Okay, I need some technical help. My genius EE former roommate Jon Brookshire isn't on IM and my old laptop is littered in tiny pieces across the coffee table. The damn thing won't turn on -- no fans, no hard drives spinning, nothing.

Right now, I'm hoping the problem lies with a certain doohickey that sits on the daughtercard holding the power switch and status LEDs. It's got "S2" written over it, and it looks kind of like this:

It's long and thin, has a hole in the middle, and is mostly encased in a light blue plastic insulator. All of these things are by design. What looks wrong with it is some brown discoloration on the left, and the fact that there's a hair-thin break partway through (the vertical gap -- in the picture it's somewhat exaggerated), as if it has split and the two sides shifted slightly so they're offset. Also -- very encouragingly -- it doesn't pass current from one side to the other (either direction -- it's not a diode), according to my newly acquired multimeter (and assuming I'm using it right to test for continuity by using the 200 ohm resistance test setting). Sounds like a burnt-out component to me.

It would be awfully nice if this were the problem -- it's close to the power switch, it's easy to get to, and it doesn't look very expensive. Unfortunately, I don't know what it is. Any ideas? A fuse of some sort? Nothing would please me more than somebody saying "it's nothing important, just short it out and start up your laptop" (which is a KDS 6480, if that matters). But I'm scared to try that without knowing what I'm doing. If anyone has any friends that are electrical engineers, do me a favor and bug them to check out the graphic above and see if they can tell me what it is.