Ok sorry for double post , but, breakthrough here, I believe about 99.98% that little chip ( i assume it's little to fit in there) is to store info like model number, etc, you know SYS INFO. If your thing is broke they get the info from the little chip and they know what's in it. How I got this idea? well, on the Sony Vaio website they have a support section. Interestingly there's a button to "Detect My Model Automatically".
http://esupport.sony.com/perl/select...4,26,66,9,70,5
Can't miss the button dead center!
