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Baked MacBook Air: A cautionary recipe
- notyourday 8y agoOut of all dumb ideas sticking a logic board into a non-calibrated oven to "bake" takes a cake.
- nerdponx 8y agoIt seems like it was working fine until he cranked up the temperature...
- usrusr 8y agoI don't think that there can be a very wide temperature band between "too cold to fix" and "components starting to fall off" for a two-sided board, the temperature band might even be non-existent. (Or is surface tension a function of temperature, enough to hold components at low temps, dropping when hotter?) But professional repair shops are using a more sophisticated form of the same method. I wonder if the have some kind of adaptive support layer instead of a simple grille or flat surface?
- anc84 8y agoI and many others had great success in "baking" our nvidia graphics cards a couple of years back to resurrect them.
- notyourday 8y agoIn a calibrated oven.
- crehn 8y agoAs a teenager I used to wrap my bricked (RRoD) Xbox in a towel to intentionally overheat it. Fixed the issue and kept it going for a while.
- hycaria 8y agoGreat writing, I'll make sure to suggest "percussive maintenance" from now on. Still leaves us wondering what would've happened with a less confident chef !
- setquk 8y agoI've done stupider things during last ditch repairs. Once time I replaced the tantalum caps on a board blindly hoping that it would cure a power rail short. I'd never used SMD tants before and didn't know that the band was a + band and not a - band. Within 3 seconds of applying power, there was a fireworks display which destroyed the board entirely :)
- henryackerman 8y agoAh, the good ol' tantalum caps. Violent ones for sure :)
- iSnow 8y agoOh yeah, tantalum caps... I stuck one into a prototyping breadboard but messed up polarity. It's surprisingly hurtful if one of those little fuckers explodes between your thumb and index finger.
- setquk 8y agoOuch!
- snovv_crash 8y agoTantalum caps are great fun. I remember we would booby-trap each other's breadboards with them in EE lab, to this day I'm still extra vigilant about polarity of all components. Measure twice, apply power once. Regular electrolytic caps also make a nice pop and ball of fuzz, often the shell will fly across the room at good speed. Also they have that unforgettable odor of shame that will follow whatever you were working on for a few hours.
- setquk 8y agoI love blowing electrolytic capacitors up. I still do that today.
- StreamBright 8y agoYou have to wait until it gets crispy.
- andy_ppp 8y agoI mean even if the oven were perfectly calibrated for air temperature the radiation from the exposed elements would almost always cause this to happen. He’s basically grilled his motherboard not baked it, try baking a cake in that oven and I bet it’s also burned on the top and soggy in the middle. The obvious solution if you must use that oven is to wrap the board in silver foil first and it might have had a chance.
- pnutjam 8y agoThat might also keep the vapor from the solder condensing on the oven. I would be worried about using that oven for food in the future. Is apple lead free for it's solder?
- jdsully 8y agoMost likely. Everyone uses lead free for consumer goods that are also sold in Europe. It’s not worth the supply chain woes to be different. Despite what everyone says lead free isn’t all that bad.
- xnyan 8y agoI learned on lead solder but quickly moved to lead-free and while there was a learning curve, I am confident that anyone capable of soldering leaded can be just as skilled with lead-free.
- Filligree 8y agoEverything these days should be lead free, but unfortunately that's just one of many toxic ingredients. I'd throw that oven out if I were him.
- mlindner 8y agoThere's no lead in the solder firstly, and secondly even if it was all leaded solder, it's not going to vaporize and deposit on the oven.
- 8y ago
- pnutjam 8y agoHP stream makes a nice linux laptop. I'm running opensuse Leap on one with no problems. It handles KDE just fine.
- 0815test 8y agoYou may find that Debian with LXDE+Xfce installed (and the non-free repository enabled, for firmware components) will work quite a bit better than Lubuntu for the laptop you picked as your MacBook Air replacement. Recent versions of *buntu seem to be a bit bloated compared to available alternatives, and this especially matters on older hardware.
- silvester23 8y agoI actually once (kind of) fixed a permanent startup blue screen on my years-old LG G3 by putting the motherboard in the oven. It worked again for ~2 months, which gave me plenty of time to backup all local data. Then the blue screen returned and after trying to bake it again, it would not power on at all anymore.
- cseelus 8y agoAs strange as this may sound, this technique isn‘t uncommon at all. Many XBox owners used this as a last resort to fix the infamous Red Ring of Death.
- om3n 8y agoI've baked components before, only once with limited success. Several years ago I had a 9800GTX graphics card fan go out, and its core temp rose to 117 Celsius[1]. Eventually it died, and I attempted to bake the card to re-flow broken solder. I'm not sure if that actually fix anything, but the card worked for a bit longer. Eventually I had to replace it. [1] http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii191/om3n07/WHOA.jpg http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii191/om3n07/WHOA.jpg
- bArray 8y agoWe used to "fix" our old XBox consoles by wrapping them in towels and purposely overheating them to get the ?GPU? solder to reflow correctly. With some extra cooling methods added, still works to this day even though it got a red ring of death.
- ascagnel_ 8y agoYea, the original run of the Xbox 360 had issues with the then-novel lead-free solder breaking down under high thermal loads.
- Doxin 8y agoIf anything lead-free solder would hold up to higher temperatures. The problem was just that the entire thing got too hot in general, there was a whole spell with the PCBs warping because of the heat.
- sosodev 8y agoYeah, both the PS3 and Xbox 360 had terrible thermals when they first released.
- noxToken 8y agoNormal operating loads. My 360 was never in an enclosed space, and it still fell prey to this. I was do the temp fix with a heat gun, but disassembling and reassembling was a pain. I eventually left the board sitting in the open without the case.
- asdff 8y agoThey didn't fix RROD until the slim in 2010. Every other 360 is a time bomb.
- _dan 8y agoI successfully fixed an Xbox 360 with the dreaded RROD with Percussive Maintenance: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PercussiveMaintenance https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PercussiveMainte...
- toastking 8y agoI sort of wonder if using a heat gun in the area they thought was broken would have worked better. Then it would have been more localized and easier to control temperature-wise.
- Spacemolte 8y agoI heated a Nvidia 780 graphics card a few times using a heat gun and a laser thermometer (max 200 degree c). I did not want to use my oven as I don't want to risk it. That revived the gpu 2 times, going from vga quality and weird screen artifacts, to no issues at all, 2-3 months with each bake. In the end i bought a new one as it really is temporary.
- shereadsthenews 8y agoI repaired a 2009 iMac gpu the same way with a heat gun but that was good for two years each time the first two times and didn’t work the third time. It’s worth a shot if you strongly suspect broken solder ball.
- ovi256 8y agoSame here, for the same equipement. Did not use heatgun but oven, wrapped in tinfoil. Same results as you reported. Finally sourced a compatible GPU from eBay, an ATI 5xxx from the next model year iMac. It was much much cheaper than sourcing an ATI 4xxx. Opening the iMac the first time was very stressful.
- talkingtab 8y agoA possible (probable?) issue is your oven. In my experience, they heat in cycles: if you set one to 180 it will heat to 240, then cool to 150, then .... Etc. Even a large electric range will cycle with a range of temperatures. In other words they are designed to maintain an average temperature rather than constant. In addition there issue of calibration. Even expensive full size ovens can be significantly off. How do I know this? I worked with Japanese laquer (Urushi) which was baked onto metal for bonding. But Urushi is the sap of a tree related to poison oak and over-heating leads to fumes that are not great. Experiments with small (toaster) ovens and large electric ranges produced bad results. Most electric kilns for ceramics, especially those that are computer controlled, are highly recommended for sensitive work where temperature control is important.
- dontknowme 8y agoLikely. Kitchen ovens and small ovens in general do not have the accuracy required to reflow. As you say, they will cycle between full power and no power and rely on the large oven hysteresis to get an average temperature which is OK for cooking, but can be easily off by 10+C at times, even if ventilated. One solution is to wrap the item in something which acts as a dampener. A couple of layers of crumpled tinfoil will help. Note that you definitely can reflow in a low-end kitchen oven with the appropriate changes ;). I built two small ovens for reflowing. Search for "arduino reflow" for some pointers.
- yummybear 8y agoWould a heat gun and an infrared thermometer perhaps be better - don't know if you risk blowing the components off the board though. Maybe on a lower setting.
- himynameistimli 8y agoI think a heat gun would + tweezers would probably be sufficient enough, however, he'll probably need to reference ifixit images to figure out where things need to go. I think it's a bit too difficult to hold a heat gun, an infrared thermometer, a set of tweezers and flux, so I would just get a feel by testing it out with some other busted PCB.
- hannofcart 8y ago> I figured, if it’s good enough for those four people on the internet - it’s good enough for me. Words to live by. :)
- interfixus 8y agoAfter flickering unhappily for a while, part of the screen backlight on my trusty Lenovo laptop recently died, rendering screen usable but hightly annoying. Short of actually buying a spare part and swapping out, I did absolutely everything imaginable, including liberal amounts of percussive maintenance: Opened the thing up, had the whole screen out, checked connections as best I could, squeezed and flexed, had the screen out again, squeezed some more - you know how these things go. So, the machine is stranded on my desk, hooked up to a stationary screen, lid kept slightly ajar. The most laidback member of the household comes by, a fully grown male of species felis catus. Apparently slams the lid shut and goes to sleep on laptop for the duration of the night. Machine has been fine ever since.
- ScottFree 8y agoHas anyone watched Louis Rossman's video series on this topic? It's pretty funny. He thinks oven reflows are a bad idea. Reballing flip chip GPUs is BULLSHIT - the truth about dead laptop GPUs & repairing them. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AcEt073Uds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AcEt073Uds Luckily, he also shows the proper way to do it: Linus Attempts BGA Graphics Chip Repair! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shn7LdIrViQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shn7LdIrViQ
- dehrmann 8y agoI got an X1 Carbon rather than a Macbook Pro in part because if his Mac repair videos.
- astrodust 8y agoBad soldering is bad soldering. Microsoft's XBox 360 had huge issues with it. The problem is that it works from a QA perspective: They can test the thing for hours and it'll run flawlessly. It's only when it goes through hundreds of heating/cooling cycles that it starts to break down and cause problems. You really never know which product or vendor is going to suffer from it next. Every GPU vendor has had some issues. I got red-ringed and I didn't swear off of buying Microsoft products forever.
- drewmol 8y agoI was gonna chime in on 360's and saw your comment. The best solution that didn't involve replacing solder was a reflow combined with case mods to add screws that better stabilized the board directly around the problem chips which limited board warping so the inevitable solder melting heat cycles did not result in connection failures upon cooling, IME. There was rumblings that lead-free solder was a requirement for 'toy' classification but I can't confirm.
- astrodust 8y agoThe whole industry was moving lead-free but the first companies to do it were the ones that had the least experience with how to manage the reflow temperature profiles. It's not just toys. Lead solder is being phased out for many applications.
- wickchuck 8y agoI had the same issue with my MacBook Air with the exact specs, though I never dropped mine. Just shut it off one night after watching Thrones for a few hours and it never turned back. Pleaded with Apple for quite a while to see if they would replace the logic board due to defect, but they did not. Mine was purchased in May 2013 and dead Nov 2014. Finally broke down a couple of years ago and bought a low end I3, with 4gb of ram logic board and it's working again. Guess I would have tried this as well had i known it was an option at the time :)
- Scoundreller 8y agoIf you still have that logic board, sell it. Someone will buy it for repair or donor parts.
- wickchuck 8y agoUnfortunately I sent the whole thing back to the repair shop and I'm guessing they probably sold it. In hindsight I should have taken it out prior to sending it to them...
- georgeecollins 8y agoDoes anyone ever try to address these issues with a soldering iron? I assume these machine soldered boards have connections too fine or too inaccessible to solder individual connections. But if you are trying something as crude as baking the board.. maybe there is some way?
- iSnow 8y agoMost likely, one of the bigger chips would have developed a cracked contact, simply because of the bigger surface would introduce more stress if the whole board was deformed/shocked. Now, those BGA's, you cannot solder them with a soldering iron, reflowing is the only option.
- baybal2 8y agoGuys, you will never ever be able to do work of a $1000 programmable reflow oven on a kitchen appliance
- HeWhoLurksLate 8y agoDepends on what you're doing and how patient you are- I know several people that have done similarly with kitchen-grade toaster ovens, thermocouples, and relays / SSR's to manage temperature and get professional-quality results. It's within reason that someone with a laser thermometer or such to be able to manually do the same thing.
- baybal2 8y agoCan a toaster oven vent heat away on demand? No
- HeWhoLurksLate 8y agoCan I wire a servo to open the front of the toaster? You bet. That'll be another $15 for a servo, some wire and some code.
- gowld 8y ago> dropping it on the corner like that might have shaken a few bytes of SDRAM around Is this a plausible diagnosis?
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoShort answer, no. He’s just being cute. Longer answer... well... two components I can specifically think of can be effected by shock and vibration: 1. Spinning disk hard drives are one, although you could probably debate this because there are protections in place. The idea being read, shock, corrupted read now in ram. Head of a hard drive should park itself under shock, and checksum bits should protect against bad reads. 2. The other is crystal isolators. XTALs are tuning forks. And if you physically hit them the right way, they vibrate. It’s absolutely possible to induce a pulse per minute variance with a crystal oscillator under vibration. A lot of Apple products are moving to MEMS clocks, which are silicon “solid-state”, do not suffer the same problem, smaller, cheaper, but have other issues (remember that story about iPhones dying in the hospital because someone vented the helium? MEMS can die in helium, but the story was nonsense, not even slightly enough ratios to actually affect phones). Don’t know if you could hit a crystal oscillator so hard and so sharp that you actually injected a full clock cycle into a running device, but, answer the question yeah it kind of sort of could be possible to corrupt ram with a shock to a crystal and probably ceramic clock.
- eigenloss 8y agoCould have just mailed it to Louis Rossmann. [0] https://rossmanngroup.com/ https://rossmanngroup.com/
- jankotek 8y agoIf I recall correctly, Louis Rossmann claimed official Apple repair center baked some motherboards as well. I don't have a link to exact video, but it is probably covered here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8 And yes, I use Dell :)
- codercotton 8y agoBack in the early 2000s my iMac (Lime G3/400), which ran constantly, wouldn’t turn on after being shut off and cooling down. It definitely didn’t fit in the oven, but it’s ass went in anyhow, with the monitor hanging out the front of the oven. It came back on and worked for a couple more years... the next cool down killed it for good though. No amount of baking would bring it back. Granted, I didn’t pull the logic board (I’d upgraded to a G4 by then)...
- lostgame 8y agoOh, the G4. My favourite Mac ever. It's aesthetics are unprecedented. I still run one in my studio - with dozens of GB of 360p formatted old shows like classic Simpsons and the 1985 Twilight Zone, and tossed a SEGA, GBA and NES emulator on it with a little USB game controller for when I need to unwind.
- zitterbewegung 8y agoThe above technique is a myth . See https://youtu.be/1AcEt073Uds https://youtu.be/1AcEt073Uds . Trying to randomly unsolder and put back resistors or other components when you don’t know what the error is is another bad idea. The author should have tried to actually attempt to fix the logic board first. But before all that he should have inspected the board and use a voltmeter to see what the issue is. But even doing that he might need a replacement part.
- majikandy 8y agoYou are an excellent writer, so funny and gripping. I suspect writing is your true calling in life. Lol @ what on Earth is that oven? :)
- lostgame 8y agoI did something similar to this on an iBook G4, I believe? It's still working to this day. I feel like I was a lot more careful. The author seems to describe their behaviour as rather reckless and haphazard. Certainly putting it up to 180 wasn't a great idea. :3
- areoform 8y agoI am a friend of a famous Apple products repair person and one of the things I've learned through our friendship is just how fragile repairs can be. As this individual quickly learned, putting a MacBook Air logic board into an oven is a terrible idea. Do not under any circumstances do it with your computers. It is one of the worst fallacies of DIY repair out there. What you're trying to do (as he stated in the article) is that you're trying to reflow the poorly adherent solder beads in the hopes that you'll fix the faulty connection. But the way you're doing it introduces the risk of damaging the PCB and the ICs themselves through thermal stresses and gaseous expansion by any trapped ambient moisture. This will irreparably damage your board and it will lead to the phenomena he experienced here. ("popcorning") The right way to do it involves a directed hot air gun and proper equipment so that you aren't imposing excessive thermal stresses onto the board as a whole. If you don't know how to do that, then please send it to someone who does. There are several good repair outfits out there right now who specialize in this and can help you out. Do not repeat this person's mistake. This DIY method is like doing cardiac surgery with a chainsaw. It's a terrible idea for your data and wallet. Edit: Here's a guide that outlines these issues and offers ways to do it properly with the right equipment. The "popcorning" is called board delamination. https://www.latticesemi.com/-/media/LatticeSemi/Documents/ApplicationNotes/PT/SolderReflowGuideforSurfaceMountDevices.ashx?document_id=8902 https://www.latticesemi.com/-/media/LatticeSemi/Documents/Ap...
- justinator 8y agoHmm: So if I'm reading you right, you're saying: instead of baking, freezing? off to put laptop into dry ice freezer
- vanadium 8y agoAnd this is why I spent $100 on a hot air gun for my video game console repairs & restorations instead of trying to do DIY reballing without proper equipment (which is $$$). Consistent and controlled heat are absolutely vital when working with tiny SMD components.
- markstos 8y agoBut it worked for four people on the internet.
- nicky0 8y ago> With confidence high and the bake nearly finished, for the final 60 seconds I thought I’d go off-piste and crank up the temperature to 180 °C - I wanted to make sure things were cooked through. Curiously peering through the oven window, all hell broke loose within 30 seconds: The room filled with sounds of popcorn being made as resistors and components desoldered themselves from the logic board and dropped onto the oven floor. The previously clear air was replaced with an acrid haze. Then the bake reached it’s finale as the logic board bowed up in the middle, accompanied by the screeching sound of the CPU being wrenched off its socket. I lunged for the power switch and yanked open the oven door, hoping to limit damage. Then, as quickly as the bowing started, everything calmed down and the board returned to its original shape. With the board still hot, a wooden spoon was employed to desperately poke the CPU back onto its mount - with little success. I'm sorry about your MacBook, and I just wanted to thank you for this wonderfully evocative bit of writing which made my day.
- mobilemidget 8y ago"if it’s good enough for those four people" made me lol But at least now it is 4 to, well at least, 1 no success
- yardie 8y agoFor those that didn't read the article the error he made was using a small toaster oven. And then cranking up the heat at the last moment. The oven's thermostat is reading the current air temperature. But the heating coils are radiative. A small oven has wild temperature fluctuations. And when the coils are active they put out a lot more heat than whatever is dailed into the thermostat. I recently repaired our iMac GPU after it started acting strange. Baked it in a convection oven for 6 minutes at 160° and not a second more. I also used a heavy baking sheet as a heat sink. I did not need a reflow station and if it failed I would have simply ordered a replacement GPU.
- rootlocus 8y agoI think the error he made was baking the motherboard, period. As multiple people have pointed out this is a bad idea.
- schlotzisk 8y agoHe should definitely mailed it to Louis Rossmann. Sendyourmacbook.com
- lqet 8y ago> Weighing up the consequences of covering our main oven in molten MacBook, I also chose to use our standalone oven Anyone who ever tried to bake a frozen pizza in one of these ovens following the instructions on the box would've immediately recognized that this is a very bad idea.
- zackmorris 8y agoA MacBook Air can't survive a 30 cm drop (less than 1 foot)? Most phones can't survive a 10 second dip in a toilet bowl? Is it just me or is technology today weak? I mean seriously, anyone could build these things better than the big companies are. Yes, the technology in the chips and logic boards is astounding. But the engineering of the cases is.. either amateurish bordering on the inept, or companies design in such brittleness to sell more devices.
- iwasakabukiman 8y agoAll it takes is for it to land the exact wrong way one time.
- saagarjha 8y ago> A MacBook Air can't survive a 30 cm drop (less than 1 foot)? Most phones can't survive a 10 second dip in a toilet bowl? Is it just me or is technology today weak? Was there ever a time where you could do this things to your electronics and guarantee that they would work afterwards?
- cr0sh 8y agoI don't know if this has been said or not already - but I wouldn't use that oven again for cooking food, especially since something somewhere off-gassed. I don't know how dangerous it would be to eat food from an oven that was previously used for reflow soldering; if I had to guess, the danger would be minimal - maybe an increased risk of cancer or something like that. Likely, the fumes or whatnot was simply rosin flux vaporizing. Rosin flux is usually something like refined pine resin with a solvent; it won't kill you to eat it (or breath in the smoke while soldering - though that can be a major irritant), but I am almost certain it might cause a flavoring issue for future baked foods. Then again - maybe it would lend those holiday dinners a festive flavor?
- fouc 8y agoYou're over-estimating the amount of heating/cooking involved. Ignore the article where he's doing everything all wrong, the plastics etc shouldn't be burning, only the solder is warming up and reflowing when done right. Fumes, if any would clear out anyways.
- cr0sh 8y agoI agree that when done right (ie, following a proper SMD reflow temperature "curve"), all that should happen is the solder should flow and not much else. Even so, just as I wouldn't reuse a pan or pot I had created sugar candy rocket fuel in to cook dinner (no matter how clean I tried to make it afterward), I also wouldn't reuse an oven for cooking purposes, that had been used for reflowing a PCB previously. It just seems like a "best practice" to me to not reuse equipment in that manner for food cooking and consumption. That's just me; I don't find the potential harm, no matter how objectively slight it might be, to be worth it in the long run.
- fouc 8y agoThis article he's just being funny and deliberately doing everything wrong and ignoring instructions. In 2012, I successfully baked my 2007 MBP logic board and it worked for 2 years after that. It was a known issue w/ the Nvidia GPU connection. Obviously you have to pre-heat the oven, you don't want the heating elements to be on continuously as that would be too hot. A trick to reduce variance is to pre-heat to say 200c, then put the logic board in. The heat that escapes during that time would bring it close to your target 170c. There should barely be any smell. In my case it was just the smell of burnt dust, slight metallic smell, probably the solder. Followed the instructions from: http://russell.heistuman.com/2010/04/27/cooking-the-books-or-baking-my-macbook-pro-logic-board/ http://russell.heistuman.com/2010/04/27/cooking-the-books-or...
- fouc 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7371908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7371908 The earlier referenced article.
- magna8 8y agoI did this around 10 times with my MBA Mid 2011 in the last years now, it worked every single time. Why did you put it upside down with the heavy components underneath? You should have read the guides.
- merlincorey 8y agoWhen reflowing components, one definitely does not want to do so upside-down, no matter the heat source, excepting in very special circumstances, perhaps.
- asveikau 8y agoMore than a decade ago I "successfully" fixed a thinkpad with a loose GPU using a heat gun. Prior to the fix, the screen would have artifacts unless I held the GPU in place with my hand. The repair only lasted a few months though. These days I would imagine the parts are smaller and more delicate.
- KIFulgore 8y agoI managed to revive a GeForce 8600M GT board using the oven method a few years ago. A much smaller board with fewer components. The bake time was only about 8 minutes though, and I pre-warmed it thoroughly to ~105C in a separate oven first.
- encypruon 8y agoTo add to our set of anecdotes: I baked a dead graphics card in the oven and it hasn't failed for half a year or so until I replaced it with something better. It probably wasn't the smartest thing I ever did and I wouldn't recommend it unless to anyone unless they have an oven they aren't going to use for food anymore in a well ventilated are (which was not the case for me). The card had bad graphics glitches in whatever mode the BIOS puts it in and would cause boot to fail at an early stage. First I disassembled the card and ensures that all remaining components were heat resistant and that there was nothing that seemed likely to fall off on the bottom side. I carefully mounted it in the oven on some balls of tinfoil. I also added a thermometer that came with a cheap multimeter because I didn't feel inclined to trust the oven not to overshoot. I ramped the temperature up slowly, using hot air and keeping it under 100°C for a while in hopes of getting out any water and keeping it from going popcorn. When raising the temperature to the point where I expected the solder to go soft (can't remember the exact temperature) the thing suddenly started to smell rather badly (but not burnt), forcing me to open the windows and leaving the room most of the time. At that point I got worried about the fumes and where they might condensate but decided to go through with it, heating it up a bit further and then cooling it down slowly. In the aftermath I got a working graphics card and a smelly oven. The smell went away after a few hours at max temperature, a lot of ventilation and some cleaning. I hope there wasn't a health issue with any substaces remaining in the oven as the smell was gone and food doesn't really get in direct contact with the inside of the oven. Anyway, it's the reason why I wouldn't recommend it or do it again.
- wvenable 8y agoI actually managed to temporarily fix a laptop using a torch-like lighter directed at the GPU. This particular batch of laptops had faulty solder connecting the GPU to the board. The heat and cooling would eventually crack the solder and disconnect the GPU. I had nothing to loose and saw a video about it on YouTube. So I cracked it open and ran the flame around the GPU for several minutes. I eventually got it boot up and it lasted for another 9 months and then I needed to do the process again. I did it a few more times and probably got another year and half out of the laptop.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago>> Although I am tempted to take it to the genius bar now, just for entertainment. Do they serve baked MacBooks at the genius bar?
- wffurr 8y agoThe saddest part is that it's impossible to replace that Macbook Air now. The new ones have the garbage keyboards and even worse they discontinued the 11" model. Best you could do is pick up another used one. Can't even buy refurbs from Apple.
- lapinot 8y agoOk folks, i think we found the guy that started the fire in paris tonight. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19666991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19666991
- babyslothzoo 8y agoI have a friend who did this with a PC motherboard, and it worked. Personally I would never try it.
- NeoBasilisk 8y agoI think I'm most disturbed by the author's comment that he has dropped it from a height of 30cm multiple times.
- michaelcampbell 8y agoI can't remember ever dropping a laptop. I'm sure I have, but not so many times that I'd remember... multiple of them. And I'm not terrible agile to begin with. Just sounds like carelessness.
- Kurtz79 8y agoIt's a 11' thin and light laptop, it is easy to abuse of the portability and ending up using it in places such as on bed, sofa, moving it around the house, etc... Not saying that OP shouldn't be more careful with such an expensive piece of hardware, but accidents happen, and some people are more careless than others (I'm one of them and a smartphone or tablet of mine doesn't even get out of the box withouth a matching protective cover).
- tachion 8y agoWhy don't people simply use their consumer rights where they apply? In UK there's 6 years period for electronics good where the seller is responsible for things working.
- michaelcampbell 8y agore: Ubuntu > However, since 4.18.0 everything seem to work well! This weird mixmastering of the version (18.04)... Yes, I know it's based on a date, but it's a version number. Probably best to just leave it.
- puzzle 8y agoAnother thing that is commonly baked, by professionals: old tapes that have trapped too much moisture and start to deteriorate. They're placed in ovens for much longer, at lower temperatures.
- rasz 8y agodry boxing and pre baking older parts are standard practice in electronics manufacturing. You put your parts in https://www.manncorp.com/dry-cabinets https://www.manncorp.com/dry-cabinets between the runs.
- hmart 8y agoBetter Call Louis (Rossman)
- peteretep 8y agoTLDR: "or the final 60 seconds I thought I’d go off-piste and crank up the temperature to 180 °C"