Initial Draft -- Laptop Process
blockquotes on this page indicate notes for improvement
Triage
Intake is a better term for this
Leave everything that came in the laptop with the laptop until it reaches teardown... seriously. lost case flaps and drive caddies is even more frustrating with laptops than desktops.
- Power on test
- Use eyeballs, BIOS, NSSI and Hardware Detector (via PXE boot) to fill as many fields of the existing sheet as possible
The form needs to be drastically rewritten. It needs to be more accessible, better arranged to reflect the work-flow, and offer at least advice on deciding a machine's next step
- Rough-and-ready battery test: pull power chord after a minimum of minutes on ac power
- Determine the machine's fate: Recycle, Recover, Install, Other
this step of the process is the "fall-through" case. No matter what the laptop does or doesn't or is or isn't, you do this step. There's no substitute for good one-to-one training, but the new form should make clear when you do this, i.e.: "Power on test: Does it power on? No? Well, find out the model's original specs. If it's high enough, this is worth trying to fix. Mark it for "Build/Refurbish?," note what's wrong, and pass it along." That's far too verbose, but this is perhaps the most intimidating step, especially with laptops.
as best i remember, we decided that the xubuntu minimum spec is the minimum laptop spec. "power and price versus portability" was the justification.
Build
I thinks this should be renamed "Refurbish" to more accurately reflect what's actually involved.
do dban'ing and memtesting fall under "refurbishing?" if so, then we could say that having clear memory and a wiped/tested hdd is the bare minimum for a refurbish. so even g.t.g. machines have to pass that much.
- diagnose: figure *why* what's wrong is wrong
- repair: fix it!
i think the decision to teardown a machine that was slated for repair should come after there's either no way to diagnose the problem (don't forget, we have that post code reader for really recalcitrant bastards. dee knows about it, they brought it in.), there *is* no fix, or the fix would cost us enough that we'd lose money on selling the final product. this requires real research, and may have to fall to the most experienced laptop vol. me, as things stand, or someone on staff after i've proposed. this mostly only applies to really sweet shit like the hp dv series.
- (optionally) upgrade: add ram, bigger hdd, miniPCI nic, etc.
memtest
dban
this step of the process should probably have its very own sheet
Install
skippable for Apple machines until PPC linux catches up or our donation stream starts bringing us intel Macs.
documenting this as it stands would be redundant, except for... tweak: laptops often have little hardware weirdnesses that require some user intervention, i.e.: restricted drivers for the wireless, hot buttons, funky audio chipsets, etc. so there's more to be done post-install... this should probably be turned into a checklist for a laptop specific install sheet.
Teardown
just like with the big boxes, except smaller. and more finicky.
this is the first time harddrives or memory are removed from laptops, with the exception upgrades done during the refurbish phase. otherwise all those proprietary little caddies, flaps, and screws get lost and scrambled.
lids and lcds require some extra training. we want lcds out of the lids, and we want to know what they came from
batteries always get pulled and held aside because (a) they might be handy for a later machine or (b) we need to figger out battery recycling in general. however, this is leading to a rather heavy backstock of untested and unknown batteries.
for that matter, we should be marking pulls with the exact model it came from, and doing a better job of storing pulled things like lcds, keyboards, batteries, maybe heatsinks and touchpads.
this probably best documented with a poster rather than a sheet, although the completist in me wants to store paperwork for all the torndown machines, in case anyone ever cares to analyze our laptop donation-to-sale ratio. maybe we need a great big red rubber stamp that says "DEMANFACTURED!". that would be hella sweet.
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