The monitor died on my desktop and very shortly the monitor died on the laptop. The desktop monitor was replaced but the laptop was scrapped. I found out that a laptop shouldn't be used as a laptop for a very long time because the cooling vents are blocked with your clothing. The fix is to put the motherboard in the oven at 300+ deg. for a while to resolder the joints. We tried this twice, the first time it worked for about a week and the second time it didn't work.
No, this can actually work very well under some situations. I myself did the exact same thing with a 2,000 watt heat gun - And guess what? That electronic item is still working today! There is a term called "dry solder", it's kind of like a slight imperfection in the solder joints. In the factory, this can happen to one in every 3,000 solders. The funny thing is that even with the dry solder joint, the object will still work (and so the weakness will remain undetectable) - Until it is a few years old, and normal corrosion starts to attack at that very spot. So that's when you discover such a problem. So how do you correct it? Well, in the past, a simple soldering iron would have worked. but these days with the arrival of SMDs (surface mount devices, which are extremely tiny) - You either head it in the oven, or use a head gun to blow hot air on it. This way the solder will get remelted, and so when it solidifies again at room temperature, the problem should be fixed! In theory, that is...
Were you trying to fix a cold solder joint John? 300°F would seem to be risky given the environmental specs of IC's. S-H's use of a heat gun would seem a lot less risky. Jerry
There are several videos on the subject on Youtube. Here is one but there is many more. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G65-ncBxdHA
But if a heat gun is not available for some reason, then what other option do we have??? Of course, it would help a lot if the oven is spotless from the inside - As we really don't need any grease or smoke to come into contact with the motherboard. This whole thing actually makes me feel a bit nostalgic again, as it reminds me how we used to invent our own electronic gadgets, how we used to look for different circuits in different magazines. How we used to create our own PCBs (printed circuit boards) - First with an etch resist pen, and later with screen printing. After which we'd develop them in a ferric chloride solution! Then drill tiny holes in it, after which we'd solder in all the transistors, capacitors, resistors, and diodes too, while in the end we'd put in the ICs. And yes, as I'd be doing all of this in my early teens, our Dog too would be taking a very keen interest in all of this! Every component (before and after soldering), she just had to smell and inspect! And of course later, when that circuit will not function as it should - We'd resort to troubleshooting! Again, by looking for dry solders. Checking the continuity of the copper tracks with a multimeter! It wasn't really uncommon to hear the beeping of the multimeter from my room. Of course, this also created a lot of complains from a few family members too - Saying: Can't you for once shut that thing off??? Oh well, those were the early 1990s I guess... It is however somewhat disappointing that kids don't do any of this nowadays. They seem too preoccupied with hanging around on FaceBook. Sigh... But it is nice to see that there still are others like me over here, *old school* people - Who will not fear putting a motherboard in an oven! I mean, this is what experimentation is all about! And science cannot exist without experimentation!!! Ah... those were the days! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSf6t9f-17w Yes, I'm posting the Russian version of the song, as in order to get cheap components, I'd often opt for surplus Soviet diodes, capacitors, and resistors! By the way, anybody over here ever got that delicious 25,000 volt shock from their TV's flyback transformers? Yeah, those were the days!!!
