[HN Gopher] I fixed my broken monitor with a hair dryer ___________________________________________________________________ I fixed my broken monitor with a hair dryer Author : nor0x Score : 253 points Date : 2022-05-13 08:07 UTC (14 hours ago) (HTM) web link (johnnys.news) (TXT) w3m dump (johnnys.news) | prawn wrote: | When visiting China as a teenager in the early 90s, my brother | and I decided to invest our hard-saved cash in a Micro Genius. | This was a rip-off of a Super Famicom which I'd seen a Malaysian | school friend play back home in Australia. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Genius | | There's a photo of us smiling at the counter of a department | store, handing over money. We bought a couple of multi-game | cartridges. 190-in-1 and 27-in-1 or something. | | We tested it in a Hong Kong hotel room, and briefly played a few | games. Then imagine our dismay when we eventually got back to | Australia and the thing wouldn't reliably load a game. We were | blowing on cartridges and all that. | | One day, we gave it a shot up in our non-A/C, second-storey | bedroom. It was a 40 deg C day, so absolutely cooking upstairs. | The console worked! The games loaded! We got to play an assorted | of games we'd been eagerly waiting on. | | We eventually decided it must be the heat and on the next day I | can remember us taking it in turns with a hairdryer trying to | warm the console or cartridge to get a game to start while the | other person played. It might let us play for several minutes and | then fail. Unfortunately, this trick didn't last for long and | then the console was surpassed and the games no longer kept our | interest. | | 30 years later, I still have the useless boxed console in my | garage and can't bear to throw it out. | rocky1138 wrote: | This is a really cute story. It might be really nice to fix it | up and play it with your brother at Christmas (or other similar | holiday) as a bonding fun time. | pvillano wrote: | replace the electrolytic capacitors and it'll work like new | prawn wrote: | Problem is, even as new, it's still the worst of about a | dozen consoles or devices in the house capable of letting my | kids play video games. They play PS4 or the 360, and | occasionally an original Xbox for a particular party game. | There are older consoles than those that get completely | ignored but would be superior to the Micro Genius! | | But you reminded me that we did take it to an electronics | store for a quote to try and fix it, and I think the quote | was more than we paid for it. Also a bit pointless with the | pace new consoles were being released! | causality0 wrote: | Hair dryers can be quite useful. If you have a small engine that | won't start like a lawnmower, heating it with a hair dryer will | often allow it to crank. | hammock wrote: | There used to be a thing where you bake motherboards in the oven | to fix them | mmastrac wrote: | I fixed a 2008 macbook with a GPU issue (wouldn't boot past BIOS) | by turning it on and letting it run full-tilt under a blanket. | Eventually it just resoldered itself. | rasz wrote: | It didnt. 8600M had a design defect in microbumps connecting | die to package. Thermal cycling in high heat scenarios (Apple | is famous fo cooking components at the margin of T-junction) | softened improperly selected underfill and broke microbumps | connecting die to package. Repeated heating up can again soften | it to release stresses and temporarily reconnected broken | traces. It never fixes the main issue of broken chip. | | https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/2011837#Problems | | https://semiaccurate.com/2009/08/21/nvidia-finally-understan... | | >On July 2, 2009, the date being ironically a year after the | notorious 8-K that publicly kicked off bumpgate, the company | put up a job listing for a "DIRECTOR OF PACKAGE TECHNOLOGY". | | https://notebooks.com/2008/10/10/apple-to-replace-faulty-nvi... | mmastrac wrote: | Interesting. It "fixed it" for about ~5-6 years of occasional | use going forward, at least. Perhaps it was a different | component than the GPU. | r0m4n0 wrote: | Kinda reminded me of the time I used listerine on my MacBook | screen and it solved the gross reflective coating issue that | apple wouldn't fix for me. Crazy part is it worked | | Context: | https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/gho3s4/m... | jwilk wrote: | Archived copy that can be read without JS enabled: | | https://archive.today/eAmar | xcambar wrote: | Is it okay if what I liked the most in your article is your table | full or stickers? | 1970-01-01 wrote: | A shout-out to badcaps.net is warranted here. They have been a | hidden gem for 2 decades. | | https://badcaps.net/forum/showpost.php?p=1002389&postcount=7 | emkoemko wrote: | i wonder if this would help my issue, my 165hz monitor is not | usable anymore at 165hz it flickers, has weird grainy image and | what looks like scan lines. Had to use it at 144hz for a while as | it didn't happen there but after some time i had to go to 120hz | and now 120hz is starting to degrade also : ( | richardfey wrote: | I feel like I missed out on the 3D hype and I am a bit nostalgic | now | devwastaken wrote: | Better done with VR headsets. Few games supported monitor VR, | and they didn't do that great of a job. | cestith wrote: | Active LCD shutter glasses for 3D movies were much nicer than | 3D gaming that way. Sadly, so little content came out for | those setups that the fad passed. | f311a wrote: | My old Benq monitor was blinking for the fist 10-20 minutes when | I turn it on and I used similar trick. I knew nothing about | electronics and used common sense. I would direct hair dryer | towards air vents of the monitor and wait for 30 seconds. | | I got bored after a month repeating the same thing every day and | sold it unrepaired. | justusthane wrote: | This observation isn't directly applicable to this story in | particular, as this case the fix did require some in depth | troubleshooting knowledge of the subject. | | That being said, I'm often struck by how often something can be | fixed by just opening it up and _looking_ at it, even if you know | next to nothing about the internals. | | Two examples, both car-related: | | - I used to drive an old Ford Ranger, and one day it started | running like crap. Horrible acceleration, engine running rough. I | made an appointment with a mechanic, but the day before my | appointment I thought "What the heck, I might as well _look_ at | it. " I popped the hood and immediately noticed that the air | filter housing was cracked in half. Patched it up with duct tape, | and it was good as "new". | | - One of my wheels started making a godawful constant squealing. | I couldn't drive 10 yards without turning heads. I brought it | into the mechanic, where they took the wheel off and promptly a | pebble fell out of the brake calipers. Had I just jacked it up | and taken the wheel off myself, I would have saved a trip to the | mechanic. | Knufferlbert wrote: | Reminds me of the "myth" of putting a Radeon GPU into the oven on | low heat for a while if it was broken. I tried it when mine | stopped working and indeed it fixed it. | | Also another Radeon card was identical as a more powerful one, | except that two pins (maybe wrong word) were not connected. I | drew the connection using a pencil directly on the board and it | worked as well, saving around 100 Euros. | | It's over a decade ago, so details may be slightly wrong. But | still interesting how low tech solutions worked on such | complicated machinery. | logbiscuitswave wrote: | What you did was reflow the solder. This isn't an uncommon | technique for amateur/small batch repairs or assembly of | surface mount circuit boards. At the maker space I use, there's | a toaster oven dedicated to this task. | | That being said, you don't want to use that oven for food | purposes anymore. Lots of toxic chemicals will off-gas in the | reflow process. | | ETA this reminds me of the Xbox 360 "red ring of death" fiasco. | One DIY repair technique was to wrap the entire Xbox in towels | blocking all the ventilation. The theory was the resulting | overheating would reflow the failing BGA solder joints. I don't | know if this really worked or was anecdotal but it was one I | remember seeing a lot. | ars wrote: | > you don't want to use that oven for food purposes anymore. | Lots of toxic chemicals will off-gas in the reflow process. | | Just run the oven at full heat for an hour and you are fine - | the same process that off-gassed the chemicals in the first | place, will also deplete them from the oven when you run it | later. (Keep the vent on, or ventilate the kitchen.) | enqk wrote: | The Apple Cube G4 power brick could also be resurrected for some | time using an hair dryer. | adav wrote: | Sandwich one of those silly cheapo USB mug warmers into the case. | Plug it in briefly for a little warmth just to get it going. Like | a choke on an old-fashioned car! | Spooky23 wrote: | Proceed with caution. | | Not to be a worry wart, but a long time ago we got a batch of | monitors with a defective board. A capacitor overheated, melted | some sort of glue on an adjacent component, which in turn | dripped on a power supply component, shorted out and started a | fire. | | A couple of days later, it happened again... and we ended up | getting all hands on deck to find those monitors. | jonsen wrote: | That would probably be electrolyte leaking. There are several | reports/stories about bad quality capacitors unintentionally | used in production. | tomxor wrote: | Certainly satisfies the quirkiness factor :) Extra points if | you can squeeze in linear actuator for an actual choke switch. | | Also good to think of alternative fixes like this when it's | difficult to source replacement components. | howard941 wrote: | Reminds me of temporarily recovering 5.25" IDE drives by freezing | them overnight | abofh wrote: | I feel like this is that story about the factory... | | 1$ - Blowing a hairdryer at the monitor | | 9,999$ - Knowing where to point the hair dryer... | mdrzn wrote: | lol definitely. | | I would have no idea where to start to find that fix, or even | where to find the schematics! | rompic wrote: | Had a similar issue with an old samsung synchmaster. The | capacitors were the problem. | | There are a lot of similar 10 year old reports on the net. E.g.: | https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=24494&highlig... | jarenmf wrote: | Bad caps was a very common problem in the old days, I remember | I replaced the ones on my motherboard at least twice. The | classical symptom was that heating the motherboard will allow | the PC to start. | rompic wrote: | Yes,"Capacitor plague" it was called. There's an interesting | story about espionage and incomplete stolen formula in the | wikipedia article: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague | rompic wrote: | https://badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=69534 says it's most | likely the regulator on this screen | unwind wrote: | The core analysis seems to be: | | > A common issue with these types of components is that the | quiescent current which ensures for the internal circuitry to | work properly depends on the ambient temperature. If it's too low | and the regular doesn't have enough supply current left the | output appears to be dead. | | Which honestly makes very little sense to me, and also reads a | bit like a terminology tombola. A quick googling did not turn up | more material on the idea that voltage regulators depend on the | temperature like that, and it would be surprising (generally | electronics performs better when cooled). | | I would expect the problem to be due to a bad solder joint, which | would explain why heating it helps since it might make the solder | flow a little bit back into making connection (although hair | dryer temperatures at 200degF/93degC) are too low to properly | reflow solder). Or it might just make components and/or solder | expand enough to make contact (which is kind of the same thing | but different). | | All real hardware experts, please explain. :) | pie314isi wrote: | I agree, it makes no sense. I am a real hardware electronics | engineer and I don't understand his explanation. I believe the | LDO could fail in a temperature dependent way. I do not believe | the explanation. | madengr wrote: | audiometry wrote: | What is a "terminology tombola". All I can find is tombola is | some kind of lottery. | unwind wrote: | Yes, to me the text read as if the author put some relevant | words into a rotating drum and then picked them out. The | result is a random-seeming sentence, which is my attempt at | explaining how it read, to me. I was not aiming for snark, | apologies if that's how it came across. | zerocrates wrote: | "Word salad" | cestith wrote: | It's similar to "buzzword bingo". | Gordonjcp wrote: | In the olden days we used to use hair driers and cans of | "freezer spray" - ozone-depleting freon in a can, now replaced | with more eco-friendly stuff - to heat and cool components to | see which ones were temperature-sensitive. Quite often you'd | get a fault that would only show up when the set was cold, or | only after it was thoroughly warm. | | I'm wondering if perhaps C206/C207/C208 in the LDO circuit that | decouple the output might have gone a bit leaky and warming | them up causes them to act more like capacitors and less like | resistors to ground. If they're SMD multilayer ceramics that | would be a pretty common failure. | _Microft wrote: | The part is a LDO (low-dropout regulator). You can read about | these here. See also the section about the quiescent current. | One more thing: what made you believe that the given | explanation is wrong? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-dropout_regulator | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-dropout_regulator#Quiescen... | unwind wrote: | I really do understand what LDO means, and at least a decent | amount of how they work. | | I still don't think it makes sense; it's not as if you have | the heat the device to be hot enough to draw the quiescent | current, it's the other way around. As the internal | temperature rises, the efficiency of the components degrade, | things start to "leak" more current and the quiescent current | draw goes up. | avianlyric wrote: | > quiescent current which ensures for the internal circuitry | to work properly depends on the ambient temperature. | | This statement seems to get the relationship between | quiescent current and the operation of internal circuitry | backwards. | | Quiescent current doesn't _power_ the internal circuitry. | Quiescent current is a _measure_ of current _consumed_ by the | internal circuitry while it's idle. | | The temperature relationship exists because the circuitry | consumes more power when it hot. But there isn't some | temperature dependent magically quiescent current provider | that must work correctly for the rest of circuitry to | operate. Just like there isn't a "standby power provider" | inside of a TV to allow it to remain in standby. The standby | power is just a _measure_ of the power consumed while in | standby. | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: | I think it makes sense when you read it carefully. What | tripped me up is that quiescent current is usually only seen | as a bad thing. It not drawing enough current also seems more | like a symptom than the cause. | | On my first pass I was also a bit confused whether he is | talking about the regulator's internal circuitry or something | else: It's not obvious that LDO stands for low-dropout | regulator, so at first it felt like he's misusing "quiescent | current" to refer to some kind of "standby current" | (comparable to an ATX power supply +5V Standby line) that the | regulator has to supply to some other circuitry that then | powers on the regulator to supply the rest of the device. | laci37 wrote: | I am not an expert, just a hobbyist. It's hard to tell anything | without measurements. Either the regulators are half dead | (factory spec for operating temperature is -40 to +85 Cdeg) and | should be replaced, or thermal expansion causes a cracked | solder joint to touch again, or some other component is half | dead and needs a bit of warmth to work properly. | type0 wrote: | > Or it might just make components and/or solder expand enough | to make contact (which is kind of the same thing but | different). | | Yeah, most probably it deformed into contact | jonsen wrote: | > ...a bad solder joint | | Or inside the IC a bad bonding between the chip and the package | leads. Or IC package developed cracks and moisture creeps in. | ariejan wrote: | It's not uncommon for solder joints to get damaged due to heat | stress. It happens to BGA compontents too when not properly | cooled. The hair dryer may or may not have provided enough heat | to fix a small crack (I didn't look up the temperature a hair | dryer provides). | | Did kind-of the same with my Philips TV a while back. Still | going strong. | | https://www.devroom.io/projects/repair-philips-42pfl6057h-12... | cestith wrote: | "Hair dryer" is such an imprecise term in a use case like | this. One can find 600 watt units all the way through about | 2300 watts. A typical general-purpose heat gun one might use | to strip paint or shrink some heat-shrink plastic is usually | between 1500 watts and 1800 watts. | mannykannot wrote: | While the power consumption may vary considerably, the | maximum temperature is presumably constrained by what | humans and their hair can tolerate. | cestith wrote: | There is a huge difference in whether one can actually | reach that temperature, how quickly, and how much airflow | it provides across the heating element and on target. A | heat gun is a much more consistent tool for the uses for | which it's designed. | bombcar wrote: | A heat gun is also designed to put pretty consistent heat | an inch or so away from the nozzle, whereas hair dryers | often have what appear to be left-over jet engines for | fans, for when you need to dry someone's hair from ten | feet away. | londons_explore wrote: | Put a thermocouple in some hairdriers and you'll find | some get well over 400 Celcius (750F!). | | They just rely on the fact air has a low thermal mass, | and it's easy to just keep it slightly further from your | skin if necessary - the air quickly cools with distance | as more room air mixes in. | ivanbakel wrote: | >A quick googling did not turn up more material on the idea | that voltage regulators depend on the temperature like that, | and it would be surprising (generally electronics performs | better when cooled). | | Not a hardware expert either, but Wikipedia points at this TI | doc[0] which claims ambient temperature is necessary for the | quiescent current. There's no mechanism described there, | though. | | [0]: https://www.ti.com/lit/an/slva079/slva079.pdf | formerly_proven wrote: | These have ground pins (as opposed to floating regulators), | so they draw whatever bias current they need (which mostly | depends on temperature, input voltage, output current and the | lottery). The explanation is bogus, and doesn't explain how | heating once would help with a problem caused by too low | ambient temperature during operation anyway. | jonsen wrote: | > ambient temperature is necessary for the quiescent current | | No it does not say that. It says ambient temperature is a | factor contributing to quiescent current: | | "The value of quiescent current is mostly determined by the | series pass element, topologies, ambient temperature, etc." | | In an LDO you normally want as little as possible quiescent | current when idle. You certainly wouldn't design stand by | operation to be dependent on temperature. If it turns out to | be so with time, it's an aging problem. | rosshaugh wrote: | I used to throw the graphics card from my Dell XPS 1710 into the | oven whenever it stopped working. That worked about 10 times over | the space of a few years! | Ancapistani wrote: | I did this with a 2012 MBP at one point. It was basically a | crude attempt at reflowing the solder on the board. | | Got it running again, and I managed another ~year out of it, | before my then-two-year old daughter poured a pint of milk into | the keyboard. | jlund-molfese wrote: | That's really interesting--had no idea that was a thing. Did | you ever worry about putting food in the same oven? | bryanrasmussen wrote: | This would seem to be significantly more clever than my open | handed slap method. | mrexroad wrote: | "Percussive maintenance" | femto wrote: | I'm guessing the real cause is an aged electrolytic capacitor. | The electrolyte can dry out over time causing a change in | capacitance. Power supplies are the most common failure in | electronics and electrolytic capacitors are a common reason for | power supply failure. | | There are electrolytic capacitors near where he was heating, and | the capacitance of electrolytics can have a strong temperature | dependence. He probably managed to heat one of the electrolytic | capacitors, which happened to change its capacitance in the | correct direction to make the circuit work. | | Chances are the monitor would work reliably if all the | electrolytic capacitors were replaced. | | Edit: | | I'm guessing the problem is C208. Section 10 of the LDO data | sheet, linked in the article, talks about how stability is | dependent on the output capacitor (C208). C208 has probably dried | out, reducing its capacitance and making the LDO unstable. | Heating was enough to make the circuit stable (for a while). | | Further edit: | | Predating my comment, "Gordonjcp" also called out C208. | whoopdedo wrote: | An old trick I learned from a tech who repaired CRT televisions | was to test components by spraying them with an aerosol. If | something was close to failing, the cold propellant would push | it over the edge and you could target individual capacitors to | identify which ones need replacement. | mikepurvis wrote: | I saved a monitor once that had a bad cap in the power supply-- | very satisfying and straightforward fix, like a $2 part and | fifteen minutes of taking it apart and soldering. | userbinator wrote: | It's such a widespread phenomenon that there's an entire site | (with good repair forums) about electrolytic capacitors causing | failures: https://badcaps.net/ | jml7c5 wrote: | For those unaware, the great capacitor plague of the 2000s | has an interesting backstory: it is believed to be the result | of corporate espionage gone wrong. Somewhere in the chain of | theft, then transfer, then use by a competitor, a | misappropriated formula for capacitor electrolyte was | altered. Faulty capacitors ended up in all sorts of | electronics, including the particular Abit VP6 motherboard | which failed and led to the creation of badcaps.net. | nneonneo wrote: | We had a 500W subwoofer amp just die on us one day. Since the | replacement was going to be several hundred dollars, I figured | I'd try disassembling it to see if I could find a problem. | | Lo and behold, I saw three 1000uF caps that had leaked, one of | which had a clear bulge on the top. So I ordered a bunch of | replacements off Mouser, bought myself a soldering iron, and | replaced all three. Worked like a charm! | | I'll never understand why even high-end equipment manufacturers | wind up using crappy knockoff capacitors in their stuff. It | seems like it's just a failure waiting to happen. I guess they | get to make good money on the support and service? | Pixelbrick wrote: | Replacing electrolytics that'd gone bad was my entry point to | electrical engineering. | anonymousiam wrote: | There's a good overview of the problems with certain Chinese | electrolytic capacitors here: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague | | Also, here's a related article describing how a Chinese failure | at industrial espionage created a worldwide capacitor problem: | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jun/29/dell... | logbiscuitswave wrote: | The capacitor plague was real. So many electronics I have | from that era have failed due to bad caps. They are almost | always cheap bottom-tier components with brand names and | packaging suspiciously similar to the more reputable ones. | (I've also read about inferior components that have been re- | sleeved but I've never come across these. I don't doubt they | exist, though.) | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | _> Power supplies are the most common failure in electronics_ | | In over 35 years of troubleshooting gear and systems, my | experience is that 90% (no exaggeration) of problems are bad | cables. | | It seems even worse, these days, with high-speed serial cables, | running on razor-thin margins, and often with embedded ICs. | | That's why, when the IT geek comes to your desk, they just rip | out all your cables, and replace them with new ones, out of the | shrink-wrap. They'll toss out a hundred dollars' worth of | perfectly good cables, because they know the deal. They could | waste an hour, trying to troubleshoot a problem caused by an | intermittent USB C cable. | bradstewart wrote: | Also network cables. After spending days troubleshooting | weird network issues a few too many times, I just toss the | entire box of miscellaneous network cables in the attic every | year or two. | | But capacitors are definitely the second most common issue. | pierrebai wrote: | I had a computer that could only be booted with a hair dryer. I | did not disassemble any parts, so I never got to know which | exact part was failing, but a good 5-10 minutes of pre-heating | with the dryer allowed it to boot. | qohen wrote: | A few years ago, my neighbor's PC wouldn't boot. Unlike | similar situations I'd had with my own hardware, the power- | supply wasn't dead -- in fact, at the back, there was a green | blinking light. I went online and found people suggesting | that, in such a case, blowing a hair-dryer at the power- | supply might fix things. I tried it and...sure enough, the PC | then booted. | | More examples: https://www.google.com/search?q=power+supply+b | linking+light+... | dbrgn wrote: | A few years ago, I got ahold of an old Samsung Syncmaster LCD | that didn't work anymore. After replacing all electrolytic caps | for around 2-3$, it worked like new again. | v0x wrote: | Same here - I've had my SyncMaster 226BW for roughly 15 years | now and it's still a great monitor, but a few years back I | had to replace one of the capacitors after the screen would | turn "on" but had nothing on the display. Did the same thing | with a Dell monitor a few months back that I use as a second | display. I am guessing that bad caps are the single biggest | point of failure on monitors. | Communitivity wrote: | I wonder if there could be another issue. I remember we had a | hardware guy once where I worked who took apart a broken cable | modem prototype, found that one of the traces was thinly broken. | Traces are the lines on a printed circuit board, Vias the | circles. He used an emory cloth to strip the protective green | coating, then a small narrow heat gun to melt the trace slightly | and bring it together. | | If OP had a broken trace in there, then heat might have fixed it. | Then again, OP's reasoning is probably better as I am not a | hardware guy. | sokoloff wrote: | Those traces under the green solder mask are copper (melting | point ~1000degC/2000degF). | | He may have added solder to fix the trace, but he didn't melt | the trace itself. | Communitivity wrote: | Thank you for explaining that, as you can tell I don't work | with PCBs myself, and this was back in 2000. | amtamt wrote: | Beware, hair dryers can also cause a failed rocket launch. | https://metro.co.uk/2010/09/06/hairdryer-malfunction-leads-t... | [deleted] | Tade0 wrote: | I would never guess that a piece of even consumer hardware was | designed with such low tolerances as to develop such issues. | | Is this some kind of a trend that I'm not up to date with? | | I was surprised to find out that my laptop fans started first | getting noisy and then rattling after less than two years since | purchase. I searched around and apparently the tight tolerances | combined with low quality of the bearings eventually produce this | effect. | | This is especially audible if I let them heat up - it appears | that thermal expansion is enough for the blades to get too close | to the housing. | | I ordered a set of new ones and appropriate tools, but I can't | imagine doing this every two years. My previous laptop lasted | around seven, after which both the battery and the power socket | gave out. | ungamedplayer wrote: | If this is the case, you could consider bearingless fans, which | should prevent them from wearing out. The only issue is you may | not be able to find them in the size requirement you need. | | Good luck ! | Fradow wrote: | He's talking about a 12 years-old screen that probably saw | daily use. Something failing at that point is more than | expected. | | As others have noted, it's in fact probably bad capacitors, | which is a really common issue for electronics of that era. I | also encountered that several times, it's a quick fix if you | know how to solder new ones, and you can find such capacitors | for cheap (like 1$ cheap last time I had to look, though | finding that price for a single one is hard, and much less when | bought in bulk). | li2uR3ce wrote: | > Is this some kind of a trend that I'm not up to date with? | | It's called planned obsolescence and it's part of the factory- | to-landfill pipeline. It's not exactly new. | | Do we know how to make a long lasting laptop fan? Yes. Would | nearly every consumer pay $0.25 more for a laptop with a longer | lasting fan? Yes. Can you buy laptops with high quality fans? | Yes, but seemingly only by dumb luck. | | By the time you figure out that a product has a high failure | part the company will no longer be manufacturing it and | therefore reviews won't be relevant (granting relative immunity | to bad reviews). And when every brand is doing it, there's no | way for "free market" competition to sort it out. It's a race | to the bottom. (3. 2. 1. Cue "The morality of protecting share | holders eclipses the morality of ripping consumers off.") | | I only buy used laptops now. The significant reduction in price | is a reduction in risk. Also a used product has had "burn in" | time to weed out the lemons. The engineer calculated xx% of | fail-early laptops often aren't the ones being resold. | | I'm bitter. I'm cynical. Despite being aware of my mind's | ability to find patterns to confirm my biases... I'm really | struggling to be excited about new products. I'm spent like | nuclear fuel; I'm toxic. They say knowing is half the battle... | not in psychology. Doesn't help me a damned bit. | | Today's sponsor is Better Help. I should just stop now. | MichaelZuo wrote: | Or you buy a laptop brand that's specifically targeted for | long-lasting professional use only, like Panasonic Toughbooks | or Thinkpad P series workstations. So all the problems | associated with consumer race-to-the-bottom type stuff is | avoided. And if not the 5 year+ next day on site warranty | would cover it. | | Are you willing to pay for it though? | mindslight wrote: | Buying older hardware is also one of the few ways to have it | be documented enough to be able to remove all of the crapware | baked in by the manufacturers. Every laptop newer than the | Thinkpad X230 is basically dead to me. | Tade0 wrote: | > They say knowing is half the battle... not in psychology. | | I've felt this so many times that I gave it a name: "the | falling physicist problem". | | A physicist falling without a parachute from the very top of | the troposphere knows, that his terminal velocity is around | 50m/s and was reached via gravity pulling him towards the | ground. | | Nevertheless he's going to go _splat_ the same way anyone | else would, because sometimes knowing is just not enough. | slig wrote: | Isn't that just | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence ? | rasz wrote: | >I would never guess that a piece of even consumer hardware was | designed with such low tolerances as to develop such issues. | | It wasnt, the explanation in the blog is nonsense. 10 years is | a good lifespan for capacitors working in hot environment, and | that is what failed. Electrolytic Capacitors are perishable, | they age even when not used. | | >I ordered a set of new ones and appropriate tools, but I can't | imagine doing this every two years. My previous laptop lasted | around seven, after which both the battery and the power socket | gave out. | | then use better quality replacement mechanical part. People | arent surprised when servicing cars, why different expectations | with modern electronics? | Tade0 wrote: | > Electrolytic Capacitors are perishable, they age even when | not used. | | But not _that_ perishable. I have some old electronics, along | with fully analog devices (guitar effects) and they, along | with their power supplies(which get hot) still work. | | > People arent surprised when servicing cars, why different | expectations with modern electronics? | | Because they have orders of magnitude less moving parts - if | any.at all. Is it unreasonable to expect something that has | one moving part to not fail after two years? | | Actually, I wouldn't want a car exhibiting mechanical | problems after such a short period. | favadi wrote: | I fixed mine with duck tape: | https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FLIl30yVcAQcKw2?format=jpg&name=.... | bayindirh wrote: | I had a similar problem with some small exotic parts on my | Hyundai L90D+. After being able to source them, I replaced the | parts, and my monitor came back to life, briefly. | | After 30 minutes or so, another part of the board has fried, so I | just replaced the monitor, quite sadly. | gijsnijholt1980 wrote: | Can confirm that this saved our old Samsung lcd television. | | It took longer and longer to turn on. Some guy on YouTube used | this hair dryer trick. So I did just that, blow the air inside | the TV from below through the panels, and like magic it works | again. Life hack! | | Curious why it works though | rasz wrote: | A lot of theory and weird explanations (weird for an EE), but no | verification like actually measuring VEN. hair dryer = dried | capacitors, not LDO. Heating up temporarily rejuvenates dead | caps. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-13 23:01 UTC)