I don’t know if anyone can help (or if I’m basically screwed and need to shell out money to send it to the repair center). I recently installed a new HD and as I was taking out the keyboard during disassembly, the infamous “brown tab” broke off. There were two little lighter tabs on the sides holding it in and I wasn’t careful with those; they’re lost in the bowels of the machine now.

So my question is, is that brown tab part something that one could reasonably fix on their own with a spare of some sort, or is it one of those pesky itty bitty things that requires a “pro” at Sony to fix for god knows how much money?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Mikaellah

You might be able to stick it into place with glue or tape, although removing it again could be pretty difficult.

Haha Okay, thanks. I guess it’s not that vital of a part—just need to make sure that ribbon stays in place?

Mikaellah

[quote author=“Mr. B”]You might be able to stick it into place with glue or tape, although removing it again could be pretty difficult.

Same thing happened to me while I had my tr3a open to upgrade the hdd.  The brown tab broke off, but the keyboard ribbon still fit snugly into the mb so i didn’t sweat it much.  My heart momentarily stopped though as I thought i had screwed up royally…...but turns out not being a big deal.  What hdd did you upgrade to?  I got tired of waiting for the mk8007gah and went with an ipod stripped 60gb mk6006gah.

Well my stupid little ribbon doesn’t fit snuggly. The port connection is huge compared to the thickness of the ribbon. I wonder why they designed it that way.

I didn’t actually upgrade the HD per se. I replaced it because windows refused to recognize the mk4004gah after about two years. It kept saying it was corrupt, etc. Interestingly enough Ubuntu Linux runs on it just fine, but I really need Windows for some of the programs I have to use for school so I bought the 4006gah. Hopefully it’s actually improved the way it claims to be.

Mikaellah

[quote author=“medstu”]Same thing happened to me while I had my tr3a open to upgrade the hdd.  The brown tab broke off, but the keyboard ribbon still fit snugly into the mb so i didn’t sweat it much.  My heart momentarily stopped though as I thought i had screwed up royally…...but turns out not being a big deal.  What hdd did you upgrade to?  I got tired of waiting for the mk8007gah and went with an ipod stripped 60gb mk6006gah.