Disassembling Fujitsu T2010

This past weekend (March 7, 2009) I decided to disassemble my Fujitsu t2010 tablet to clean its fan from dust and other junk.
Since it is a quite fragile and expensive machine, maybe taking it apart wasn’t such a good idea but I did it anyways.
There were only a few sites/forums available that would help me on this process and most of the pictures weren’t available to be able to follow the instructions. So I decided to take some pictures as I go along to make a photo journal.
I hope that this guide will help someone out there who is also trying to disassemble a tablet computer.

Things you need:
-Pen & Paper
-Screw Driver
-Tweezers or anything alike

Note: It is probably a really good idea to keep track of the screws you will be taking out from the laptop by keeping them on a piece of paper in a mapped structure. This way we won’t get the screws mixed up and they’ll all hopefully go back to where they came from. I also taped the screws on the paper not to lose them. Here is what it looked like:

Fujitsu screw layer

I also wrote down where the screws came from and which way the paper should be facing.
So here are my step by step instructions to take the t2010 apart:

  1. Flip the laptop upside down, take out the battery, unscrew the hard-drive and ram sections and take them out.
  1. Now, remove all the screws you can find under the laptop. The 2 red circled screws are for the hinge of the monitor. You don’t need to take them out yet but you will eventually, so might as well do it now.

Fujitsu bottom

  1. Flip the laptop to normal position, lift up the monitor (Be careful since the hinge screws are taken out). Now we will remove the plastic that sits under the monitor (above the keyboard).

Stick the flat-head of the screw driver under this piece just above the F9-F10 keys. Then, slide the screw driver down to the right (towards the delete key) you will hear the piece come out. Now do the same towards the left side (esc key) starting from F6-F7. This piece should pop out as well.

  1. Now there is some space above the keyboard so, it is time to remove the keyboard. Lift the north end of the keyboard an inch and push it away from yourself to get the bottom part of it come out of its spot. Be very careful because there are 3 data cables connected to it which we will disconnect in the next step.

Fujitsu keyboard data cable

  1. Remove the cable that is located above the F2-F3 keys by carefully pulling it up (circled in green above). Without lifting the keyboard more than 2 inches, remove the data-cable that connects to the mouse-stick by lifting up the black section of the cable holder up; and the cable will come out itself (circled in red below). Then remove the cable. Pull the blue mouse button data-cable to remove it as well (circled in orange below).

Fujitsu mouse data cables

  1. Detach the monitor (boss level):

Make sure to remove the stickers that are located in the back of the laptop in between the usb and network sockets that cover the 2 screws which hold the monitor. Remove those screws as well. Now, you need to remove the 2 cable hubs (white & black) that are right under the hinge (circled in green below). This is done by holding the whole hub from its sides and lifting it up. Don’t try to remove the tiny cables one by one! One last cable to remove is the one that is under the power button. Remove it by pulling it away from its hub. Once this is done, slowly lift up the monitor out of its place and put it in front of the keyboard as if you were laying the monitor flat on the table (180 degrees). The monitor still has cables connected to it; so be careful. Now, the plastic frame around the keyboards old location should come out and you’re done!

Fujitsu monitor cables

  1. TADAAAA we have reached the motherboard and the CPUs who are under those metal plates.

This is all for today. I hope this guide was useful. Feel free to send me any questions or comments you have through the Post or Contact portals.

Cheers,
Kaan