I finally installed it the RTC Battery Substitute – more or less drama free!
The Substitute was definitely a very tight fit and I can see why it caused problems for people. It doesn’t quite hook under the two prongs on the north side when you’re trying to pivot it in. I hooked it under one retainer and then used a spudger as leverage to lift the other one up away from the motherboard just a little and rocked it around a little until it snapped under.
After getting The Substitute under the north clips it was still a bit of a tight fit to get it under the south retainer fingers – but a little coaxing with the spudger got it in on that side quite a bit easier than it was on the north side.
I’d recommend that people not try to force it in – just take the time with as many tries and as much jiggling to get it to seat easily without forcing.
The rest was pretty easy – a bit of time to get the wire taped in just the right position for soldering. The soldering space is pretty clear and relatively large. I got a friend with more soldering experience to do it for me, but I think really not anything for anyone with some soldering experience to fear.
Works flawlessly now – back to unconditional love for Framework! (Well, you know what I mean.)
ps. the “more or less” drama was I stripped one of the motherboard mounting screw inserts out of the chassis when re-installing the motherboard. Just careless over-torquing, really – no fault of the hardware. I was originally going to try gluing the threaded insert back into place but I wasn’t sure that I could definitely get it to drive past flush (which it definitely needs to be) without the adhesive setting so I decided to just leave out that screw. Definitely not ideal … but I’m pretty easy on my laptop and don’t carry it around a lot so pretty sure it will be fine. If/when I ever replace the MB I’ll probably try harder to repair that.