I just finished the RTC circuit replacement on the two 11th Gen FW13s in our household. All in all, it went pretty smoothly - the second (my partner’s batch 1) took maybe 10 minutes total (from disassembly to replacement/solder to reassembly). The circuit is a tight fit into the coin cell socket, though - I cracked the socket on the first one (my machine) but I rigged up a fix. The second attempt went perfect, probably because I was more careful.
To solder, I put the solder on the tip (I used a generic “small” chisel tip), held the wire over the circuit with tweezers, and then just tapped the tip to the wire/circuit and lifted away, and repeated until the wire stuck. It only took two or three tries, and turned out pretty decent.
It is so nice to be able, after reassembly and before connecting power, to press the power button and have it finally turn on without first connecting it to power regardless of the battery status.
Rework Instructions for 11th Gen Mainboards to enable powering the RTC circuit from the main battery
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