Gormadt

NGL I usually only do component level repairs on the power boards (or in the case of appliances most of the components are easy to find docs for and are much larger) but I usually find stuff by poking around with my multimeter or looking for obviously blown things. But my experience is more from the realm of appliance repair (and all from experimenting).

Testing capacitors can be done (and if they’re big enough) something I’ll do as well. I ain’t gonna test capacitors that are smaller that a grain of rice.

There are times though that it’s easier to just buy a new board rather than do component level repair.

Good news is that when it comes to TVs those boards are usually really cheap.

Usually if it’s a charging port, it’s pretty common that there’s like dirt in there or something.

But soldering a type C connector is pretty tough due to the size. Especially for my (lack of) experience level.

It could be a learning opportunity for you though.

NGL when it comes to that kind of fault I usually just replace the mainboard, they’re usually dirt cheap and it’s a hell of a lot easier to swap that whole board than it is to poke and prod for an hour just to find out it’s some 40 pin monster with micro-soldiered pins.

The power board is usually what I do component level replacements on. The t-con board and the main board I usually just swap.

For TVs it’s usually really simple, like internal fuses or blown caps. And a few with bad backlights or mainboards that are dead.

For 2 of them it’s been shorts in the LCD itself which meant I had to block the clock pin from the TCON board for the specific part of the screen with the short. Basically killing a line of pixels to get the TV working again. In general if the TV is 4k and smaller than like 45 inches you’ll never see it unless you look for it.

That’s a super involved fix (involving A LOT of trial and error to find the right pin) but it keeps it out of a landfill.

In general fixing a TV is always cost effective unless the actual LCD has physical damage.

In the last few years I’ve fixed about a dozen TVs, they can definitely suck to fix at times (especially the really new ones) but in general the fixes have been simple. And all of them were snagged out of the dumpster at my apartment complex.

And that’s just the TVs I’ve fixed. I like to fix things.

In terms of phones they’re a nightmare though. I’m keeping an eye on HMD phones and Fairphone though as both of them are a LOT easier to fix than other brands.

In the event of my current phone breaking I’d love to get either one of those brands.

Getting my friends to shift over is a pain in the ass for sure

Whenever I download a new version of Blender I typically throw them $10 - $15.

Just like with other open source software I use, I give it a shot and if I like it I’ll throw them $10 - $15 each time I update.

Edit: It’s not much but it’s not nothing. No raindrop feels reasonable for the flood and all that.

Another reason to hate new cars

I’ll keep my old clunkers running until I literally can’t. And that’s a hella high bar.