Has anyone ever successfully hand soldered any surface mount components ? Ive reading up about this next step in my soldering evolution and it looks surprisingly straightforward. Does anyone here have any experiences or stories, failure or success ?

Russ.

Re: Pandigital Supernova

Ive had a close look over the motherboard and dont see any liquid or fractures/dry joins, it hasnt been dropped at all. I hooked up a different Li-Po battery, and still got no power.

This is a new one for me. I have a Pandigital Supernova that wont turn on. When i press the power button i get nothing, i figured maybe its the screen, so i connected the device to my computer hoping that when i power it on, my laptop will see it, but nothing. When i plug in the charger i get a green light, the battery has some power so im sure its charging. The power button has a voltage, as do other parts dotted around the board, see pic. I dont have any majorly important data on the device, just some notes, ebooks and some .pdf attachments that id like to recover if possible.

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Re: Dell 2208wfp hissing

Awesome replies, and thankyou for the photobucket. I pulled the bulbs out, slowly, broke one of them. The ends didnt look burned like yours did though, ill pick up some replacements from the cflwarehouse and attempt my first bulb transplant I found the same screen on ebay with horizontal lines, i could in worst case scenario, buy that, and swap the lcd panel with my good panel. Experiment continues with the aid of your photobucket !

Re: Dell 2208wfp hissing

I messed a little more. I plugged each bulb into their own sockets, same result, i plugged swapped them around (so bottom bulb in top socket, top bulb in bottom socket) and i get the hissing from the same wires, not the same socket. So this points to the problem being the actual bulb and not the socket. I have never replaced a bulb and would be quite sure that repairing a bulb probably isnt possible.

I have 3 of these, all with the same issue, 3 seconds to blank. I replaced the burnt out caps on all 3 screens, two of them came back alive. This is an image of the 3rd one.

In the image, the red circle is the only burnt out cap that i replaced. The blue circle is where im getting the hissing sound from.

I turn on the screen, get the high pitched hiss, the screen goes blank after a couple of seconds, the hissing stops. If i do this in the dark, i can actually see the wires leading from the board glow a blue/purple colour, this is accompanied by a chemical burning...

Re: Vizio M261VP blinking power light.

This is the mainboard and the power board. The DC input is visible at the bottom right section of the PCB. :/

A friend of mine brought me this TV, saying it wont display anything on the screen. Rightly enough, when i turn it on, i get nothing, no flash of light, no OSD menus. The only thing i did notice is that the power light blinks on and off for around 30 seconds and then stays off. Does anyone have access to a service manual for this model ? Before i look deeper into the PCB im just wondering if this is a known defect, firmware update etc. might save me some time.

I took a quick look inside for any obvious visual flaws on the PCB, but nothing stands out, all caps are flush, no residue...