Curse

Winterclaw · Jan 26, 2010, 11:20 PM // 23:20

Below is a picture of one of two wires that were hooked up in my computer and soldered at the other end to the metal thing in the top left. The gold ends of both wires are connected to a tiny card (half an inch by 3 inches). Unfortunately one of the wires were damaged when opening the case.

I'm not too sure what that little card is for but I'm pretty sure the wire shouldn't be broken.

I tried emailing HP support, but they aren't being helpful after playing email tag for a few days now.

Elder III · Jan 27, 2010, 12:07 AM // 00:07

is that black plastic from the front of your tower? It's hard to tell exactly what I'm looking at here.....

Reformed · Jan 27, 2010, 01:25 AM // 01:25

Where is the other end of the wire attached, to the motherboard or to the case? That plate you are showing screwed into the plastic just looks like it's producing a ground if anything electrical at all. Here's the $64,000 question...does the computer still boot and function correctly?

Edit: A quick search says it's most likely your HPs wifi antenna, talk about a bad place to put it

. The actual part is..."P/N 502302-001 Antenna : Planar Inverted-F (type) antenna (PIFA) - For 802.11A/B/G/N WLAN card"

Winterclaw · Jan 27, 2010, 01:47 AM // 01:47

Elder, the black thing is the top of my tower.

Reformed, the other end of the wires are soldered to that metal thing on the top of the case. It is screwed on to the case and to nothing else. I did a search on that part you gave me and that really sounds like my problem. I tested the computer before I pulled out the PSU and it worked then.

Elder III · Jan 27, 2010, 03:37 AM // 03:37

eh, why is the top of your tower detached? Or is this one of those non standard cases that HP and Dell sometimes use?

I agree with Reformed though, it looks like just a ground, if you have a solder gun you could fix it to the same condition it was before pretty quickly too.

Winterclaw · Jan 27, 2010, 04:02 AM // 04:02

It wasn't the top of the tower technically, it was some silly plastic thing on top of the tower and the person helping me insisted it needed to come off.

If it is a grounding wire, why is it connected to plastic and nothing else? Shouldn't it go back to the PSU if it is for grounding?

Reformed · Jan 27, 2010, 02:17 PM // 14:17

Not necessarily no, my first thought was that this was some type of strange case intrusion sensor with the plate producing a chasis ground. Seems silly now...had I seen the other end of the cable (which should be attached to either your NIC or the mobo) I would have known what it was. The PSP uses the exact same type of snap connector for its wifi.

Nerull · Feb 06, 2010, 10:15 PM // 22:15

Yes the wire looks like one that goes to your wireless card. There should be a white and black wire.