dead motherboards...

hi people..

im interested in repairing computers motherboards.. mostly the older ones ( based around socket 370, socket A and lower) and have some questions... when there is a motherboard fried from a power surge, is it worth trying repairing? what components usually die in such situations? how to check all those SMD componentes and small ICs on easiest way to find out if they work or no?

well, any info about such problems is needed... thanks in advance

bye

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hr.rec.ronjenje 

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Reply to
Papcina
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Never. There are zillions of these out there you can get for free, so why try to fix one?

Reply to
PeterD

PeterD wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

WHERE does one get these FREE motherboards?

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Jim Yanik
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Reply to
Jim Yanik

Most computer motherboards are 4 layer and many are 6 layer -- so problems may be present you can not see (but testing would --- takes time -- to find bad component,etc.) START with Power Bus and go from there.

Reply to
w9gb

For computers that old, check businesses that are doing tech refreshes. Many of them -pay- to have their computers hauled away. And many of the computers aren't that old.

Reply to
GPE

MOst any independent computer repair shop will do. THey frequently have to pay to dispose of them, and are glad to give them away. Many are the result of upgrades. The local shop generates a couple of them a week, sometimes more. THey usualy have a pile of 20 or so in the scrap pile at any time.

Reply to
PeterD

I've fixed a lot of dead motherboards by removing the CMOS battery for a day or two. This has worked several times, even when the clear CMOS jumper didn't help. Andy Cuffe

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Reply to
Andy Cuffe

If a motherboard is showing no signs of life, how can you say that every other bigger chip is working fine? If the board is dead, meaning that it won't boot up, or even run POST tests, then how are you checking the "bigger chips? You can't assume anything in this case... everything has to be verified conclusively. The only way that I can think of doing that in the case of a dead motherboard is to unsolder the chips and put them on a known good board. Given the lack of service information on any of the PC boards that have been produced in the past 25 years, it's shooting in the dark.

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Dave M
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Reply to
DaveM

I gave away a pile of them on Craigslist, I probably have some more laying around I need to dump off on there.

Reply to
James Sweet

dead

There's no way to know. Fortunately, the big chips are very reliable. They don't normally fail unless something really bad happened (like excessive voltage from a bad power supply, or someone shorting something out). Testing the chips is completely impractical. The soldering equipment alone would cost thousands.

The way to trouble shoot a motherboard is to eliminate the few things you can fix before scrapping the board. Once you eliminate the simple stuff, it doesn't really matter whether it's a bad chipset chip, bad internal connection on the board, or some other unfixable problem.

I've repaired a lot of boards by replacing exploded caps. I've also replaced melted ATX power connectors. On one board, I even replaced some bad voltage regulator transistors (they were over heated because of bad caps). If you know the board suffered from a failed BIOS flash, you can reprogram the flash chip (it helps if it's in a socket). Andy Cuffe

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Reply to
Andy Cuffe

Papcina wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Around here, it is not worth upgrading the innards of older computes, as they don't meet modern power and cooling requiremnts, and the cases don't "match" modern fashions, so old PCs are thrown out whole, and new ones bought.

Reply to
Gary Tait

---> as they don't meet modern power and cooling requiremnts, and

---> the cases don't "match" modern fashions,

If we are asked, in the year 2525, what we did with all energy, then we can gladly answer: We built things and dumped them.

(SCNR) Regards, H.

Reply to
Heinz Schmitz

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