the resulting structure into its holes:
And, as you might guess, such a sandwich can already be put in a vice and clamped - the contacts of the FDC connector are securely hidden in the crutch connector. Well, based on this, further actions will completely coincide with the actions for crimping the IDC connector. We insert the sandwich into the vice, clamp it a little, move it closer to the center and squeeze the FDC connector until it stops:
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First of all I would like to point out that Any practical use of this article is entirely at your own peril and risk! Remember, it's better to ask or Google (and sometimes just think a little longer) than to try to do something you don't understand.
It was necessary to disassemble the laptop in order to find the location of the bad contact in the power circuit. To do this, a wiring harness with a connector for connecting the adapter going to the motherboard was removed (for study, tightening the contacts and, if necessary, soldering in the problem area). It’s hard to name a component that would require disassembling the laptop in more detail to remove:
For this repair, we will need a Phillips screwdriver (choose the size carefully according to the screws) and a wooden or plastic strip, which you don’t mind periodically sharpening to the point of a chisel. A good option is a disposable Chinese chopstick. It will practically be a consumable item.
When disassembling, I recommend using small, lockable containers for screws with labels that clearly allow you to restore their purpose and location during reassembly. Lockable, because there is a high probability that after disassembly something will distract from the process, and it will be necessary to assemble and pack the disassembled device until better assembly times, and also so as not to scatter the screws all over the area during some local cataclysm. Whatever is on hand will do. This time we had plastic Eppendorf tubes on hand: 
First of all, install the connector into the housing and carefully lay out the wiring harness as shown in the photo. It is almost impossible to insert the connector itself incorrectly - its shape is quite unambiguous. After installation, we attach the grounding screw to the housing with orange conductive coating. 
Now we put the left speaker in place and secure it with two carefully preserved screws.
The screws must be tightened to a reasonable torque. It’s not worth making it too strong, “for centuries” - you can ruin the aesthetics of the screw slot, as well as deform the plastic. In addition, this will complicate the next possible disassembly. 
Let's move on to the right loop of the monitor. Carefully lay the Wi-Fi antenna wire deep to the right of the right speaker, place the monitor hinges in their proper places and secure them with the appropriate screws. 
The hinges are usually quite tight, so it is best to straighten them both at once and screw them together, placing the monitor body in the most comfortable position.
Views of the motherboard from below and from above, respectively: 
When working with printed circuit boards, it is extremely important to be careful with static electricity. Regularly equalize your potential and the ground potential on the board (by touching the metal connector housing on the side of the board, for example). This is especially true when using woolen clothes and/or concentrated fidgeting in a chair, which will be difficult to do without. Ideally, it is good to use an antistatic wrist strap.
We install the motherboard in its proper place (it is also quite difficult to place it incorrectly). Do not forget to be careful when its connectors or other parts rest against the laptop body. If excessive force is applied, the contact of these parts with the board may be disrupted. Bending deformation is also not useful for the board. 
Carefully hide the monitor cable deep to the right of the left speaker and connect it to the corresponding connector. The arrows indicate where to connect the cable: 
We work very carefully and “sensually” with fastening the connectors of cables and simple wires. Smoothly holding both parts, we slowly apply insertion force until a characteristic soft click is felt. Depending on the connector, it can be very soft and not very clicky, but you can feel it quite well, in my opinion. You don't need to use too much force, it could damage the connector's solder joint or something worse.
It is convenient to separate the cables with our homemade wooden chisel. Its shape is a tribute to your ingenuity and love for comfort. It is usually convenient for it to be about 5-10mm wide and sharp enough to fit into a narrow slot. Also, the wooden stick will not close the contacts when you accidentally touch the board with it.
The screws that need to be installed in the next step are shown with red arrows. Next, we connect the cables of the Power button with LED, as well as the network card to the motherboard: 
These two cables do not have a plastic connector at the end, but instead have a tab for easy removal. The tongue and cable, pressed against each other, form a structure rigid enough to be carefully inserted into the connector on the motherboard. With a sufficiently slow and careful application of force, you can feel that the cable has entered all the way. You can evaluate this by placing the end of the cable to the connector before inserting it and estimating the length to which it should go. Also, with some skill, you can carefully try to use only the tongue to insert the end of the cable into its proper place.
When we see during disassembly that there are many holes for screws, and only some of them are occupied at this stage, it is better not to be lazy and at least write down or sketch, or better yet, take a photo of this moment. Remembering such things can be difficult. For example, in the photo above you can see that of all the holes at this stage, only two require screws. The remaining holes imply through use with the top and/or bottom cover.
Now it's time to connect the expansion cards on the other side of the motherboard. Don’t forget to connect the connectors of the power wires, the battery board and the wi-fi antenna going into the monitor. 
We insert the Wi-Fi card into its proper place in the mini PCI-E connector. Before doing this, we make sure that the contacts are clean. We do not touch the metal contact plates with our fingers. The card is secured with two screws.
We do the same with the modem. Its connector is vertical. Gently press it until you hear a characteristic smooth click. It is best to do this slowly to feel that the connector is fully seated. We also fix it with the corresponding screw from our “cash box”: 
Now we put the optical drive in place. Its shape also leaves no doubt about the correctness/incorrectness of its placement. We insert the connector in the same way as we did with the network card, without touching the contacts. The drive should be pushed into the connector from right to left when looking at the open laptop in a natural way. We secure it with a screw from the side of the back cover. 
The next stage of assembly will be connecting and securing the top cover: 
I would like to immediately draw your attention to the fact that the operation of removing this cover, in my opinion, is the most potentially dangerous for both breakage and damage to the appearance of the device. There are two things to remember when disassembling.
Firstly, after you have unscrewed all the imaginable and inconceivable screws that, in your opinion, are holding the lid, you need to find where the plastic latches are located that can (and, most likely, will) hold it in place in addition to the screws. There can be two breakdowns here - either inaccurate prying of the cover with something hard and flat, leaving unpleasant traces of the patient’s “opening” in the areas where the lower and upper covers join, or the latch can be broken off, which can lead to the joint being loose, in it cracks form. Therefore, I recommend using a flat tool made of a material that is obviously softer than the material of the lids for prying. This can be a disposable Chinese stick, planed with a knife from the wide end to the state of a chisel, or a similar piece made of soft plastic. I recommend making this “tool” by hand, because due to its softness, it doesn’t last long, after which it needs to be resharpened. However, this is a price to pay for the aesthetic pleasure of the joint in the case after assembly (if there was one in the first place). Once one side of the lid remains, which is held only by the latches, it is useful to rock the lid up and down, thereby carefully freeing it from their grip. At this moment, the main thing is not to rush, because it is one of the most “traumatic” for the person being repaired.
Secondly, as a rule, there are cables from the cover to the motherboard, the connectors of which can be located approximately in the center of the motherboard. It is quite easy to damage them in various parts. Therefore, after the cover has given way, carefully look under it, find out how and how it is connected to the motherboard in order to carefully disconnect it, without bringing the cables to critical deformation when lifting the cover.
In this case, the cables to the motherboard are quite accessible without lifting the cover.
By the way, Toshiba carefully indicated the markings of the screws for convenience. The presence of such markings (F number) on an empty thread also indicates that a screw needs to be tightened on this layer of the assembly. 
Among the fastening cables there are connectors with a folding plastic clamping strip: 
We fold it back for installation, place the end of the cable clearly in the shallow recess for it (fix it in the transverse direction), and then insert it approximately along the dimples on the cable from the previous clamp. We close the plank. A correctly clamped cable should hold quite tightly. If it is removed, then you need to once again carefully and correctly position the cable in the recess for it and deepen it into the connector to the end before snapping it into place. Patience and accuracy when connecting cables will pay off when you don’t have to disassemble a fully assembled device again, because some of the equipment on board will not work (in this case, the touchpad or the lights on the case, or the buttons for the player above the keyboard, for example).
It is convenient to place the keyboard by tilting it towards you. Then it will be easy to connect the cable. Its connector is also equipped with a folding bar: 
The keyboard is often secured with latches on the sides. In our case, they are below and above (the lower ones are marked with arrows). There are still two screws on top (above the F1-F2 and END-INS buttons). The area above the keyboard is covered with a white plastic strip that simply snaps into place. 
After snapping the plastic strip over the keyboard, the top of the case is ready.
Now let's go back to the bottom cover. Install the screws as in the photo: 
We put the hard drive in place. As always, carefully and gently (and most importantly - to the end) we combine the connectors. There is no need to screw in the disk housing fixing screws yet. 
A line of remaining screws on the back cover. The screws of the hard drive compartment cover secure the drive itself into the body of the laptop. Finally, close and tighten the three screws of the central memory compartment, modem and network card. 
All that remains is to install the battery, remove the bandages and check the functionality! 
After everything boots successfully and there are no visible problems, it’s good to go into the device manager in Windows or lspci and its ilk in Linux or system information in Mac to make sure that the peripherals are successfully recognized and working. After successfully passing the test, you can finally exhale, relax and enjoy the integrity of the device, which was just distributed in an even layer on the table and boxes, and is now breathing life.
There was a Sony KDL 26P3000 TV in the closet - it’s not a bad television receiver at all and it didn’t work for long, less than three years, but something happened to the image and it began to disappear. Professional specialists at the Sony service center easily agreed to “put it back on its feet” for 12,000 rubles, but considering that it costs 18,000 they politely refused. We bought a new TV, and this one was at my complete disposal. In anticipation of a banal disassembly into its component components, I decided to check the guess made by a radio amateur I knew about a possible malfunction, which there is a chance to correct on my own.
To do this, it was necessary to remove the controller, including disconnecting the cable coming from the panel. Usually everything is simple when someone has already done it before your eyes, but here you had a negative experience. The specialist who removed the controller last time took a long time to get used to it and did not succeed right away; in a word, he was heartbroken. Well, the impression from this operation remained appropriate.
When I had a chance to do it myself, I coped with the bottom connector without any difficulty. Everything here is logical and obvious, so to speak predictable. At the bottom of the connector, on the sides, there are clearly visible metal elements of a U-shaped profile, between which and the main plastic element there is a large free gap, which immediately suggests the need to simultaneously compress them and then remove the “plug” from the “socket”. When the “plug” is removed, the latch itself is clearly visible, through which the connector is locked (fixed).
But the upper connector turned out to be “inadequate”, no protruding elements, no recesses or grooves. At first glance, all structural elements are equivalent; neither the main nor the secondary parts are visible. I rushed to the forum for help. The advice was as simple as all great things - “Pick it up with your fingernail and pull!” All that was left was to figure out what to pick up. I armed myself with a flashlight and a magnifying glass and eventually got into it, we understand. It seems like smart people did it, but they created such a primitive thing (just kidding, of course).
In the working position, the clamp bar (the right side of the entire structure) is lowered (it would be even more correct to say latched) and holds the cable going to the liquid crystal panel. This is where the radio amateur needs to slip his fingernail under it (of all the available repair tools, this one turned out to be the most effective in this operation and safe for the integrity of the connector). A small nuance, you need to cling to the very edge of the bar, then it will not come off, but will turn on the tides on the sides and become vertical, at the same time releasing the train. The nail may slip off the first, second, or even third time, but in the end the desired result will be achieved. This can be clearly seen in the simple but clear video below.
How to fix a broken keyboard connector on a laptop motherboard
This guide describes how to fix a broken keyboard connector to your laptop motherboard. I'm not saying that my recommendations will work on all types of connectors in all brands of laptops, but if I can help at least a few people, I'll consider my mission accomplished.
Let's say the keyboard in your laptop has stopped working properly, and you decide to install a new keyboard yourself. You disassembled the laptop, removed the keyboard, tried to unlock the connector to disconnect the cable, etc. . . Here YOKLMN part of the cable clamp has broken!
What can you do? Unfortunately, you don't have many options. The keyboard connector is permanently soldered to the system board and cannot be replaced at home. If the connector was damaged, you will have to replace the entire motherboard, use a laptop with an external USB keyboard, or try the following trick... We hope it works, or alas...
The keyboard cable is blocked in the connector on the system board. To remove the keyboard, you must unlock the connector and remove the keyboard cable.
In the image below you can see one of the most common connectors. It has a base (white in my case) and a locking clip (brown in my case). The keyboard cable is clamped between the locking clamp and the base contacts.
To unlock the connector, you must move the clamp approximately 2 millimeters in the direction indicated by the two yellow arrows in the figure.
IMPORTANT! The locking clip must remain attached to the base of the connector.
After this, you can remove the keyboard cable (green arrow) and remove the keyboard.
If you are not careful enough, you may move the clamp too much and break it.
The image below shows the clamp with the left clamp broken off.
In the following image, both sides of the clamp are broken.
IMPORTANT! Don't throw away a broken clip, even if it looks completely useless.
If you insert the keyboard cable into the connector and do not clamp it with the clamp, the cable will not make good contact with the pins in the connector and the keyboard will not work.
Here's how to fix the broken clamp in place and get it working.
Insert the broken clip in the same way as before. In my case, both sides of the clamp are broken. What could be worse?
Carefully insert the keyboard cable into the connector. Please note that with this type of connector, the cable goes above the locking clamp.
Carefully place the broken clip in place and use a small screwdriver to insert the clip behind the cable.
Secure the connection with adhesive tape for reliability. The keyboard should work great.
The keyboard connector shown in the next image is very similar to the previous one. The only difference is that the keyboard cable is located under the clip. Install it in the same way as the previous connector.
In the next image you can see a different type of keyboard connector. The cable is inserted vertically.
To unlock the connector, you will need to lift the locking clip (brown part) approximately 2 millimeters (two yellow arrows). After this, you can remove the keyboard cable (green arrow) and remove the keyboard.
If you apply too much force, you may break it.
In my example, the right side of the clamp is broken. But you can still use it!
Insert the keyboard cable into the connector, then insert the broken locking clip correctly (behind the cable in my case) and press it down gently.
Even with broken clamps, the clamp ensures good contact between the cable and the base of the connector, and the keyboard will work.
Here is the same connector, on the opposite side. You won't even be able to tell if the locking clip is broken.
