All hardware acts up. How does yours?

rcbsdpge said:
I have a spare workstation laptop. It’s my baby. I’ve had it since about freshman year of college
I’ll either figure out why the motherboard got fried or replace it entirely worst case scenario
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Frankly I don't really care, but I'm completely confused: I thought your drive died. Now you wanna test your MB?
You are aware of this is a bit more ambitious job than looking for why your egg cooker doesn't work? You need a bit more than having some YT videos watched and a voltmeter from the supermarket to do that.
Anybody does/did electronics on a professional level will tell you: Don't waste your time on that. You will slave months over it, if not longer, with no realistic chance of success.

If the whole machine is powerless, you may check some capacitors, diodes, fuses, inductors, connectors and conductor lines directly at the board's onboard power supply circuit. But anything else ain't even remotely worth the effort: too many (tiny) parts on a multilayer PCB with no scheme at all, some even covered under lacquer paint, so no connection for measurement... - not a chance to find all parts to be suspected in a reasonable time.
Even if you figure out the voltage provided at the drive's port was too high - which I highly doubt very much, because those are all standard ICs used and working properly and reliably millions of times - then what?
Look close at your PCB's ICs! How many of them there are? Which one is for the port's power supply? What type of part exactly is it? What's the part's type designator? [Not the serial number, nor the lot charge; if there even is something readable written on it.] Even if you found and figured that part out doubtless, where do you get this part from to replace it? I bet, even if you make it that far, you will not get this part anymore. Especially when the machine is older than 3...5 years most of its ICs are not produced anymore. You need similar same luck like winning the lottery to find one to be bought at Mouser, Digi-Key et al (they name lots of parts in their catalogues, but most are out of stock, and forever will be) - if those were even available on the market anyway, and not exclusively produced for or even by the laptop's manufacturer itself (many of those have their own semiconductor fabs producing only for their own usage.) With extreme luck you may find some remainders offered by an IC broker. Of course then you need to buy them all: app. a couple of some hundreds to a few thousand parts for way more than you get a couple of new laptops for. When you get the part, which I doubt, then what? You replace it with the new part, of course. Ever compared the tip of your soldering iron with those connector pins? But many ICs, especially power supply ICs, come as BGA - all (and many) connectors are under the part. A soldering iron is completely useless here and can only cause damage. And even if you got this far there is a very high probability you will face the bitter fact, you still did not repaired your machine. Because chances are high, that's not the only part damaged, and chances are even higher you do even more damage to your board than repairing.

Then you want to replace the motherboard. I got it right: We are talking a laptop here, right?
With laptops it's not like desktop PCs, where the MBs come in standard ATX sizes. Most laptops have an individual tailored, own designed PCB. The only way to get a fitting replacement is to get an identical laptop. Then you use that, but don't exchange the boards - which with laptops is very much more fumbling than with a desktop/tower PC; it's not that simple like replacing its SSD, RAM or WLAN module.

Maybe I'm mistaken, and you are an experienced electronics hardware master with pro equipment.
But if not, take my advice and don't waste your time on that.

My guess is, there either was some static electrical discharge, which toasted your hardware (maybe you touched it without being properly grounded), or it died of other ("natural") causes.
Sooner or later hardware also just dies by age. Then it's time to get a new one.
But trying to repair modern electronics instead of trashing it may be a noble idea, but practically it's a waste of time, resources and money.
 
I simplified the problem entirely. The replacement SSD in the photo. But I’ve taken apart complete car engines before and inline 6 diesel engines. It’s not that big of a deal.

I guess to answer the inquiry it’s to sharpen my engineering skills in laptop/PC building to save costs on paying someone else to do it if something I own breaks.

Unless FreeBSD crashes then yeah
 
Er, what's the simplicity of a car engine got to do with the complexity of a single chip in a computer?. The most complicated part of a car engine these days is the engine management unit (a few chips in a sealed unit), but that can't be repaired and is treated as a single component. The mechanical parts are very straightforward, just the same simple mechanism repeated 3,4,6,8,12, or 16 times.

As for the "static charge" in the Lenovo, yes capacitors store static electricity at the voltage applied to them and will discharge naturally through the rest of the circuit when the power is removed, but silicon junctions do not conduct at very low voltages, so it's possible a register (almost anything that handles data can be considered a register for this purpose) could retain a corrupted data bit after normal power is removed if a capacitor can't discharge any further, and that corrupted bit would be what interfered with normal operation. The procedure outlined provides an additional discharge path enabling the corrupted bit to lose its memory and thus clearing the problem. So, yes, technically it is discharging static electricity, but the cause of the problem is that power to a junction storing a bad bit of data cannot otherwise be removed in a reasonable time. Leaving the computer unused for several weeks would probably work as well because the charge would have to leak away eventually. The static voltage would be very low, however, compared with what usually causes concern; less than half a volt compared with the thousands or even millions of volts we normally mean by static.
 
kjpetrie said:
Er, what's the simplicity of a car engine got to do with the complexity of a single chip in a computer?. The most complicated part of a car engine these days is the engine management unit (a few chips in a sealed unit), but that can't be repaired and is treated as a single component. The mechanical parts are very straightforward, just the same simple mechanism repeated 3,4,6,8,12, or 16 times.
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What would you rather have your laptop break or your vehicle break. Ever diagnosed a voltage drop in the electrical wiring in your vehicle

Or what about compression on a coil spring. Know what that does.

People forget technology is engineered. Vehicles included. If it was so simple we all would repair our own vehicles.
 
Of course I know about compression - Hooke's law and all that. If you think a computer is comparable with a car you really haven't grasped it. In the 90s the most complicated technology in the car was the CD player - far more complicated than the rest of the car put together by an order or two of magnitude. Now every car contains computers, but the actual mechanism which drives the car is kindergarten stuff compared with that.

As for vehicle maintenance, I used to do my own but I haven't the time these days - bleeding the brakes and all that. I couldn't be bothered to hire the tools to take the cylinder head off but I designed and built a new voltage regulator for the alternator in my 1979 Fiesta when that failed and I improvised a new water pump gasket out of an old shoe and a bicycle inner tube for my old Fiat when I discovered some idiot had messed around with a file on its mating surface.

If you want to mess around with the MB you're welcome to try, but I'd be very surprised if you have the necessary equipment to diagnose the problem. As for getting the faulty part off and on again without breaking everything else when you've found it, unless it's a simple resistor or capacitor you'll probably need an oven hot enough to melt the solder but not enough to melt the chips, and then you'll need a very steady hand to ensure nothing else falls off. Let us know how you get on.

Oh, and don't forget to remove the CMOS battery and all electrolytic capacitors or you'll boil the electrolyte and in the case of the battery could even start a fire.
 
kjpetrie and rcbsdpge, I never repaired a car engine. Maximum my bike :-) I propose this hopefully "balanced" position:
  • a car engine is so costly, that it makes sense to repair, while a motherboard not so much;
  • a car engine has many parts that are designed for being repaired;
  • a desktop computer (too) has many parts designed for being repaired/replaced, e.g. PSU, disks, RAM, many cables, etc..;
  • an SSD as counter-example, is not meant to be repaired and in fact one usually replace it with a new one;
  • a motherboard usually is not meant to be repaired, but replaced, because it has many parts to test, and the time lost is usually more than the cost of a new motherboard;
  • a faulty motherboard or a faulty PSU can damage other components of the system;
  • a faulty motherboard can make the system not reliable;
  • I prefer when possible desktop computers because I can replace/repair/upgrade parts;
In worst case scenario, you will stop fighting and you will start attacking me :-)
 
I'm not fighting anyone. I'm just trying to point out the huge difference in complexity between a motherboard or SSD and a car engine to someone who seems to think them comparable. Your observations are quite correct. Electronics these days has become so dense and specialised in construction techniques repair is almost impossible beyond replacing whole assemblies. An engineering workshop would usually have everything needed to make or repair an engine or gearbox; lathe, borer, grinding and polishing equipment etc.. You can still do those things by hand.

To build computer parts and assemblies now requires a huge industrial complex. The best you can do by hand is assemble the sub-assemblies in a case, and you can't even do that with laptops, tablets, or phones. I "build" my own desktop machines. In reality I buy ready-made parts more complex than a combine harvester, and wire them up in a case. If I tried to build the whole computer from scratch I'd finish up with something the size of a barn which would be slow in operation because of its scale and would cost a million quid. That's how computers were in the 1950s.

I had my own business as a TV/audio repair technician until I realised I couldn't compete with the robotic factories churning out sets cheaper than I could take them apart by hand.. That was 30 years ago. These days there's very little inside a TV or radio you could replace by hand. Even they now contain a small computer, probably running Android.
 
Did something change between 15.0-RELEASE and now? My laptop server seeming needs console="nullconsole" to boot with lid shut now or else boot loader doesn't load (when lid-opened after POST it sits at flashing cursor and flickers screen)

I didn't need that option previously and thought my laptop hardware went weird or something :p (I noticed it earlier this year with Linux distros but Windows was fine; I thought it was MBR vs GPT but it happened both AutoZFS GPT BIOS and UFS MBR; although lsblk mentioned GPT still with UFS; maybe something with MBR -> GPT handoff with video OpROM?)
 
kjpetrie said:
These days there's very little inside a TV or radio you could replace by hand.
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Modern equipment doesn't live very long. Occurs to me that it is made to last 10 years at best.
That's why I stick to old stuff. Still sounds okay and you can still repair it. Just don't count the labour hours, I replaced hundreds of capacitors alone.

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Tieks said:
Still sounds okay and you can still repair it. Just don't count the labour hours, I replaced hundreds of capacitors alone.
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Sure, a good tube amp is worth to be repaired. No question.
And not only.
I also always try to repair my stuff myself first before I dump any of it: vacuum cleaners, earphones, ventilation,... even my stove (I graduated in mechanical engineering major electrical engineering. I know what I'm doing where others better keep their hands off.) And I did some electronics designs for mass production at $JOB.
The point is (as you said): Can it be repaired at all.
Comparing by just only looking at the circuit of some electrical device, especially older than ~30years, or some modern electronics hardware should make the difference already pretty clear. There are not only obvious differences in the size of the parts. There is also the complexity: The amount of parts. It's a huge difference if you deal with something consisting of 30...200 parts, its circuit's schematics fits on one page. When the defected part(s) ain't obvious, or trivial to find, you must have one. In old tube television sets (Don't you ever touch those, unless you are a qualified electrical technician or engineer! Tubes come with high voltages, at least 400V, often >2kV. Those are actually lethal by the slightest mistake) and other devices often came with its schematics (for repair).
Or if you're dealing with something consisting of 2k...>10k parts, its schematics are on many pages, looking like a large project tree, printed needs at least a complete case file, and they are not delivered, most of times not even available, so you don't have any schematics at all.
And those modern computer electronics hardware seldom come as two layer PCBs - all conducting traces running on the surface, top or bottom side - but on a multilayer PCB - at least two, not seldom even more additional layers of conducting traces inside the PCB - there is no real chance to create a schematics from it of your own. Plus, with common hobby laboratory equipment you cannot do anything else but damage to those boards. Especially, as I said, when you have BGA parts, you need something else than a soldering iron for that (I don't tell; because you either know, or you better don't even try - it's a waste of time, and as I said, you can only cause (more) damage.)
Plus many of those parts, the ICs, the small black square boxes, are not seldom at least partial microcontrollers. Which means, they are small computers, which means they run software. So, even if you identified such as to be replaced, and even you managed it to replace it properly (as I said in my former post, it's also very difficult if not impossible to get the exact part at all) you still gained nothing, because you don't have the software you need to program it with (and still not the suiting programmer for it, which also comes at ~200...>800 US$.)

As you said:
One needs to know the limits.
And it's a pity, so many stuff needs to be trashed and bought new, instead of being repaired or lives longer.
But here we also need to think of Planned obsolescence - alas we live in capitalism; always need to sell even more at even shorter times. Those tiny microcontrollers are perfect to be programmed to start your otherwise perfectly tip-top device to act crazy at a certain time of usage. You think your device (printer, car,...) just became old, and starts to become more and more defective. Nah, that's a show programmed in for you to make you believe it's old, and you need to buy a new one.

So far you are right: Better use old stuff - when and if you can, and the stuff you have as long as possible.
And also here FreeBSD and other free, open source OS do a good job:
Since it does not insist on running on the most top modern hardware, you can save a lot of HW using such OS, like using older, even used HW, or the HW you have for way longer.
Using FreeBSD saves money, resources and the environment.
 
...and the idea someone would think stripping down a car engine or gearbox comparable tells us all we need to know.

But seriously, you're quite right. If car manufacturers could program their engine controllers to detect test conditions and run in a different mode they could easily program them to misfire after between 70 to 90,000 miles. Since modern cars need an Internet connection many of them could also be sent a signal to malfunction at any time. We'd like to think it wouldn't happen, just as we'd like to hope a future government wouldn't use facial recognition to target people it considered a nuisance. However, anyone with a modicum of common sense knows given an opportunity many will succumb to the temptation. If it can happen, sooner or later it probably will.
 
kjpetrie said:
If car manufacturers could program their engine controllers to detect test conditions and run in a different mode they could easily program them to misfire after between 70 to 90,000 miles.
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It's not the engines (AFAIK), at some points there are laws for security and eco; you better don't mess with those. It's all the features, sensors and onboard computer stuff start acting crazy and producing unreasoned alarms and weird error messages, like "defective gear box", "track control off", etc.

Edit April 23th, 2026: I didn't want to bring it up myself, even if somehow it fits in what we were talking here: For farmers those modern, full of electronic high tech feature garbage tractors are not just a nuisance, but a serious, and critical cost factor. When they cannot repair their machines themselves anymore, but need to wait and pay for repairs every time something is defective, which, like in all systems like common cars, is more often the more fiddle-faddle is installed, it can actually threat the existenz of their business.
No-Tech Tractors
 
kjpetrie said:
If car manufacturers could program their engine controllers to detect test conditions and run in a different mode they could easily program them to misfire after between 70 to 90,000 miles.
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Are right to repair and OSS linked? :)

Consumerism is destroying the world. Electronics in cars and households appliances is already used as a method for lock-in cheap assistance. Often companies put electronics or mechanical parts with programmed obsolescence.

In a rational world, the cheap electronics of costly mechanical devices should be mass produced in excess, stored by law, and sold with reduced margins, and maybe there should be standard way for replacing it. The same for error-prone components.

But all these is contrary to the rules of the game called consumerism. If a company produces too much durable goods, it will fail.
 
From the 50s to the 90s DIY was a big growth industry (at least in the UK) and a huge number of hardware supermarkets sprang up to supply the market. Then the government brought in certification requirements on building work, and with that the DIY market was destroyed. DIY was effectively made illegal.

I suppose FOSS and Right to Repair are the last strongholds of DIY, so they have that in common. The imposition of legal content requirements on all software development could be seen as a way to ensure only qualified professionals are allowed to do it in future.
 
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