[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.
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