My personal laptop, this very day, is a Lenovo (Thinkpad) X201 from 2011. That’s more than 11 years of service, and still pretty well holding up (in no small part thanks to Archlinux and Xfce). Nonetheless a few weeks ago, it just decided after a very “helpful” spark when plugged in, that it won’t turn on nor charge 🙀… After reading a bit and experimenting with the charger, the battery, &c, the probable verdict that “it needs a motherboard replacement”. I did start to consider, whether to give it piece and just wholesale replace it with a new machine, but since I’ve already taken it apart a few times, I thought that self-service might just give it a bit longer lease on life.
First time ordering from AliExpress, I actually found a bunch of people still selling the board, and at ~80USD it doesn’t even break the bank (even if it wouldn’t work, or wouldn’t work for long). Thus ordered one with the right CPU that I vaguely remembered (it’s soldered on, so couldn’t be replaced), and waited. The predicted shipping time was something like 40-70 days, but actually it turns out things can arrive in less than 14, if the delivery company sets its mind to it…
Now just had to get my trusty little precision screw set and start working on it (like a few times before, but hopefully with better success).