TF101 flickering and a loose cable

My ASUS Transformer TF101 had suddenly started flickering in all sorts of funny colors some weeks ago. As tapping it gently on the table in the right angle made the problem go away temporarily, it was clear the problem was about a loose cable, or some other hardware connection issue.

As I needed to go on a business trip the other day, I didn’t look up the warranty expiration day until later that week. Then, Murphy struck: the tablet was now 2 years + 1 day old! Calling ASUS, some friendly guy there suggested I still tried to get ASUS to accept it for warranty, because the tablet had been with them last year for 5 days, so if they added that, it would still be within the warranty period. I filled out the RMA form, but one hour later the reply was they rejected it because it was out of warranty. Another guy on the phone then said they would probably only do the adding if it had been with them for maybe 10 days, or actually really 30 days, or whatever.

Some googling suggested that the loose cable theory was indeed worth a try, so I took it apart. Thanks to a forum post I could then locate the display connector and fix it.

Putting the case back together was actually harder than disassembling it because some plastic bits got stuck, but now everything is back to normal.

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