Kitchen Table Electronics Repair: Computer Stuff
July 26th, 2010 | 
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One works, the other doesn’t. Both have bad capacitors. Curiously, the Aopen motherboard uses Nippon Chemi-Con capacitors at every location where one is needed…everywhere except those three locations, where no-name caps are used. The Samsung LCD panel was dead to the world and only hissed when plugged in. Switchmode power supplies tend to make noises at times, particularly when they’re having trouble staying in regulation. At that point, the switching frequency may drop into the range of our hearing. Turns out it was more bad caps. Some repair shops told the previous owner that it wasn’t worth fixing. I told them it was, and that I surely could. They told me to haul it away anyway.
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If the system is beeping, you probably do not have a BIOS problem. There is a problem with some device in the system, which you may or may not (if it’s built into the motherboard) be able to replace. Although some beeps (such as those that constantly repeat at the same interval) don’t tell you anything, others do have meaning. Take down what you hear, making note of long and short beeps or pauses. Then search for “BIOS beep codes” on the web.
That will help you find the problem.
hw do u replace the bios chip if the motherboard is givin beep and no display on a working display unit
I was thinking of maybe getting a temperature controlled Weller, but Metcal is a name I’ve heard a few times as well. This cheap little Radio Shack iron has done surprisingly well. I also have their desoldering iron (45W/$10) and it works very nicely as long as you can get the suction tip over the lead you want to desolder.
Yes.
It’s hard to say.
While the quality of manufacturing might very well not be as good as it once was, the reliability of many parts has gone up. So too has the integration–and a highly integrated part that fails is not likely something you can fix because it’s A) potted B) made of microscopic components C) it’s not well known what it does internally and/or D) impossible to open without destruction.
Fortunately, these integrated parts are usually reliable.
That was my attempt at doing something humorous. If I’d have really had my thinking cap on, I’d have arranged for one of my brothers to kill the lights and then put the sound effect in on top of that.
No, I hadn’t heard that. I’m not sure how electrically isolated the heating element in an soldering iron is from the rest of it. I have never had one that far apart.
well if a monitor would hiss at me and go fizz bang pop pop bang it would be time for the good ole chevy to put the computer monitor in its place then finish it off with orchestra playing a good pounding with a sledge hammer lol
Sign of a perfect repair!
BZZZZT! FIZZ! BANG! POP! I’ll show you, $%^! monitor. Where’s my hammer! (A scene from the “Percussive Maintenance School of Electronic Repair”)
I bought the fans you see in the back on eBay. I had a CPU heatsink fan that was an exact fit but I didn’t measure it precisely (was in a hurry) and the fans I bought were a little too small to fill the holes at 60mm. You’d probably need to go a bit bigger than that. The front fan is the same as what you’d find in the average PC power supply (3 inches?).
Excellent video…5*****
I use 15W for things like surface mounts, diodes, transistors, etc. For caps and other heavy items like DC jacks, flybacks, etc I use my 40W iron. Gotten so bad with caps I buy 10 of a type from Digikey when I need to order them – cheaper per item and I have them on hand especially common types like 1000uf and 470uF. I probably do 5 cap repairs a week right now. Good thing laptops dont use them, they’d be a mofo to work over. I do a lot of hot air rework on them and printers anymore though.
Hey there…long time, no see! (Hope all’s well with you.)
I had a better sound that I’d hoped to use, one that I made myself when I happened to pull the headphone connector out of a Sharp boom box. Amazingly, I happened to be recording the output to a computer at the time, and while the sound first scared the living daylights out of me, it turned out to be a really great effect. Unfortunately, I think it might have disappeared into the sand of lost data on forgotten computers.
The zapping noise cracked me up!
@uxwbill ill be watching for years!!!!!!!
I’ve got a Debian Lenny machine running right now (450MHz Dell P3). I haven’t been the biggest fan of VIA chipsets, although it seems at the time, that they could be a better choice than Intel’s offerings. Not that the i810/815 weren’t good, but they had that stupid 512MB ceiling and the only way to go further was the i820 and that horridly expensive Rambus RDRAM or the aging 440. I don’t know how far this VIA chipset would go, but I think it might do more than 512MB total RAM.
You are welcome. I need to make some more vintage computer videos, so stay tuned!
Well, you are most certainly welcome and I thank you for watching.
Yes, there are some things I can’t fix–or that I haven’t managed to get going just yet. One of them is a Teac AG0790 stereo receiver with a number of bad parts and some major burn damage on the circuit board. It may be a write off.
It won’t be like that forever. I’ll clean it up and get it going again. It should just be a matter of dirt–they are pretty hard to kill.
@Viscoscist I am glad to hear that these have been useful to you. Thank you for watching and commenting!
My god… i need to buy a bad LCD and repair it. You’re an inspiration.
You deserve more views,Good sir.
Despite the lack of said views,You have helped me fix several computer and other
component fixes.
wow working on those deep internals of a computer is way more than i want to get into. is there anything you cant fix?
That poor Model M!
I can only dream of having a nice clicky keyboard like that…