820-00045 Questions...

SMMRepair

Member
I got one of these in for the first time today, and it had pretty substantial liquid damage. Liquid to around 6 areas of the board, including some pretty bad burning to a few ICs and coils/caps/resistors. Amazingly, the computer actually powers up, but has issues.

My question is more related to the process of working on these new-style boards:

1. With everything being so close together, what's the best way to replace a group of 3-5 caps/resistors that are nestled between medium-sized ICs and other components that one might not want to get too hot? Is it a matter of just skillfully placing kapton tape and being slow/patient?

2. How is the heat-sinking of this board in particular--is it easy/difficult to remove components without applying insane amounts of heat? Obviously with everything so close together, it's significantly more difficult to avoid heating the "vital" bits and/or melting connectors that look like they'd be an absolute nightmare to replace. Would this be a case where maybe a smaller tip on the hot air station (maybe 2-3mm instead of 5-6mm) would come in handy? Maybe better directional heat would make it easier to heat up an isolated area.

3. Any general suggestions for working on this board? Anything to be aware of?

I'm really not liking this new design. These new models are going to be absolutely grueling to work on at any sort of regular interval.

Thanks!
 
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dukefawks

Administrator
Before applying heat put some leaded solder on the caps so they melt before the rest.
General suggestions are to avoid these things. I bet the KBD is bad or sticky, getting the keys off without fucking it up is near impossible. Usually the microphone doesn't survive either.
I hate these, it is like working on an iphone...
So far I have not done BGA work on these, it was all simple resistors/caps/connectors.
 

SMMRepair

Member
Yeah, I'm thinking about not accepting these for repair until absolutely necessary. I didn't realize replacement boards were so cheap ($300). Will suggest that to customers instead, since we would charge that to work on them...might as well just replace the board for them and not have to worry about working on the thing. Thanks, Duke!
 
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