One way to test electrolytic capacitors is to measure their capacitance. It does not tell the whole story of capacitor condition. Another usually more useful way to measure electrolytic capacitor condition is to use an ESR meter. EEVblog #365 – ESR Meter Bad Cap Monitor Repair video gives you tips how to use ESR meter →
Washing machines, toilets, baths, cups of tea, beer pint, the rainy weather… these are a few of our favourite ways to ruin a smart phone. How to save a wet mobile phone – and what not to do and How to Save a Wet Cell Phone articles tells that usually you don’t need to panic →
Heat-shrink tubing can be thought of as the duct tape for electrical wiring on the factory floor. Can you name all of its uses? Think of heat-shrink tubing as the duct tape for electrical wiring on the factory floor. It can be used for preventive maintenance to avoid problems, and it is a wonderful tool →
How to remove and re-attach LCD Ribbon from a PCB with a Fine Pitch article describes one method how to repair broken LCD ribbon cable connection. According the article the repair of LCD ribbon is a hard and delicate process, but can be rewarding if it goes well. If you have a device with LCD →
Nokia Lumia 800 smart phone has display got broken. What to do? A real goldmine for anyone attempting to star repairing a cell phone nowadays are disassembly/assembly videos on Youtube. So I got there and looked for Lumia 800 related videos to see if anything could be done for this. Nokia Lumia 800 Teardown – →
Soldering is an art. With practice, one can learn to easily assemble complex circuits. When you make mistakes you need to do rework, which is usually quite time consuming with through-hole parts. The solder must be completely removed pin-by-pin and the vias cleared of solder before a new part can be installed. The ‘slap method’ →
iFixit.org article How One Teacher Built a Computer Lab for Free tells an interesting story. The problem? An underfunded school needed computers for the classroom. Budget? $0. How One Teacher Built a Computer Lab for Free article tells how just one sixth-grade teacher got those computers at that budget. In 2007, Robert acquired 18 donated →
Is electronics heading to be less and less hackable? DIY site iFixit has been keeping tabs on the tech world whilst providing handy self-repair guides for popular electronics. Now the site maintainers have seen trend that electronics products seem to become intentionally harder and harder to fix in recent years. The New MacBook Pro: Unfixable, →
When I was last night again fixing old Nokia N73 cellular phone (needed a touch of soldering iron to make volume button to work again) I remember this article I saw few days ago. Are engineers early adopters? article claims that engineers aren’t early adopters of the latest technology. They are more like past the →
Why modern high tech electronics fail? Too often the reason for that is electrolytic capacitor failure. I have had a quite high number of electronics that has failed by this reason after few years of service. I have had a quite number of devices failed by capacitor: PC motherboard, PC graphics card, set-top-box, DVD player. →