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Bad Capacitors

Aspire Lite 16 N24G1

About 6 months ago this one had a hard impact on the same side the power connector plugs in, a pair of capacitors are right after the power connector, one of those was shorted, probably cracked from the impact and slight flexing of the board in just the wrong place. I couldn’t tell which one so I just replaced both. If it’s a situation like this you probably really need both especially because they are the two capacitors doing the heavy lifting for the entire 19v power rail. Cause = Violence

HP Compaq Pro 4300 SFF

This one is from last week, after cleaning the internals, RAM contacts etc. it still just powers on and does nothing, not posting and no display, this one there were three 6v 1800uf capacitors, the one right next to the power connector from the power supply the top actually bulges inwards, the other two near the RAM are swelling at the top, I don’t think they are the cause of the problem but but they are all slowly failing so replaced all three stooges and bam……the world is cursed by another HP small form factor PC coming back from the dead. Cause = Old Age

HP X360 14" Something Something

This one is from a couple of years ago, the laptop had a crack from an impact in the top left corner of the screen and front left corner of the body of the laptop, main input mosfet is cutting off the power because it’s detecting a short to ground and causes the telltale blinking. The video is 1v injected into the output side of that mosfet to see where the short actually is. Circled area in the photo is the input protection mosfet and the arrow is pointing at the shorted capacitor.

Tiny capacitor near where the M.2 and SATA HDD plug in on the front left corner of the machine. 25v 10uf.

I had this thing fixed and ready to go within a few hours and stole the replacement capacitor from an apple macbook junk donor board.

I didn’t take any photos, this was the first board i fixed with my thermal camera so i was a bit excited and and also I hate the HP x360 cursed range of laptops in particular, it’s usually an over priced crappy screen replacement most of the time so this was a nice change doing a board repair on one. Cause = Violence

ASUS TP412U

This one is from last week actually, random customer from a property.

input mosfet blinking, and a small warm spot below CPU, the laptops power adapter shuts down so I had to use a really crappy universal power adapter with no protection circuitry to see this, this one is a good example of why it’s so important to only use 1v when injecting voltage. the coil next to the shorted cap, if you inject voltage to the top side it goes to the CPU, the bottom side lights up the first of the 3 large capacitors right next to the coil. In this case I have no idea what replacement value it should be, but because there is actually 4 used to bridge that connection, 3 large ones and one little, i’m sure it will be getting enough power with just two big ones and the little guy. DC input mosfet is at top right, shorted capacitor is indicated with a red arrow.

Cause = ? Violence ? I’m guessing a hard impact

Apple Macbook A1466

This one is from a really long time ago. First time I fixed an Apple A1466 board, first time failed tantalum capacitor.

Tantalum capacitor near the battery connector, looks fine from above right? nope exploded out the side all over the mosfet. I replaced the mosfet and capacitor etc. Watch out for tantalum capacitors, they like to explode out the sides and look completely fine from above.

I don’t think it’s particularly common, but it’s sneaky so they might slip passed you if you don’t have a good look at their sides.

Cause = Normal (A macbook might explode for no reason at any time)

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Xbox Series X - No power but power supply ok

So This guy bought a faulty Xbox Series X on Ebay which you can get for a bit less than half the cost of a new console, looks like he was lucky and it really was a console that nobody attempted to repair, he was hoping he just needed a new power supply but he tested the power supply and found the 12v power cable from the power supply was not shorted but the power connectors on the mainboard were shorted, so something somewhere on the main power rail is shorted.

Those capacitors are 25v 10uf for anyone needing to know, there are schematics for these boards circulating online and that’s how I found out, for perspective those capacitors cost approx 20c each if you buy a spool of 100 from mouser so I spent 40c worth of caps replacing the failed one and the innocent bystander right next to it.

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Panasonic Toughbook FZ-55 no power

So almost a year ago I got a call from someone with a brand new Toughbook that failed after 1 week of use, no power at all, I couldn’t resist taking this job because these machines cost between $2500 to $3500 and a pretty decent and over engineered machines, what could have possibly overcome the rugged design and caused the machine to fail so early in it’s life?

Liquid damage but not the normal kind, this was caused from condensation because that machine is left powered off overnight in a really small office on a work site with an air conditioner set to chill the room to the lowest temperature possible, the humidity must also be really high so in the middle of the night the magnesium alloy of the chassis must be the coldest thing in the room and a magnet for condensation, if not during the night then it will be after the machine is powered on and the internals heat up.

The CPU fan was then spraying the liquid around the machine, see photo 2 below.
the plastic sheets covering the mainboard to protect from liquid ingress did the opposite and liquid pooled under the plastic and ran along the board under the plastic……..Amazing.

So Panasonic Toughbook FZ-55 one weakness is really cold conditions with humidity above a certain level……don’t take one on a trip to Antarctica, really expensive dehumidifier. The detailed specs for this model states IPx3 water resistant rating, The Toughbook 20 and 33 convertible and G2 models are apparently IP65 dust and water resistant.

The customer called again about 8 months later and told me it had worked fine since so staying up all night instead of sleeping and speed running getting this done was well worth it.

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A1534 no power, faulty CD3215C00

First important detail was the customer had a really cheap aftermarket power adapter and questionable USB-C cable, machine gets no power and doesn’t charge, USB-C amp meter confirms this, tested with another power adapter, faults the same but my test USB-C adapter gets stuck on 15v instead of negotiating like 19v-20v from the charger that it shouldt. The customers adapter gets stuck on 4 or 5v with no current at all, open the machine and the CD3215 is getting red hot because it has an internal short, USB-C port on side of laptop has no damaged.

replacement chip arrived, replaced it, CD3215 no longer gets red hot but both power adapters still fault the same on their own and no power at all if I try with the USB-C amp meter, I wasted a lot of time assuming there must be something else wrong with the board or the first replacement CD3215 was not shorted like the original but maybe faulty in another way.

Turns out the laptop was fixed but it was the only thing that was working, my test USB-C power adapter was faulty, also the customers dodgy USB-C power adapter faulty, customers USB-C cable straight up looked cursed so I didn’t even entertain using it, and my USB-C amp meter was completely non-functional. CD3215 is a common chip to fail and is used on multiple apple models.
Be super careful with USB-C, use good quality power adapters and cables and hopefully avoid fun situations like this, also when assessing something have a good look at the USB-C ports under a microscope and shine some light down into the socket so you can see if there are any bent or damaged or missing pins.
Also with replacing the chip it’s well worth covering everything around the chip with high temp kapton tape or teflon tape or aluminium foil or all three and just have the chip itself exposed for removal, it is really easy to blow one of those little resistors out of place when removing the chip or bump them when removing the excess solder from the pads on the board so just be really really careful.

so in summary USE GOOD USB-C POWER ADAPTERS AND CABLES I don’t have a recommendation for cables at the moment because low quality but over priced cables on ebay and amazon etc. and on sale at fuel stations is a real problem. But as for power adapters I would recommend Targus USB-C power adapters, the 45W one I got works well, compatible with any real USB-C powered device regardless of brand, samsung, apple etc. you’ll pay between $70-$100 for one but they are a decent quality product and when you consider the $20-$30 dirty cheap adapters might damage anything plugged into them it’s really really well worth spending the extra on good power supplies.
https://au.targus.com/collections/power-adapters/products/45w-usb-c-power-adapter

Note about CD3215C00: The datasheet for this chip is not available and a faulty chip won’t always be obviously shorted to ground and getting really hot, for more advanced troubleshooting when you think you might have a CD3215 that is quietly faulty then the information in the community wiki that old man Rossmanns Repair started is probably your best bet, there is some information about cross compatibility or lack of cross compatibility with different boards that use different versions of the CD3215’s https://logi.wiki/index.php/CD3215_Bootup_Sequence

Большинство посещений моего блога о ремонте макбуков — это русские из результатов поиска яндекса в последнее время. Я предполагаю, что ремонт плат стал гораздо более распространенным в России за последние два года, расскажите мне о своих приключениях с ремонтом плат макбуков в комментариях.

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Ryzen AM4 bent CPU pins

So this guy brings me a new PC his mate built for him and they don’t know why it doesn’t work

This is a perfect example of watching some youtube videos and thinking you know more than an expert because you “did your research” you have enough information to think you know everything but not enough to realize just how much you don’t know, this has always been a problem with technology, it’s a growing problem with with a lot of other things…..cough..anti-vaxers…cough… right wingers..cough cough.

  1. CPU was in the socket the wrong way around, it doesn’t slide in the wrong way around so it would have had to be forced in like this and they actually screwed the heat sink down all the way really tight so bent pins all over CPU and damaged CPU socket

  2. NVMe slot damaged, turned out to be mostly bent pins that I could straighten and it worked. The riser that screws into the mainboard for the SSD to screw into was missing so the SSD was just bouncing around not secured, they apparently lost the rest of the screws, luckily I had a spare to replace it with.

  3. I was about to test the system and check the mainboard for any damage I might have missed and found damaged components just below the first RAM slot, 2 caps and a resistor broken and the corner missing off a generic driver IC.

  4. There were two different pairs of RAM, one Gskill pair that is the new RAM and a pair of Samsung RAM i think it was, turns out the Gskill RAM had damaged pins, it’s not good to use unmatched random pairs of RAM like this, expect quirky unreliable behavior, I’m not even sure how that kind of damage happens. The owner is mostly playing games like league of legends so one 16GB pair is overkill, 32GB of RAM is super duper overkill.

  5. Oh it’s also using one of those super cheap sub $100 higher than 500W power supplies that have a really high failure rate and barely have 80-plus rating or don’t

    Click on photos for a larger view, captions on every photo, if you are using a smart phone or ipad and don’t have a mouse cursor then sorry no captions for you.

update 20-09-2022 Additional information I should have originally mentioned

with pin grid array CPU’s (the ones with legs on the CPU) it is possible to replace broken pins by transferring them from a donor CPU, they are actually soldered onto the CPU so don’t lose hope if you have a high end CPU with a couple of broken legs, it can usually be fixed stealing some legs from a really cheap/old CPU that uses the same size legs.
Northridge fix demonstrates this well in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF3T4tzIi88

Also if you have an intel board with legs in the CPU socket that are badly bent or broken off, it is actually possible to replace the CPU socket itself and they generally cost $10-$20 AUD, so if you have a high end intel desktop board with a mangled socket it is well worth it to repair it. The legend himself DosDude1 is the only person I’ve seen make a video demonstrating this successfully.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzMHJXHO120

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A1932 No power, No charge, Liquid damage

Someone actually sent me something other than an A1466 for once.
This one had a little bit of something get in through the back as usual and caused corrosion on 3 resistors, apple told him just to buy a new laptop, didn’t even quote for the cost of a replacement mainboard, a replacement one of these machines costs $1500 give or take a little and a replacement board costs the best part of $1000, total cost of the replacement resistors is less than 5c, probably used 50c worth of flux and the time to do it. The result is one working laptop and one very happy customer.


Click the photo for a larger view and captions on half the photos, if you’re using an iPad or smart phone and don’t have a mouse cursor then no captions for you.

Большинство посещений моего блога о ремонте макбуков — это русские из результатов поиска яндекса в последнее время. Я предполагаю, что ремонт плат стал гораздо более распространенным в России за последние два года, расскажите мне о своих приключениях с ремонтом плат макбуков в комментариях.

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Acer laptop corrosion from ants making their home inside the machine

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Acer laptop corrosion from ants making their home inside the machine

I’m sure this customer was another that said it stopped working after doing some updates……man those updates.
Anyway it’s an Acer version of those cheap, thin, 13 inch laptops, the SSD is built onto the mainboard so with a dead mainboard data is lost so board repair or no data.
I’ve seen two of these type of machines previously, a Kogan and Lenovo version, both with board failure not related to liquid damage that I was unable to fix, no board view or schematics and terrible design makes me not a fan of them.
Luckily nothing at all needed to be replaced, the corrosion was mostly just the solder joins, the ends of some components were oxidized more than I would like but they all seem to work fine with their solder joins refreshed, only one place with a broken connection that needed to be bridged with a wire, the only thing that couldn’t be salvaged was the CMOS battery connector and we don’t really need a CMOS battery, just means it doesn’t know about time passing while it’s turned off and windows 10 is pretty aggressive with syncing the time and data with time servers for the selected time zone so the time and data will never be wrong for long. I think you can configure it to sync the time more frequently. These laptops have barely any or no BIOS options that are changeable other than setting the time and date so it’s not like losing BIOS configuration is a real problem either.

Click the photo for a larger view and captions on half the photos, if you’re using an iPad or smart phone and don’t have a mouse cursor then no captions for you.

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Macbook Board Repair A1466 Liquid damage, no sound and system running slow

Another Macbook board repair, customer presented laptop with the fault description it was slow since doing the latest update, system CPU usage is 65%-70% permanently making the system slow, sound not working, light on the charger doesn’t work sometimes. Opened machine and it has spots of corrosion all over both sides of the back edge of the board, one capacitor next to SMC detached from the the board from corrosion, cleaned the corrosion, repaired all visible bad solder joins and replaced the missing capacitor and cleaned board in an ultrasonic cleaner, all issues resolved, CPU usage back to normal, Sound works, Light on charger works, extra bonus this customer actually appreciated a tech with the skills, tools and knowledge to repair his machine at the board level and didn’t threaten to kill me.

Большинство посещений моего блога о ремонте макбуков — это русские из результатов поиска яндекса в последнее время. Я предполагаю, что ремонт плат стал гораздо более распространенным в России за последние два года, расскажите мне о своих приключениях с ремонтом плат макбуков в комментариях.

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Macbook Board Repair A1466 Liquid Damage

This is not just a lesson in board repair but also dealing with crazy customers and why any business should have security cameras like I do. Repair details in the captions on the photos.

This customer was the one out of a thousand customers that acts like a complete Psycho and refuses to understand even the simplest concepts even after being shown photos showing the corrosion damage on her mainboard. Firstly nobody honest will guarantee exactly when your board will be repaired because it’s impossible to predict precisely, some boards are not reparable at all, if the CPU is fried or something else that is not replaceable or if the corrosion is too extensive etc. and there is no guarantee the visible damage is all that needs to be repaired, there can easily be invisible side affects from the corrosion that also need to be fixed and it’s kind of a step by step thing, you have the fix the obvious damage to then track down the invisible problems so you can’t know the board can be fixed until you’ve stepped through every problem one after the other. Anyone fixing something for you probably has other jobs to juggle to, your job isn’t the only job they are working on, the person throwing the biggest tantrum isn’t the most important.
99.9% of people understand this without it being any drama having to deal with them, it’s only the 0.01% of psycho customers that refuse to understand anything.

After talking a lot of trash constantly and telling me she’s going to send her husband to get me etc. standard psycho playbook stuff, I messaged this woman to tell her that her laptop was fixed and ready to go, her response was completely silence for more than 12 hours. Considering she was supposed to be in a hurry and needed it urgently you would think she would be happy to collect it and not stuff around for another week but no, eventually just more complaining and throwing a tantrum like a 2 year old, when I eventually convinced her to cut out the nonsense and collect it this woman screamed like a maniac, threatened violence, told me I was gong to die, ridiculed the fact that I only charge $50 for board repair, claimed I’m not a professional because I couldn’t predict the future with precision, meanwhile her board is repaired and all she had to do was collect her laptop, also claimed I threatened her and that she was going to call the police because I told her to “stop acting like a psycho” which is not actually a threat by any stretch of the imagination, telling me I’m going to die and threatening to get me are the things that can easily be interpreted as a threat though literally nothing is good enough for her.
One thing this one out of a thousand Psycho also didn’t consider that like most professionals I have security cameras and there is one at the front of the house aimed directly at the front gate and captures everything that happens 5 meters either side of the gate too, I have them for the same reason most businesses do, to protect themselves from trespassing and the one out of a thousand psycho customers.
It’s only the worst kind of people that think being a professional means you have to tolerate the worst kind of behavior including lies and threats from someone screaming like a spoiled 2 year old or else.
If you think I’m wrong try going into any business or organisation of any kind and screaming at the staff, trying to hit them and tell them they are going to die and see what happens, they will ask you to leave at a minimum and probably call the police, quite likely both, no worthwhile business expects their staff to tolerate abuse like that. And like myself they will probably have security cameras recording you just like I do.

Don’t be the one in a thousand psycho, understanding simple concepts isn’t that hard.

And someone doing a complex repair for such a reasonable price is something 99.9% of customers appreciate, don’t be that one out of a thousand that proves why installing security cameras was necessary.

Большинство посещений моего блога о ремонте макбуков — это русские из результатов поиска яндекса в последнее время. Я предполагаю, что ремонт плат стал гораздо более распространенным в России за последние два года, расскажите мне о своих приключениях с ремонтом плат макбуков в комментариях.

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Random Tech Adventures

Some of the more interesting jobs from customers since last post. HDD repairs and Phone repairs are going in their own separate posts soon. Repair details in the captions on every photo.

Lenovo Y520-15IKBN 80WK keyboard replacement.

ASUS ROG G74SX-TZ048V corroded USB and HDMI port replacement.

Lenovo Yoga 910-13IKB power on problem causes and solution.

Xbox One S HDMI port replacement (and power switch).

Ranting about cheap ATX power supplies.

ASUS P8Z77-M Pro Intermittent no power on repair.

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More Random Pics

The past few months mostly brought a bit of work at secret locations, lots of call outs, one dishonest customer with a laptop bent like a banana, spoiler warning her charming boyfriend punched the life out of her laptop, a really low quality repair from the same guy I most often see it come from. Usual random stuff, finishing off with hard drive and phone repair pics, the next post will probably be mostly phone and HDD repair pics.

Captions on every photo this time.

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HTC Vive Sweat damaged misadventures

The Vive like a lot of things, no official parts supply, you’re buying second hand parts from other dead Vive’s at inflated prices if you’re lucky or you’re trying to craft a part yourself from pieces of other stuff because this special little cable is just not available anywhere.

Service is based in Ireland, it takes months and the last one the same customer sent back under warranty completely went missing so they had to give him a new one, costs quite a bit for out of warranty service as well.

Most valuable learning lesson was the plot twist as the end

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WTF have I been doing again

The whole problem with people not wanting to read hasn’t really become any less of a problem since my last post so here is another bunch of random photos in no particular order. Yayyyyy?
There are captions on most of the photos for people that like to read.

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WTF have I been doing ?!?

Considering most of my customers, haters and friends are still confused about what I'm doing with myself. I decided just to post all the most interesting/boring photos with some captions if you're lucky otherwise just use your imagination.

 

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Evolution of the Microsoft Scam and what YOU can do

The good old Microsoft scam that's been going on for years now has grown, many different groups all carrying out the same scam calling people claiming to be from Microsoft and able to fix all their errors for a small fee they mention after they have remote access to your system, recently these con artists have changed tactics and claim to be from Telstra which has been successful for them and prompted Telstra to take the problem seriously for the first time ever.

If you get pestered by these calls you can call Telstra and they will put a trace on your phone line for 30 days and next time the scam artists call a detailed record of the origin of the call will be recorded, you then call Telstra and they can use this information to block that number from reaching you or anyone else in this country, it's not a permanent fix but if everyone does their part, the more often these scam artists have to change their numbers the more they will be discouraged from calling this country.

Also the more Teamviewer log files I have from targets of this fraud the more detailed map I can make of how many groups are actively doing this and where in the world they are. so far two distinct groups, one group are more of an annoyance than anything, the other more sophisticated and malicious.

Also if they gain access to your system, don't ask them to get out, just unplug your internet connection, if they have enough warning depending on which group are calling they may do something to lock you out of your system, I saw this for the first time a few weeks ago and was able to overcome the encryption of the system registry preventing the user from accessing their own computer without having to pay a mysterious fraudster to let us back in.

Don't let anyone tell you there is nothing you can do, especially if you are being called frequently by these fraudsters. The only thing required for evil people to succeed is for good people to do nothing. 

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Use your PC's idle resources to help find a Cure

Update 15-03-2020
Folding@home https://foldingathome.org/ is a project that lets anyone use their computers hardware to process data required to find cures to diseases such as cancer, mostly it simulates protein folding and thus the name folding@home. Recently they have put a big effort into getting a bunch of projects online specific to finding a cure for COVID-19, anyone with a decently powerful GPU or CPU you can’t play games all the time, use your machine while you’re at work or asleep to help medical experts and scientists find a cure faster. If you’re mining crypto currency then you probably have lots of GPU’s, you can contribute about 20 times the computational power of the average gamer, help resolve this pandemic faster so the regular folk stop fighting over toilet paper, but more importantly for the older generation and people with underlying conditions who are at most risk and then we can get back to playing games or mining crypto currency or just having an over powered GPU idle most of the time.

I’m folding on team 231300 and I’m folding as TheRabidTech come join in and see who can fold the most proteins.

Pro Tip: You might want to tweak the cooling profile of your GPU to keep it below 80 degrees C so it can live long and prosper. If there is anything wrong with your PC’s cooling, folding@home is a great way to find out, it won’t take long to overheat.

Sources:

https://twitter.com/Barnacules/status/1238654725098065920
https://pcmasterrace.org/articles/1d4df/folding-home-actively-targets-coronavirus

Original Post:

Hello there, now that I have your attention I want to tell everyone how they can help cure cancer and figure out a lot of other things for free everyday, even while you sleep.
Here is a link to BOINC http://boinc.berkeley.edu/  which explains itself pretty well on the website. Basically a screen saver for your computer that uses your resources while the system is idle to process data on behalf of scientific research projects that are under funded and need a million million computers to process all the data they need to interpret to make discoveries and solve problems..........such as cancer........the more people that contribute the quicker answers come, at least half a dozen of these projects are related to medical research that will help cancer treatment, there is even one called GPUgrid for the PlayStation 3 because CellMD crunches data a million times quicker on a PS3 GPU than anything else.
So get your PC working on the problems of the world.

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Products ?!?

What do people want? tired of the boring smelly old products generally available on store shelves, want some more variety? something a bit unique? like a metal chassis gaming mouse from china half the price of similar products sold here?? Wrap your hand around some cold classy metal instead of tacky plastic.

Or perhaps keyboards, mice and flash drives made from bamboo rather than plastic. Express what a tree hugging hippie of a nerd you are. 

Feel free to share your thoughts on what unique products or brands not readily available you would like someone to be selling in the area, if there is enough genuine interest in any of the ideas I'll order a small shipment to see how good the product is and let interested people try them out.

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