Electronics Repair & Tinkering

My grandpa ran a TV repair shop and fixed arcade machines, robots, RC cars, and VCRs on the side. My brother and I hung out in the back room so customers wouldn't see us, watching him solder and troubleshoot everything that came through the door. Eventually I started picking up the soldering iron myself - melting solder, playing with pulled components, just poking around to learn how things worked. I saw my grandpa troubleshooting different components using an Oscilloscope, I tried to copy him and make little round waves, square waves, triangles, and even shapes that looked like fish. We also played around with the Simpson 260 multimeter, learning how to measure voltage, and test resistors. My job as a kid was to use the solder sucker to remove the solder from the boards, and use the audio setting on the multimeter to test for continuity.

That's the origin of everything electronics for me, and it never really stopped. I've torn down and fixed my share of game consoles over the years - a PS3 stripped all the way to the motherboard and heatsink to deal with the "Yellow Light of Death," a common PS3 failure usually caused by cold or cracked solder joints on the CPU/GPU from years of heat cycling. Laptops too - a MacBook opened up to swap the hard drive and battery, with a hot air rework station and a UV curing light on hand for the flex-cable and adhesive work.

It's not just repair, either - modding counts too. I rebuilt a kid's Power Wheels Jeep with a Ryobi 18V 4Ah lithium tool battery in place of the stock battery, so it runs longer and charges faster on a regular power-tool charger, plus a PWM speed controller wired in so the top speed can actually be dialed in instead of running flat-out.

These days the bench has a digital microscope instead of just an eyepiece - useful for tracing traces and inspecting solder joints on modern boards, like a ps4 mainboard I was working on here, magnified on screen while I replaced the HDMI port under the iron.