Hell reading over and over again about Saskia's diet success might motivate me... need to lose 50kg of fat. target / fit weight is about 100kg. Yes I am tall and wide frame, a big guy.
453 : see ? I told I needed the bench space and had no time for it... I just didn't know how right I was ! A couple hours ago a friend just paid me an impromptu visit, he brought me lots of stuff from a friend og his, to fix !
A DVD player, an ASUS mini laptop, tablet size, and a couple big 600 Watt Somfy electric motors (with built-in control electronics and user interface) that drive electric fences.
DVD player, guy said he looked at it (every time they that, it scares the shit out of me.. it means it's a can of worms...) and all it was is a cap that leaked.
Yeah right... sorry bob the filter cap in the SMPS is just fine, what you see on its side is not a leak... it's just the dab of old cooked hard dark brown glue that's there to hold it in place ! But yeah, you must have watched a youtube video telling you it was the cap... according to YT you could fix a cancer just by replacing the caps, always the caps right ?!
Then noticed he replaced the fuse, he fitted a fuse holder (old fuse had terminals on it so was soldered straight to the PCB). The solder job was not exactly the best, but was good enough for the purpose. However he failed to see that his replacement fuse was blown.. even though when you look through the glass... it looks fine. This happens sometimes...
So replaced the fuse, checked that the primary side was no shorted, was not, so I powered the thing up. Instant massive fireworks, scared the shit out of me !
Inspected the thing.... filter cap was still good, though half burned by the component that caught fire... was the PWM controller / voltage regulator chip. A TNY717, 7 pin DIP package. Yes 7 not 8, one of the pins is not implemented. The package looked fine from the TOP, however on its side, where the built-in power MOSFET is located, you could see it was burnt and cracked. FET measured 30 ohms, not good, and the pin where it's source goes, the pin that drives the primary of the transformer... is no longer there. It completely vaporized. There was just enough metal left inside the package for me to stick my sharp "SMD" friendly test probe in there and get a good enough contact to be abel to measure the drain/source resistance.
Transformer looks like it survived... measures 1+ ohm. It's not a dead short nor an open circuit. Still, might be partially shorted, who knows.. I don't know my SMPS transformer, I don't know what a typical resistance value would be here.
So I told the guy it's repairable (TNY 716 is available at Farnell for one Euro + 10.60 Euro shipping), for 30 Euros (need to make 10+ Euros profit, I am not a slave, don't work for free...), and since you get a brand new DVD player, with warranty, for the same price or almost... they guy was kind enough to abandon his DVD player to me, so I could salvage the parts. So that's a winner for me.
Then the ASUS tablet. It's so crap that there is not even a model number on it, nowhere. It just says "ASUS".. great, how helpful...
Guy said he wanted to replace the battery. Looked at said battery, it's a C11P1328 , still available today for 25/30 Euros on Amazon, and Google found me one from a local French shop specialized in consumer batteries, for only 18 Euros frees hipping, cool.
The problem is that I am not 100% sure the battery is at fault ! I unplugged it, was at 3,1 Volt . fast charged it at 2 amps for a few minutes. That brought it back to 3,7+ Volts. Plugged it back into the computer, now it starts up and works, great. Says batter charge is at 7%.
I plugged the charger... well there is no charger acutally, just a USB port. Don't know my USB ports but I don't think it's a fancy USB-C. It's must be older because my ancien Smartphone USB charge cable fits just fine. So I used my phone cable. Coptuer does detect that the USB cable is plugged in, and does say that now its charging the battery... all good so far I hear you say ! but wait ! I left it for 10 minutes and the charge does not build up, it stays at 7%... then eventually it suddenly dropped to 0% and then it shut down !
So even though it pretends it's charging... it's really not, it's draining the battery ! Even with the USB cable plugged in, not only can't it recharge the battery, but it can't even power the machine ! If I unplug the battery and just use the USB cable, the machine simply won't turn on at all !
Now I know/heard that some crap-sumer products now do that these days... even the battery is dead as a dodo, the computer still NEEDS it to be present or else it won't work even if you plug the charge cable !
So.... I fear it could be more than just a dead battery. Maybe the charging chip/circuitry inside the machine is defective and won't allow to charge the battery nor even to run the machine on off of the USB cable. I understand charging chips going south is an extremely common failure on smartphones.... so maybe why not on computers too ?!
OR... it's just my USB cable and/ or 15 year old desktop computer that are so crap they can't even supply enough current to get that laptop to power up or even sustain operation once booted from the battery.
So I told the guy yes I can replace your battery but I am not 100,00% sure it will fix your problem ! And if if does not, sorry I can't fix your motherboard...
NOW... as I am typing this I guess there would be a simple way to rule out my USB cable / old computer ! I could just solder a couple wires to the motherboard, and just feed +5V through my lab power supply, as it can delivers 3amps or so, should be plenty enough to boot the machine.
Yeah I guess I could try that....
Then the two Somfy electric fence motors. Now that's the more interesting part ! That, I am OK to spend a little time on...
Model ELIXO 503S io
Guy said that one of them is dead, motor doesn't work from the remote, and doesn't either using the local user interface. says the LCD doesn't even display anything.
Other motor, he says motor doesn't work either, but the LCD is alive and display some error code.
So I will look at that...
See, told you, no time to fix my scopes !!