Geekfix1706

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Happy Customers :)

Sorry to have not posted in ages, will have a few interesting things to put up soon, been sooo busy working haven't found the time to update, but my phone is full of Pictures. BRB :)

On the bench today...
YAMAHA XS650 1981.
Not charging battery...I used to be a biker years ago, but having never seriously hurt myself and with the arrival of a baby boy I hung my leathers up. However I did all my bike maintainence, sometimes more Zen than anything else.

Absolutely fuming, Facebook has charged me £30 today for advertising that I have not requested, can't find a bloody number for them anywhere and there business help page is down!

On the bench today...
If the success of my Business is indicated by the number of times I post then you would imagine I`m not doing so well. However not every repair is interesting and sometimes I have just been that busy...
MacBook Pro A1278, Chimes and powers up but no display...... First inspection shows liquid damage around the LVDS (LCD) connector :( (never a good sign) So removed logic board to inspect and found nothing else? cleaning up revealed one pin without a pad underneath but referring to schematic showed it was connected to the adjacent pin and was the power for the backlight...Ah ha... metering this pin to its adjacent decoupling caps and back to D9701 proved it was still connected? back to the schematic, decided to check fuse F9700 its the little brown rectangle with a "P" on it and its open circuit. this is the feed (via Q9706 backlight on off control) for the backlight "Buck Convertor" (U9701,D9701,L9701) D9701 measure OK as does L9701...Oh dear metered one side of L9701 to ground and found it shorted to ground the reason for the fuse blowing :( only components capable of doing this are C9712,C9713 and the Chip U9701, other paths to ground are via D9701 but this wouldn't have bleeped because of the diode. Fingers crossed its one of the capacitors and not the IC. Removed C9712 10uF and YAY! short to ground gone! fitted a replacement and tested :)
All's well :)
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Been so busy lately havent had time to add anything...
Do you ever have trouble with your TOMTOM,Tablet not charging, you push the connector in and then have to wiggle it around? well dont do that for too long. What could start out as an quick (and reasonably priced) repair could turn into a complicated and more expensive one.
Check the 1st picture, a customers Sat nav, wiggled the connector that hard that they took it off the board!(top left)... It looked as if someone had attempted to solder it back down in the past (unsuccessfully) These SMD connectors are a bit of a pain to replace but this one more so, three of the pads and PCB tracks have gone you can see them still soldered on the connector. Now I cloud have replaced it and it would have charged (power goes in via the far left and right pads that were still there) but updating the device would be impossible the middle three pins carry communication to a computer and they are gone... So what would have been a removal (with hot air), clean up, flux and reflow turned into something rather trickier. You can follow the progress in the remaining pictures those wires are like hair! very time consuming but the end result was a satnav that charged and updated once connected to the PC. Price? well just replacing an intermittent USB on this would have been £25, this repair £45.
So call me as soon as you notice the problem and save yourself some cash :)
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Going Vintage today :) On the bench an 80's analogue synth - Korg Poly 800.
Worked fine on battery's but no go on a DC adaptor, Dry jointed DC jack I hear you cry...Nope and generally if one pin is dry jointed on the socket the others will be too and that would stop it working off battery's.
... Discovered a (very hard to read) schematic... looks odd in the power regulator section as its a positive ground type with a PNP pass transistor Q1 a 2SB731. Quick meter around proved correct voltage across Zener D4, and 9V at collector of Q1 but nothing at the emitter. Q1 is s/c base-collector! definitely have trouble finding the correct transistor so pulled up the datasheet and fitted a slightly better device that I had a 2SA957. Keyboard now works of the Power Supply. :)
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On the bench today good friends 19" Samsung portable-wont tune any digital channels.
First checked all the obvious supplies to the tuner, all present and correct - possibly the tuner is defunct, removed the main PCB to carry on inspecting.
Past experience has left me with a deep suspicion of SMD caps, found them shorted in all sorts of equipment over the years. ... So I decided to start metering them out around the tuner (meter on continuty - bleep) nothing nothing nothing - Bleep, ah ha! dead short, remeoved the cap and measured where I had removed it from Bleep. bugger-this cap fed to three inductors, so I removed them one by one on removing the second the original short disappeared :) this inductor fed an IC and two other caps, so removed larger cap, short still there, second cap, Short gone! Installed a replacement and replaced the other components I had removed. TV now tunes all channels.
:D
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Tonights repair.

Well here is an unusual repair, this kind of fault would generally be considered a write off.
SONY KDL-40R438B No picture, a main SSB (The only board in the TV, uses an external power supply) had already been tried. So due to a lack of TCON (built onto COFS flexes) it was passed to me along with a donor with a damaged screen.
... No voltage at any of the test points bar the 3V3 and 1V8. Checked all the SMD (brown) caps and all test points to ground. No Shorts.
OK there seemed to be two QFP chips with inductors around them and this suggested they were supposed to generate the missing supplies, out with the hot air gun and swapped them between the panels - the same - OK picked on the other marked 81224, self aligning while reflowing these devices doesnt always seem to have them "self align" even with flux and some nudging is required to place.
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Got this for repair, that black crap is just like tar... it's not waterproofing is anti repair seal. :(

Some times a description for repair seems fairly straight forward... This one was, "Change Capacitor underneath CPU socket" here it is.