I recently received an old Acer Aspire Switch 10 computer that no longer ran: there was no response when pushing the power button. The most obvious hypothesis is that the batteries are flat and need to be charged. Unfortunately, my gift of the computer did not include its matching AC power adapter.

If I was confident that was the only issue, I would go out and buy a power adapter. But I didn't know if there were more serious problems in this machine and didn't want to throw money at an unknown quantity. Besides, I received this computer on the premise that I wanted to take it apart for fun, so that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Putting its serial number into Acer's support site told me the model number (SW5-012) and part number (NT.L4TAA.018), but no service manual. I'm spoiled by Dell who usually releases a service manual detailing how to take apart and service a computer. Apparently Acer does not follow the practice.

There were no obvious external fasteners I could loosen, so I started prying at the visible seams to see if I could release plastic clips. Once I had three loose, the remainder (~25 in all) easily popped off in sequence.

My target was the battery module which I planned to remove and charge directly. Removing the battery required removing several pieces of tape. Some of these pieces of tape were applied over connectors, presumably to help the cables stay in place. One of these cables traversed the length of the battery so I had to remove the tape and the cable to free the battery. After I carefully peeled off the tape, I reached out to disconnect the cable and... it fell off freely.

Hmm, that wasn't supposed to happen.

This cable connects the motherboard on one side of the machine to a small circuit board on the other side. The small circuit board hosts the Windows button, the volume up/down buttons, the headphone jack, and... the power button. If this cable was disconnected, it would explain why pushing the power button had no response.

Acer Power Ribbon

Since the battery was accessible now, I checked its voltage: 4.01V. Comfortably above the ~3.7V nominal voltage of a lithium-ion battery so the problem with this computer was not a dead battery. Maybe it's the loose cable I just came across? I reinstalled the cable and pushed the power button again.

And... it's alive!