On Friday, April 22, 2011 07:59:10 Cranky Frankie wrote: > When last I reported about my Acer Aspire One netbook that had had the > DC input jack repaired, it was running OK on AC but would still > randomly shut down when running on either the original 6 cell battery > or a newer 9 cell battery (with both batteries showing up as fully > charged in the OS). I'd tried flashing the bios, reinstalling the OS, > and had it to Liberteks in Albany twice. Having it run without > problems on AC was fine but it is a netbook after all so it should be > portable. > > I was ready to just get rid of it when I decided to bring it back to > Liberteks one more time. Well, now it finally appears they fixed it - > it now, finally, runs on the battery and on AC without shutting down > randomly. The best part is how they fixed it: they claim they removed > the motherboard and baked it in an oven! The only thing I can imagine > is they wanted to reheat any cold solder joints, but wouldn't any heat > high enough to melt solder destroy the components on the board? Unless > maybe cold solder joints don't have to be reheated "all the way?" I > don't know what it was, I've never heard of doing this before, but > apparently it works.
I've heard of other people heating up motherboards in an oven before, although I've never personally done it. I'm not positive, but I think the idea is to actually get all of the solder to melt in order to get it to reflow slightly in order to try to fix any bad contacts. This might have to do with the BGA packages [BGA = Ball Grid Array] used for chips, which don't allow any access to the contacts underneath the chip, so there's no way to inspect or repair any bad solder joints there. I guess putting a motherboard in an oven is essentially an act of desperation; at the point that you're about to throw the device out, that's when it's worth a shot, as it occasionally works to fix the problem. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium May 4 - Inkscape Jun 1 - Zimbra Jul 6 - Jul 2011
