what are the most needed equipment used to repair motherboard??

Repair at what level? About the only things that can be replaced on a modern motherboard are capacitors and things like IDE connectors/rear panel ports etc.

Dave

drivers,

Antistatic straps?

Hot Air SMT re-work station, Hot air/infrared BGA re-work station, desoldering station, ESD work area ... a lot of experience.

From someone who works on and repairs motherboards for a living.

I think that if you don't work at a motherboard factory, you can better invest the price of a rework bench in a good logic analyzer. If you end up having to replace that one BGA IC, you can scrap the board. Any of the other hundreds of components can be removed with a tube of chip-quik and a $5 soldering iron from radio shack.

You would have to replace an awful lot of bridge chips to make up the cost of a BGA rework station.

I , too who works on and repairs motherboards for a living.

I wouldn't have thought it is cost effective to repair a board cheaper to but a new one.

Aren't most of the repairs done on motherboards performed before most of the chips go on? (And don't most factory repairs consist of throwing the board out and using a non-broken one?)

Only thing I bother to repair on motherboards are electrolytic capacitors, I doubt the factory does that though.

power supply , capacitors. yes, we make money

Based on the question and the way you asked it, you'll need a bright light and a magnifier. Once you get past the things that you can find by inspection, bad solder joints, broken connectors, bulging capacitors, you're outa luck.

You can't get documentation. You can't get parts. A 20 MHz scope will let you know if the power supply is working.

With the level of experience/equipment suggested by your question you'd be better off fixing something else. mike

Ouch.

Actually, I agree that working on mobos is a waste of time in most cases. I've changed clock IC's on some, and repaired some physical damage, but I wouldn't attempt to make a living doing it. Nobody will pay a tech five hours to work on a motherboard if they can get a more modern replacement for the same price.

Now if you are talking about motherboards for PDP-11s, Lisas, arcade consoles, or something like that, you most certainly can repair them, make money at it, and use your 20MHz scope to do it.

In message , mike writes

Mum, you can. Most boards are very similar to the chip-set manufacturer's reference designs for the chip-set used. There's only so many ways you can connect the same chips and get a working system.

You can. If you know where to look, there are many companies out there selling chips, either pulls or new.

And a bunch of other things as well. Remember, most of the chips on the motherboard run at much lower frequencies than the core and you'd definitely be able to troubleshoot the on-board peripherals plus the PCI bus to a lesser extent, although a POST card is probably a good initial test here.

Or learning on a few old boards to gain a new skill.

Yeowww, I didn't think you could make any kind of respectable money repairing mobos.

If the caps are bad, the board is old - maybe expensive multi processor server boards???

The local computer shop in town here, actually do mobo repairs. it does seem like caps and psu circuits like the transistor/scr looking devices (mosfets???)

I've done a few cap jobs and "enjoy" the hobby style project. Of course, the stuff that I repair is worth $30 on eBay. (loser, huh?)

Tom

And my pre-neolithic Hexacon 1001 crapped out.... boo hoo. (It made a loud buzzing noise when it was working, then it quit buzzing and quit working.....)

For a few years that wasn't true, I fixed a whole pile of boards with bulging caps that were between 6 months and 2 years old, the defective capacitor plague seems to be over with though.

In message , James Sweet writes

Dell SX270 and GX280 are suffering badly. Wouldn't be surprised if others were too.

Hmm thats nice to know.. I'm reinstalling windows on a sx260 right now for someone. I will remember to expect that if it comes back dead in the future.

- Mike

future.

May as well peak under the hood, if the capacitors are bulging or leaking replace them before they corrode the board.

Sounds like a good idea. I've had it apart allready but didn't bother to look at the caps. By the way do you know where to buy a cd rom for these units for a reasonable price? It takes a laptop sized cd rom drive.