c/electronics-repairers

Just spent 4 hours on a vintage receiver that had a single cold solder joint on the power board.

My kid's friend said his Xbox just 'got fixed' when he left it unplugged

Heard a 12 year old tell my son his Series S stopped turning on, so he left it off the wall for two days. Plugged it back in and it worked. Made me think about all the times I've seen a full power cycle clear weird faults in modern gear. How many 'broken' things just need the caps to drain fully? Ever run into a device that needed a specific long reset time, like more than 30 seconds?

A customer brought in a 1980s VCR from their attic and asked if I could 'just clean the heads'.

I opened it up in my shop and found a mouse nest made of shredded wires and insulation, which explained the burning smell. The owner was shocked and said, 'My mom's wedding video is still in there,' making me feel awful about the likely total loss. Has anyone else had a simple request turn into a major salvage job on old media devices?

I always thought those cheap USB power testers were just for show

For years, I figured if a phone or tablet wasn't charging, the port was just dirty or the cable was bad. I'd clean it, swap cables, and if that didn't work, I'd start looking for a broken trace on the board, which is a huge pain. Last month, a customer brought in a tablet that would only charge super slow. I grabbed a little $15 USB power tester I got as a gift and never used. Plugged it in, and it showed the voltage was dipping way down under load, even with a good cable. That pointed straight to a bad capacitor on the 5V line near the port, not the port itself. Fixed it in twenty minutes. Now I hook that little thing up first for any charging issue. Has anyone else found a simple tool that saved you from going down a rabbit hole?

Looking through old repair logs from my shop in Tacoma, I saw a pattern with 2008-era LCD TVs.

I found a note that we replaced over 30 bad capacitors in Samsung LN-T4665F models in just one year. The whole line had a known issue with cheap caps from one factory. It's wild how a single faulty part could cause so many identical failures. Anyone else remember dealing with that specific capacitor plague?

A simple trick for finding tiny screws that changed my bench time

For years, I'd just dump a device's screws into a small dish or a magnetic tray. I'd spend what felt like ages, maybe 10 minutes on a laptop teardown, just trying to match them up at the end, holding each one up to the light to check thread pitch. The change came about six months ago after a frustrating repair on a 2017 MacBook Pro. I was tired and put a screw in the wrong spot, which stripped the post. Now, I use a piece of plain white paper and a pen. I lay the paper flat, place each screw in the order I remove it, and draw a quick circle around it. When I'm done, I have a perfect map. It adds maybe 30 seconds to the start, but it saves me from that frantic searching and costly mistakes. Does anyone else have a simple, low-tech method that saves them a headache?

Appreciation post: That old trick with a pencil eraser for cleaning edge connectors actually saved a Sega Genesis I was about to scrap.

Honestly, this unit from a garage sale had no video and I'd already reflowed the main chips with no luck. Tbh, I gave the cartridge slot a good scrub with a white eraser like I saw in a magazine in the 90s and the picture came right back. Ngl, what other old school fixes like that are still totally valid today?

Just bought a $30 USB microscope for checking solder joints and it's a total game changer for board work.

Honestly, spent 4 hours yesterday chasing a phantom short on a 2018 MacBook Pro board

It was just a tiny bit of conductive dust under a capacitor near the CPU. My thermal camera showed a hot spot, but I kept looking at the wrong power rail. Finally cleaned it with some IPA and a soft brush, booted right up. Ngl, felt pretty dumb but also relieved. Anyone else had a repair where the fix was way simpler than the hunt?

A customer told me his 'fixed' laptop from a big box store died again in 3 days

He brought it to my shop, and I found a cold solder joint on the DC jack that they clearly just reflowed without cleaning. It got me thinking about the push for fast, cheap fixes versus doing it right the first time, even if it costs more. Where do you draw the line between a quick repair and a proper one for your customers?

Hot take: I chose a $30 Chinese hot air station over a Hakko for my main bench.

Everyone said I'd regret it, but after calibrating it myself, it's handled 6 months of daily board work flawlessly. Has anyone else had a good run with off-brand gear they were told to avoid?

PSA: I saw a repair shop in Portland charging $75 just to look at a laptop

I was walking around the industrial part of town last week and saw a new shop's sign. It said they charge a flat $75 'diagnostic fee' for any laptop, even if you don't get the work done. It got me thinking hard about our trade. On one side, that fee covers our time and skill, and stops people from wasting it. We all know how long a real check can take. But on the other side, it feels like a big wall for a customer. They might just throw the thing away if it's an old model, which is bad for everyone. I've always done free estimates, but maybe I'm leaving money on the table. What's your shop's policy on this? Do you think a high look-at fee is fair, or does it scare off good business?

Tried a different flux on a stubborn PS4 HDMI port and it actually worked

I was fixing a friend's PS4 with a dead HDMI port, and I ran out of my usual no-clean flux. All I had left was this old, cheap rosin flux paste from a kit I bought like 3 years ago. I figured it was junk, but I used it anyway just to get the job done. To my surprise, the solder flowed way better and the new port went on perfectly on the first try. I guess the old stuff had a better activator for that oxidized board. Anyone else have a 'bad' product that secretly works great for a specific fix?

Had to pick between a $15 hot air station and a $80 one for a phone screen job

I was fixing a cracked iPhone 8 screen for a friend and my old station died mid-job. Grabbed the cheap one from the corner store, and it actually worked fine for that single repair, but the temp control was shaky. Anyone have a go-to budget brand that holds up for more than a few uses?

Had a weird short on a 2018 MacBook Pro board today

I was working on a liquid damaged A1990 board in my shop in Denver, and the 5V rail kept dropping to zero under load. After an hour with the thermal camera, I found a tiny speck of corrosion under a 0201 capacitor near the CD3215 chip, something I would have missed without the cam. Has anyone else run into a short that small causing a full rail collapse, or did I just get unlucky?

Had a customer bring in a vintage 1978 Pioneer receiver last month, said his dad left it to him and it just hummed. Took me a full weekend to track down a single bad capacitor on the power supply board. The look on his face when it powered up clean was worth every minute.

Had a customer bring in a 'dead' Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra that just needed a new SIM card

They were convinced the logic board was fried because the phone kept saying 'No SIM'. I popped out the tray, and the old SIM was literally cracked in half. Put in a new one from the drawer, and it booted right up. Charged them twenty bucks for the part and the five minutes it took. How many of you get these 'major repairs' that turn out to be the simplest fix?

I fixed a 2015 MacBook Pro in my shop last week and everyone told me to just toss it

Three years ago, a client in Portland brought me that same laptop with a dead logic board, and I swapped it for a used one. Last month, the display backlight went out, and folks online said it was a lost cause. But last week, I found a single corroded capacitor near the LVDS connector, replaced it for about $2 in parts, and it runs fine now. Why are we so quick to write off older gear when a simple fix can give it years more life?

My cheap hot air gun melted its own handle last night

I was working on a stubborn HDMI port replacement for a PS5 board, maybe my third one this week. The gun was a no-name brand I picked up for $40 from an online marketplace about six months ago. I had it set to 380C, which is normal for this job, and was maybe five minutes into heating when I smelled burning plastic. Looked down and the plastic housing around the grip had actually started to sag and bubble. I had to shut it off fast and let it cool for an hour before I could even touch it to finish the job with my backup iron. It wasn't just a nuisance, it's a real safety hazard I didn't see coming. Has anyone else had a tool fail in a dangerous way like this, and what brand did you switch to that actually holds up?

Switched from a generic hot air station to a proper Hakko one for BGA work

The old one had such inconsistent airflow it was a gamble every time. The Hakko's digital control and steady heat made a reflow on a PS4 motherboard actually work on the first try. Anyone have a favorite tip for keeping those tiny balls aligned during the process?

Showerthought: I spent $80 on a 'universal' power supply tester that was basically junk.

Bought it online for a quick bench check on some laptop bricks. The voltage readings were all over the place, like 2 volts off on a 19v line. Tried it on three known-good adapters, same junk results. Ended up just using my old multimeter like always. Anyone know a reliable brand for these, or are they all a waste of cash?

Shoutout to the guy who fixed my 1990s boombox at the swap meet

Honestly, he was just using a basic multimeter and a soldering iron from a tackle box. It made me miss when you could fix stuff with simple tools instead of needing a $2000 hot air station and software. Anyone else feel like the skill floor for repair keeps getting higher?

I used to hate working on old tube TVs until I found a trick with a $20 signal generator

For years, I'd get these big old sets from the 70s with weak or fuzzy pictures, and I'd just start swapping tubes and checking caps, which took forever. Then about six months ago, I picked up a cheap used BK Precision 4040 signal generator at a flea market in Dayton. Instead of guessing, I started injecting a clean video signal right at the grid of the video output tube. The difference was night and day. I could see exactly where the signal got messed up in the circuit. Last week, I fixed a Magnavox in under an hour because the issue was a drifted resistor value I never would have found otherwise. It turned a frustrating guessing game into a straight line to the problem. Has anyone else had a simple tool change their whole approach to a specific repair job?

Just realized I've been using my $50 hot air station wrong for two years because the manual was in German.

I was complaining to another tech about how my rework always looked messy, and he asked if I ever changed the airflow setting from 'blast furnace' to 'gentle breeze', which was apparently on page 3 of the diagrams I never bothered to translate.

Can we talk about the gamble on a $400 thermal camera for phone repair?

I remember when a bad solder joint meant poking around with a meter and a lot of guesswork. About a year ago, I finally bit the bullet and dropped around $400 on one of those little thermal imaging cameras that plugs into your phone. The first time I used it, it felt like cheating. I had a laptop board with a short, and the camera showed me a tiny resistor glowing hot in seconds, something I would have spent an hour hunting for. But honestly, since that first big win, it mostly sits in the drawer. Most of the stuff I fix these days, from cracked screens to simple power issues, just doesn't need it. It's a cool tool that solved one big headache, but I'm not sure it was worth the cash for my usual work. Has anyone else bought a specialty tool that ended up being a bit of a one-trick pony?