watch that screwdriver!

[kc8adu]

sometimes bad caps are not the only problem.
careless end users sometimes wreck boards beyond cost effective repair.
careful when installing the hsf!
looks like this board was treated like garbage before it got to topcat and it is easy to see why it failed to post after he recapped it.
btw this WAS a supermicro 370dl3 dual p3 with scsi.

[willawake]

i always slip a business card underneath the clip of the heatsink that i am removing with a screwdriver. works great to protect the board and always something that is easily available. business cards are also good for spreading thermal paste on the cpu. there is always a use for business cards that idiots give you.

Although looking at the board that KC8 has, the only thing to do would be to shoot the user.

what a shame. so many traces. can be repaired but it will be a fucker to do all that. two times dammit, confiscate the screwdriver and chop off the hand.

[Topcat]

I have seen MANY MANY VP6's (and many others as well) with SM components knocked off, stab wounds, cut traces, all from careless handling. Some people need not touch computers!

[bushytails]

I have two geforce4 cards with missing smt parts... an old nvidia card with a missing unknown cap... one of my 694ds is running without a smt cap... a relative bought a uber-shiny ati card to find one cap missing and one mushed... I've seen plenty of missing smt bits.

--Randy

[kc8adu]

I have two geforce4 cards with missing smt parts... an old nvidia card with a missing unknown cap... one of my 694ds is running without a smt cap... a relative bought a uber-shiny ati card to find one cap missing and one mushed... I've seen plenty of missing smt bits.

--Randy

just because it is working doent mean its ok
if the part was not needed it would not be installed.
the bean counters look for anything to trim a few cents off a product.

[bushytails]

only one of them that works is the 694d, and it's a power supply bypass cap (directly in parallel with my new nichicons, in fact, from the looks of it)... everything else is and/or was quite dead.

--Randy

[ngorge]

Re: watch that screwdriver!

Does scratches on the back of a mobo damages it? The pixs above are from the front sider right? I accidentally scraped the backside with a dental-tool

[willawake]

Re: watch that screwdriver!

yup, if it scratched a trace but it depends how deep. there is possibility to fix it though but it is quite difficult ihmo.

[tiresias]

Re: watch that screwdriver!

i always slip a business card underneath the clip of the heatsink that i am removing with a screwdriver. works great to protect the board and always something that is easily available. business cards are also good for spreading thermal paste on the cpu. there is always a use for business cards that idiots give you.

Although looking at the board that KC8 has, the only thing to do would be to shoot the user.

what a shame. so many traces. can be repaired but it will be a fucker to do all that. two times dammit, confiscate the screwdriver and chop off the hand.

Looks like that board was "insulted" even more than twice - two are the most obvious, but notice the stab mark after the 45 degree bend the traces take, going left from C45... if the trace is completely severed, even a single hit like that in such a position (leading to the MCH) can kill a board.

The incident around CPU2 in the second picture was so violent that it slashed all the way through C9 and broke three traces on the other side. The guy/girl in question must have forgotten to take his/her Ritalin that day.

ngorge: As Will mentioned, most traces aren't carrying that much current, so even if only part of the trace remains, the board should perform fine. Mechanical damage is particularly lethal to motherboards and not always repairable (not just motherboards, its 'deadliness' tends to be underestimated in the case of chips and the human body too, but that's another issue ).

[kc8adu]

Re: watch that screwdriver!

Although looking at the board that KC8 has, the only thing to do would be to shoot the user.

what a shame. so many traces. can be repaired but it will be a fucker to do all that. two times dammit, confiscate the screwdriver and chop off the hand.

cant do that here.idiots are a protected species!public school system turns out plenty of em too.

[arneson]

Re: watch that screwdriver!

They could all be jumped but it would take some time and a small bottle of Jack.
Wait, that may be how that happened..