Zaurus SL-5500 Internals
Proceed at your own risk with the instructions below if you decide to take your unit apart for whatever reason.
Following instruction on how to disassemble the Z, were copied from http://www.halfsane.com/zaurus/hw/
- Back up anything you care about--- you shouldn't lose anything, but better safe than sorry
- Remove battery cover, and battery
- Remove any CF or SD cards
- Remove screen protector
- Remove stylus
- Remove two tiny screens from each side of the keyboard cover (4 screws total)
- Slide out keyboard cover
- The keyboard cover at this point is held in place by two pins set into a small piece of metal (which is what the screws take out above screwed into). With the cover slid out, you can see the piece of metal from underneath, and right next to the hole left by one of the screws, you can see one of the two pins. You need to pry the side out to disengage those two pins. Be careful prying. You don't need to pry it out very far to disengage those pins though. Pry out too far and you will end up with a keyboard cover that doesn't attach to your Z anymore... You only need to pry out one side, as you can then lift that side up up and disengage the other side easily.
- There is a small black piece of plastic to keep track of (one on each side). It only fits in one way, and should be obvious where is fits. It is this piece that keeps you from sliding the keyboard cover off completely.
- Remove screws hiding underneath: lower-right front of Z
- Remove all the other screws you can see (1 on the back, 3 in battery area, 2 on top edge of Z, 1 on left side)
- Now for the 'hard' part. Go slow, don't force anything. You need to seperate the front from the back, which is held in place by friction and several small 'clips'. There are roughly 3 clips to a side, none on the top or bottom. I found it was easier to start on the lower left (ie by the battery switch), go up that side, across the top and down the other taking my time, just wiggling until the clips disengaged. I didn't have to pry or force. Note, the upper right corner (by the phone jack) is a tight corner to seperate because of the wire for the front light. The Z is like a clam shell with neither the front or the back being attached to the main board/lcd itself. Two other things to note: the phone jack sticks though the hole, so pay attention when pulling there. Also, the LCD front light, while not attached to the front piece, wedges in on the left-side, in the middle. Pay close attention there too.
- Seperating the components (main board, LCD) is pretty easy once you have the case apart, but be careful when seperating the LCD as the ribbon cables are tight, and the connectors easy to break. Note: The long LCD connector flips up. The short LCD connectov pulls out, and the SD card connector flips up. If you do take the LCD off, pay close attention to how the wires route for the front light-- they only fit one way, and trying to figure out that way after you've already taken it off won't be alot of fun.
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Assembly is the reverse
Smoked "Fuse"
I smoked my Z once and needed to send it back to Sharp to have the "fuse" replaced. This problem has come up for many people, so I decided to open up my Z and see if I could find what actually needed to be replaced to get it working again.
The only place I can see on the unit that has any hand soldering is where the external power connector is connect to the board, which leads me to believe that it was the only thing replaced. It looks like the connector itself will smoke the ground connection before it even hits the board if the polarity is flopped or it gets hit with a power surge.
I do not have a smoked Z right now, so I really can't test this. If you do have a smoked unit and want to troubleshoot this further, I would suggest the following steps to isolate the problem:
- Disassemble the unit with the instructions on the top of this page.
- Plug in the 5v external power supply that came with your Z.
- Test the solder points with a multimeter, Positive-to-Ground_1, then Positive-to-Ground_2. If you do not get a power reading using one or both connections, you know that it is the connector that is smoked.
