Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

That reminds me, I need to do the same, I broke a plug on one of my power adapters for my laptop, and it just doesn't connect well because the wire in the back no longer contact all the time. Need to solder.

I do have another universal power adapter but don't like it because it has the chance of rotating and blocking the USB port right next to the power adapter...

I had yet another hack - a power adapter that the connector seemingly does not fit. I ground off part of the plastic and forced it to fit...sort of... It works but still very dicey.

Ideally I still need to fix my original adapter.

[momaka]

Dell 65-Watt power adapter cable repair

Does anyone bother to fix laptop power adapters anymore? I know replacements are pretty easy to find and often quite cheap too – even the OEM ones. Nevertheless, I hate waste, so I still “fix” (cobble / hack / McGyver) these when possible.

For this post, I have a 65-Watt Dell OEM power adapter with a “big barrel” plug. It was a freebie from Craigslist with a box of other adapters, all mostly non-working. As with most OEM adapters, I usually find the failure to be either a short or an open-circuit in the cable on the DC / output side of the adapter. Very rarely it’s something else.

For short-circuit in the cable, I typically see that near the adapter side, right where the cable enters the adapter. And it seems to happen more often with cables that use coaxial construction – i.e. ID wire in the middle, followed by an insulation layer around it, followed by the positive (+) conductor wires wrapped around the insulation, then another PVC insulating layer, then ground conductor wires, and finally the outermost PVC insulation. On the other hand, if the cable has an open-circuit, it’s usually near the plug side.

This one was a bit more interesting though. The Craigslister / person who I got it from already had attempted a repair… and not too bad of job, if I may say (at least the soldering part about it.) The adapter must have suffered from an open-circuited wire(s) near the barrel plug end, because the person soldered new wires from the plug to the cable on the adapter. I forgot to take pictures of this, but the soldering wasn’t bad. Likewise, where the wires were soldered to the cord was also done decently, as seen here.


The problem, however, was that the person only used electrical tape to hold / “secure” the newly-soldered wires on the barrel plug. As expected, electrical tape doesn’t provide a rigid support, so the wires that were soldered to the barrel plug all ripped out again. Otherwise, I checked everything else with the adapter, and it was OK.

In the process of doing so, an idea came to my mind: why not wrap the wires around the plug (after soldering them?) I figured this can provide stress-relief on the solder joints on the plug end.

So I decided to try this idea. Here’s how it looked with the wires soldered and wrapped around the barrel plug:



I tested my theory by tugging on the wires, and indeed they wouldn’t pull directly on the solder joints on the barrel plug. With some glue or potting material over them to secure them better, I imagined (hope) this would allow the repair to last a little longer.

Speaking of potting / gluing, I was debating what to use for this. The standard stuff I always keep on my bench is hot glue and silicone/caulk. JB weld and epoxy probably would work better. However, I didn’t have these in stock. So in the end, I went with the easiest/quickest route – hot glue. I considered silicone before this, but wasn’t sure if it would hold up any better (and I only had one kind left, which was some very cheap stuff.) Plus, I haven’t tested it long term to see if it’s non-corrosive. Most silicone/caulk tends to give off acetic acid while curing, which could be a source of corrosion.

So, hot glue it was! To make the hot glue adhere better to the metal on the barrel plug, I pre-heated the plug with my heat gun. Then, with the plug still hot, I quickly potted everything with hot glue. The result… wasn’t very pretty, but it seemed to hold relatively well (time will tell, of course.)




Finally, I re-soldered the wires on the other side to the ones on the adapter’s cable. Like I said, the person that tried to fix this didn’t do a bad job with the soldering. However, I didn’t like the way the wires were “poking” out, so I re-soldered them. While at it, I also slipped on some heat shrink pieces to put on both ends. The finished adapter looked like this:




Note that I intentionally didn’t cover all of the “new” wires with heat shrink tubing. The reason why is because heat shrink tubing tends to be a little too stiff once tightly shrunk around multiple wires. And for a laptop power adapter cable, it’s probably better for the cable to be a little more flexible, especially around the plug side. In fact, this is what I believe causes most of these adapters to develop open-circuited wire(s) near the laptop power connector (when used by less-than-careful owners, of course.) Dell in particular likes to add large ferrite beads near the plug (or at least it used to on older adapters like these), which further aggravates the issue, IMO.

Another consideration to keep in mind: where the power plug on the laptop is – i.e. on the back or on the side of the laptop. This could matter depending on how/where the laptop is used. Why I mention this has to do with how the wires/cable comes out of the plug. In the case of my repair above, they now come out sideways, almost 90° to the axis of the barrel connector, whereas the original wires came out straight from the back of the barrel connector. When the laptop is used on a flat, solid surface, this doesn’t matter much. But when it’s used in bed or on the lap (like many people do… hence laptop ), the cable can push up or pull down onto the barrel plug, causing stress both on the wires in the cable and on the connector in the laptop. I find this to be the case more often with laptops that have their connector on the back. So this is one reason I put the wires at 90° relative to the barrel plug. On the other hand, if someone trips over the cord, a straight-out cable-plug design would be better, since it can just pull out of the connector on the laptop without causing any side-loading forces. In contrast, a 90° design will cause a lot of sideways forces, both on the cable wires and the connector/plug in the laptop. So both of these designs have pros and cons. In the end, I went with the 90° design, because I left this power adapter as a spare for my uncle’s Dell Latitude E6400, which has a plug on the back and I figured this would suit the design better.

Anyways, not sure how long this repair will last. The adapter is still sitting in a drawer as a backup. However, I also fixed the power adapter for my uncle’s Latitude E6400 after this one (in the same fashion) and I do have the results. But I’ll post that in another post here (need to finish typing it up, though.)

Again, I figured I’d post this here, since it’s probably a “worthless” repair in a sense that it takes relatively long time to do compared to just going out and buying a new / another power adapter. Doing the failure & engineering part was the fun for me, though. I’ve seen many such power adapters fail and also fixed a good deal of them in the past… just never put so much thought into it before as I did now.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

BTW transmitter splatter of P"L"L tuners is usually due to PLL not locking correctly or has slop on lock.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

TBH grainy is not a big problem for me. My biggest problem are stupid web and software developers assuming you have a 4K monitor . And even with a 1080p TV, it's still not there yet...

And yeah $80 really is too much. At least with a new TV I get warranty and brand new LEDs instead of hoping the CCFL tubes don't wear out. *sigh* That is, if the tcon isn't also dead or the panel has hidden problems...

[momaka]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Technically even if it splatters (i.e. can receive on more than one frequency), if these pass FCC part 15 rules, they are still legal. Unfortunately it appears that anyone within 200ft line of sight may still get unintentional operation. Should be much less than that if there's something in the way...

Well that's the thing - I wasn't getting any reception on any station I set it to, blank or otherwise, with the way the transmitter was in its stock form. And now with the added "antenna" (piece of quite long wire sticking out the side), I get splatter and really really good reception on any station. Pretty sure I must have annoyed a few truckers on the way in those trips. I imagine the worst must have been when playing DJ Splash from one of my flash drives - great music to drive with when it's 11 PM - 2 AM and stay awake (did that so I could avoid traffic completely... plus, hardly anyone cares when you drive 80-90 on a 65 speed limit then... except maybe deer. )

Sigh... I wonder if https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=113251 will end up being a worthless/pointless repair if I end up getting another mainboard for it.

Well, if the TV ends up working for a long time and you get some good use out of it... maybe not. But for $80, that's a little too much for a mainboard. If the seller has a "make offer" on the listing, be sure to low-ball it. Then maybe I can too from my account. Hopefully he/she gets the message, lol.

Mainly would like it working again as I'm currently using two 19" 1280x1024 monitors right now... a full 1080p display would actually be an upgrade...

IDK, I tend to dislike large TVs as monitors. Can't view them from far away if you want to do pixel-accurate work and can't be too close because of all the light and just the screen being too big and grainy. I think 22-24" is the best middle-ground (for me.) 27" max. Anything more and it's too big. Below 20-21", the desktop real estate gets a little on the cramped side... but I can manage.

Keep them for a far future , they'll be priceless .. Not much as Vinyl discs though , but who knows !!!

I will be, indeed.
Well-made stuff will always remain well-made stuff.
And I do have fun with them sometimes as well. Have some CrO2's that had pretty terrible recordings on them (improperly done with a deck that probably didn't have Type II/IV biasing.) Might erase them and re-record with something modern, just for kicks. I've already done that with some newer (late 90's) TDK standard tapes, and they sound surprisingly amazing afterwards.

[jiroy]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Do you mean blanks or pre-recorded type II / IV tapes?
Type I = Ferric Oxide?
Type II = Chromium Oxide?
Type IV = Metal Particle?

Metal Particle tapes aren't exactly a rare commodity even, thought that all DAT tapes, 8mm video tapes, etc. were all MP. Old VHS tapes were ferric oxide, so those are dime a dozen...

There is more complexity to types :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compac...d_formulations

It's not the matter if they're re-producted now or before . It's if you keep their original status .

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Do you mean blanks or pre-recorded type II / IV tapes?
Type I = Ferric Oxide?
Type II = Chromium Oxide?
Type IV = Metal Particle?

Metal Particle tapes aren't exactly a rare commodity even, thought that all DAT tapes, 8mm video tapes, etc. were all MP. Old VHS tapes were ferric oxide, so those are dime a dozen...

[jiroy]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Yeah, a properly recorded FeCr, CrO2, or metal tape can sound pretty decent. I have a few of these as well - in the same box as the RAKS tape shown above. Also have one with a ceramic casing. This stuff is worth crazy money now on eBay, LOL. They all worked too, last time I checked (3-4 years ago.)

Keep them for a far future , they'll be priceless .. Not much as Vinyl discs though , but who knows !!!

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Sigh... I wonder if https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=113251 will end up being a worthless/pointless repair if I end up getting another mainboard for it.

Mainly would like it working again as I'm currently using two 19" 1280x1024 monitors right now... a full 1080p display would actually be an upgrade...

[Johnkill]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

oh nice

[momaka]

Samsung LNT4061FX-XAA 40” TV

As usual, I’ll start with a bit of a story. I picked a Samsung LNT4061FX-XAA 40” TV up in December of 2021 from next to a dumpster near a condo in my area that I pass by on my way to one of the grocery stores. We had rain forecast for the evening, but I left the TV sitting there, hoping someone would take it (besides, I was skeptical if that condo was clean or not in regards to roaches and other pests.) However, no one did and I returned for it later in the evening. By the time I was there, the TV got rained on a little. But figured I’d still pick it up. Worst case, I’d pull the boards and scrap the rest.

Once I got it home, I wiped the moisture from it and then put it outside again, covered with a trash bag to prevent it from getting rained on more. The next day after the rain stopped, I pulled it apart and inspected it - no roaches or anything else indicative of pests hiding in there. However, the TV did have a thick coat of dust with very strong scent of air freshener (probably one of those households that has an air freshener plugged in every socket on every wall, LOL.)

Upon opening, I immediately spotted a bad cap on the PSU – a SamWha WB, 25V, 1000 uF.


However, I decided to test the TV as-is, just to see what it did and if the screen is OK. Interestingly, the TV worked, despite the failed SamWha WB cap. The bad news is that the screen wasn’t exactly good… though not broken either. It was this:


… basically a thick row of dead / dying / dark pixels on the bottom of the screen. Shame, because it is a 1080p TV, despite being older, not smart, and only 60 Hz refresh.

More pictures of the issues with the screen:





At first, I though I’m not going to waste any good-branded caps on the PSU board. Just replace the one failed SamWha cap, take pictures, and donate the TV as-is (well, jury’s still out on that.) So for a test / quick fix, I replaced only the single failed SamWha cap above with a Jackcon LHK, 25V, 1000 uF that I bought back in 2017 for cheap when I worked in MicroCenter (was going to use this cap along with a few others to fix a recycle bin –rescued LCD for my workbench there, since I couldn’t take the monitor with me… but I ended up not having enough time before I left that place.) Believe it or not, this Jackcon cap was still showing good ESR and capacitance after 5 years of storage and never used (not that I’m making any claim here for Jackcon to be considered good or even OK, but just worth noting they can be used as a temporary/test fix.)


And here is what the failed SamWha WB cap read like:


With the SamWha cap replaced, I then finished the TV by cleaning / wiping all of the plastics to get it ready to give away. And again, it’s a shame about the screen defect, because otherwise look how clean the TV came out after cleaning:





What’s even a bigger shame is that I saw a ton of working 720p and 1080p TVs being given out for free (or as little as $10-20) in the last year, all the same size or even bigger than this Samsung, with no screen defects. Many came with remotes, too. I guess no one cares about 40-50” TVs in my area anymore. Looks like they fall in a size that is too big to be a kitchen TV and too small to be a main / living room TV. Mine being without a remote and with a screen defect seemed just not possible to even give away for free. The most ironic part is that I don’t even watch TV! (And I have plenty of 19-24” LCD monitors, which is my preferred size, so not much use as a monitor either… but jury’s out on that as well. )

Then one boring rainy day last spring, I thought, “Ah, what the hell!” - in for the penny, in for the pound / dollar / [insert your currency here]. I decided to do a more extensive recap on the PSU board, since I already had some of the values in stock.

And I did. The repair is posted in the thread below (figured I’d split it in there, since I put some cap info and whatnot.)
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...55&postcount=6

So what am I going to do with this TV? No idea yet. Don’t think anyone will be interested in it, but will see / try again. I bought a used remote for it for $6, so it’s a complete set now (I guess that’s the nice thing about older Samsung TVs – remotes are abundant and cheap on eBay.) The TV is currently set up as a monitor with a spare PC I have. It doesn’t see much use, as I use that PC only for testing software or burning DVDs once in a while. The TV also doesn’t look too bad when used for watching extended wide screen content, such as shown below, where the screen defect is not visible at all:


So all in all, it’s usable. At least for a little while longer, I guess that would be another TV saved from the landfill. Good enough for me.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

I have a FM transmitter that was completely analog that was not PLL driven, this thing drifts really badly. However my FM transmitters that are PLL locked (one cellphone with built-in transmitter and a few cigarette lighter FM transmitters) and can tune the whole broadcast FM band have been much better, though I always use an unused station. With the unused station, they worked just fine.

Technically even if it splatters (i.e. can receive on more than one frequency), if these pass FCC part 15 rules, they are still legal. Unfortunately it appears that anyone within 200ft line of sight may still get unintentional operation. Should be much less than that if there's something in the way...

[momaka]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

This was "media recovery" way back when.... just to restore a cartridge back to usable shape so that data can be recovered.

LOL, now you make me sound like a data recovery specialist.
Perhaps something I should put on my resume.

Not a pointless repair if you don't have a copy of the media elsewhere, else probably cheaper to recreate a new tape.

I don't, but it's nothing special, nostalgia aside - just Queen, Greatest Hits collection. Like diif mentioned, it's probably faster to grab a copy off of the internet - be it in digital format or just buying a used CD (I still do the latter, though locally now.)

That being said, what would happen if someone winded the feed spool backwards, practical joke for way back when?

Heheh.
I thought about that once when I was a kid.

What happens may depend on the deck / machine the tape is played on.

I have a few off-brand Walkman / "personal" cassette players that don't have Rewind function (LOL!), so there is nothing that rotates with the feed spool.

On my Marantz SD4000 deck, however, the tape counter mechanism is driven via a rubber belt pulley system. So if it spins backwards while the tape is going forward, the tape counter will spin backwards.

It's only pointless in the fact a FLAC copy can be downloaded faster than you can do the repair.
To me, repairing one of your favourite vintage tapes to be used again, is the very opposite of pointless.

Thanks.

Yeah, isn't it somewhat sad how (too) easy it is to do certain things with the internet now? Things that before, we'd have to spend a considerable amount of time and knowledge on. I mean, it's nice and convenient... but also not as much fun, IMO - not for a kid, anyways. Glad I wasn't in the generation to grow up with a tablet and phone in my hand 24/7.

I remember when my dad taught me how to make my own mix tapes when I was ~5 or so years old. Certain days, I'd spend all day listening to the radio, waiting to record songs I liked. And of course, one had to be quick to hit the stop at the end of the song before the radio host started talking or cut the song a little early... or fade it out gradually before that.

I still do , and it's worth it , especially when mines are of the highest possible quality , like ferricobalts and chromes ..Their quality was pretty equivalent to Vinyl discs .

Yeah, a properly recorded FeCr, CrO2, or metal tape can sound pretty decent. I have a few of these as well - in the same box as the RAKS tape shown above. Also have one with a ceramic casing. This stuff is worth crazy money now on eBay, LOL. They all worked too, last time I checked (3-4 years ago.)

One of my cars has only a tape player for removable storage and it's bust, so I end up having to use RF. Oh well.

Is that one of those 3.5 mm / flash drive / removable media to RF car transmitters?

I bought one some years ago to complement my CD music collections on long trips between college and home. The thing couldn't transmit to a blank station even in the middle of nowhere on a highway. I ended up opening it up and soldering a long piece of wire to the antenna output. Then it had no problem over-powering just about any radio station. Even better, I found that its PLL frequency-aliased (or something along those lines) and was transmitting to several other random FM frequencies too, but with a little less power. Definitely must have broken its FCC approval, if it ever had one.

Hmmm... looking at pictures of stuff I posted, I don't think I posted my "modified" RF transmitter. Worthy of the ghettomod thread, though.
Gonna wait for some sunlight one of these days and see if I can snap a few.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

I still have a small pile of compact cassettes, mixture of regular and chrome tapes. Unfortunately nothing worth listening to since they're blanks.

One of my cars has only a tape player for removable storage and it's bust, so I end up having to use RF. Oh well.

[jiroy]

Re: RAKS ED-X 60 audio cassette repair

In fact, does anyone even have/keep cassettes anymore? )


Of course me being who I am today, I knew I could fix this cassette finally after all these years… and so I did!

Even with cassette tapes now being vintage and probably having higher value than they did 20-25 years ago… I think we can all agree this was quite a pointless repair.
However, I still think it was totally worth it to see it play properly again. And that it did.
Nostalgia is such a satisfying feeling sometimes.

I still do , and it's worth it , especially when mines are of the highest possible quality , like ferricobalts and chromes ..Their quality was pretty equivalent to Vinyl discs .

[diif]

Re: RAKS ED-X 60 audio cassette repair

Even with cassette tapes now being vintage and probably having higher value than they did 20-25 years ago… I think we can all agree this was quite a pointless repair.
However, I still think it was totally worth it to see it play properly again. And that it did.
Nostalgia is such a satisfying feeling sometimes.

It's only pointless in the fact a FLAC copy can be downloaded faster than you can do the repair.
To me, repairing one of your favourite vintage tapes to be used again, is the very opposite of pointless.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

This was "media recovery" way back when.... just to restore a cartridge back to usable shape so that data can be recovered.

Not a pointless repair if you don't have a copy of the media elsewhere, else probably cheaper to recreate a new tape.

That being said, what would happen if someone winded the feed spool backwards, practical joke for way back when?

[momaka]

RAKS ED-X 60 audio cassette repair

Ever encountered an audio cassette without screws?
Well, they aren't actually that uncommon, I suppose... at least back in the day (Otherwise, can we say ALL cassettes are uncommon at this point? In fact, does anyone even have/keep cassettes anymore? )

So where am I going with this? Let's turn back time [to the good old days] just a little over 25 years ago - mid 1990's. Little 5-6 Y.O.me back then used to love taking a cassette tape and spinning the reel inside it with a pen or pencil while listening to music. I don't know why I found this to be so magical (hypnotizing even? ), but that's what I did.

Long story short, the tape on one cassette somehow fell on the side of the reel. I realized what happened and switched to the other reel to spin the tape backwards, hoping the tape would pull out and straighten again. It did. But then some days/week/who-knows-how-long later, the same thing happened to the same cassette. And this time, the tape didn't straighten out, even after reaching the end of the reel (the cleaning tape.) Instead, it kinked and partially pinched on the side of the reel of the tape. No matter how many times I rewound that tape, both by hand/pen/pencil or on my dad's tape deck, the kink never straightened itself. And because it was partially pinched on the side, it added considerable friction between the reel and the case. As such, this cassette would now drag / play slow towards one side. It drove me nuts for many years when I was a kid. But I was too little to try to fix it back then. And my dad said it is not fixable, because the cassette's case didn't have screws and we wouldn't be able to put it back together.

Fast forward 20-ish years later... and I found this cassette stashed in a box with other tapes that I thought my parents had gotten rid of a long time ago. The nostalgia kicked in and I wanted to play this cassette again. It was a copy of Queen / Freddy Mercury – Greatest Hits, and probably one of my most favorite cassettes, along with Foreigner and a few others.

Of course me being who I am today, I knew I could fix this cassette finally after all these years… and so I did!

Since the cassette came with no screws, I had to split it open with a razor / sharp knife. This was pretty easy, actually. So was straightening the kinked cleaning tape (sorry, I forgot to take pictures of what it looked like when it was kinked in there.) But when it came time to close it, that's where I had to go just slightly ghetto with the fix. I didn't have rubber / contact cement to glue the cassette's case nicely. And PVC glue probably wouldn't have worked, since it looked like PC (polycarbon) plastic, which doesn't glue well with PVC cement. However, if there is one thing that works pretty well on PC and acrylic, it's hot glue.

5 minutes later with the hot glue gun, and it was all back together.



Even with cassette tapes now being vintage and probably having higher value than they did 20-25 years ago… I think we can all agree this was quite a pointless repair.
However, I still think it was totally worth it to see it play properly again. And that it did.
Nostalgia is such a satisfying feeling sometimes.

[REpairAT]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

It is similar in Swedish.
It means full throttle or idle (speaking about a cars combustion engine).

Exactly!

[Per Hansson]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

"vollgas" and "standgas" are cute for reading as straight English, but probably quite typical for German...?

It is similar in Swedish.
It means full throttle or idle (speaking about a cars combustion engine).