I recently acquired a new car from a friend that had been sitting un-attended for quite a while and have been in the process of getting everything back in good running condition over the past few weeks. Well today I pulled into the garage and noticed how incredibly slow my windows were rolling up. After some googling (my favorite solution to problems) and research I was quick to find many recommendations. I assumed instantly that the contacts on the motor were rusted causing high levels of resistance and making the motor slow. After an hour or two the door panel was off and as I inspected it everything seemed to check out. So I proceeded to liberally douse the door tracks in WD-40. And of course, up they went, without a hitch. So, before you go off half cocked taking your door panels apart, try just running some WD-40 down the tracks. Long term you might want to pull it apart and actually grease the tracks, but for a quick fix that will prolong the life of your motor this was easy.
Homemade Arc Welder
I recently needed to have some exhaust work done on my car due to a failed muffler. Being the diehard do-it-yourselfer that I am, I like to do all the work on my own cars even when un-practical, and this time was no exception. I took the old and new muffler and piping to a shop and asked them for a quote on what it would cost to weld the new one on and they said $30. Well that seemed reasonable, but for one tiny weld it did rip at me a little bit. I had always wanted a welder and it seemed like maybe the $30 would be better spent going towards a welder and then I would have a welder to use.
Well, after a little internet research (as I do with all my purchases anymore) I learned of the surprisingly simple way to build your own arc welder. With two old microwaves, some jumper cables, and 25 ft of 10 gauge wire and some patience you can easily build your very own homemade arc welder. I picked up a used auto-darkening welding helmet from ebay for $30 and my second microwave was $10 at Goodwill. A few days later my new muffler was all welded on as well as a rattling heat-shield, a new flange, and a broken bracket. $40 well spent for sure.
PS3 YLOD Three Month Update
After following the solder reflow technique used to commonly fix the Xbox 360′s Red Ring of Death (RRoD) the PS3 has been running flawlessly now for three full months.
To reflow the solder I used standard kitchen tin foil to carefully cover all areas of the PS3 except for the main processor. I then used a standard heat gun from a home improvement store to heat the processor to 200 degrees C. After this I re-assembled the PS3 including new thermal grease and to this day it has worked without error.
A similar procedure was performed on an Xbox 360 and worked equally well, although this included replacing the X-clamps as well.
If there is interest I might try to assemble a guide on how to repair your yellow light of death.
Windows Bootloader Restore
Recently I was trying to help a friend fix a laptop that had a broken CD drive. This created quite the issue because he was unable to boot any sort of restoration utility or anything. He had a corrupted boot loader from a BSOD. Luckily after a bit of digging through forums I managed to find this useful command.
bcdboot %WinDir% /l en-US
BCDBoot allows you to restore the default boot loader to Windows 7 environment on any connected Windows drive. This allowed me to pull his hard drive, plug it into my computer and restore the corrupted boot loader. More information on this command can be found in Windows documentation linked below. Just replace %WinDir% with the path of the affected hard drives Windows folder and bingo.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744347(WS.10).aspx
Fob Fun
The other day I noticed that my friends key fob for their car was starting to get a little weak. We were heading to Walmart to pick up some groceries so I figured, “Hey, why not get that battery switched out?” Well that was my first mistake. I handed over the fob to the lady at the counter and proceeded to watch her try to use six different screwdrivers to get the screw out of the fob. The main problem was she used her index finger to push the screwdriver in with minimal pressure. After throwing in the towel she gave me back the fob and said she just didn’t seem to have the right size screwdriver. As I walked away I looked at the screw in the fob to find it mashed to hell. Awesome. Back at home I got the fun of spending 10 minutes and a lot of grunt pushing the correct screwdriver into the screw and turning to get out the screw. For those that don’t often work with small electronics you generally seat the back of the screwdriver in your palm and apply significant pressure while turning the driver with thumb and forefinger. Otherwise it just slips and mashes up the screw head making your job even more difficult.
Long story short, save yourself the trouble and replace your own batteries when possible.
PS3 YLOD Fix
Unfortunately PS3's aren't immune to the dreaded overheating problems that effect Xbox 360's
My friend, a loyal Sony fan, recently had this problem with his PS3. Dubbed the yellow light of death his PS3 turned on, flashed yellow, then blinked red indefinitely. He called Sony and they basically told him he was SOL without shelling out $150 to get it fixed. Disappointed he asked me for help knowing how much I love to take things apart. After some research we tore it apart and started inspecting things. Taking apart his power supply everything checked out alright. No bulging or busted capacitors meant that chances were good it was a symptom of the overheating. It might also be mentioned that this friend is extremely meticulous. He keeps his things very clean and well taken care of. Later we would find out that the PS3 was far from clogged with dust and was always properly ventilated. So, it’s not just a problem for people who leave their PS3′s always running in a dusty video cabinet.
Although only about 0.5% of all PS3′s encounter this affliction, frequency of the problem is reported to be on the rise. In addition, so far Sony does not seem to be affording any sort of extended warranty for the problem because the effected console percentage is so low. Although YLOD is code for a general hardware error the problem is most frequently caused by overheating. The second most common failure is related to the power supply failing over time due to electrolytic capacitor’s aging process. Based on the overheating diagnosis we proceeded to research the topic further.
Basically all these high performance electronics generate a lot of heat and chip technology has advanced so much that they can withstand enormous amounts of heat without failing. Combine these two factors and what happens is that the actual solder joints that hold the processors to the board soften when the board gets hot from playing a graphically intensive game. Then when you’re done playing it cools down, and over time the heating and cooling cycle slowly causes small cracks in the solder causing impaired connection to the board. This is the same cause of the XBOX 360′s RROD (red ring of death).
To fix these micro-fractures the solder must be heated back up to a completely liquid state and allowed to cool. The main obstacles in doing this is the fact that other components on the board are fairly sensitive to heat and there are several hundred solder connectors connecting the processor to the board.
Following recommendations of some forums and YouTube videos we carefully disassembled the entire PS3 (reference video on the left for disassembly) down to the motherboard and planned to use a heat gun to melt all the solders at once. We hung the motherboard right side up (chips facing up) by bailing wire and heated the bottom of the board (where all the solder connections are exposed) with a heat gun. Heat guns can be cheaply rented from some hardware stores. We borrowed ours from our friendly local university physics department. Using an infra-red temperature probe on the top of the chips we heated both the graphics processor and main processor two a little over 150 degrees F. After reassembly the PS3 worked correctly for about a week. Unfortunately we did not heat it up hot enough (better safe than sorry, right?) because the board still sporadically receives YLOD and has strange graphical glitches. But nonetheless it did repair a completely non-functioning PS3 to working order for a time and proves the method.
Our plans are to disassemble the PS3 and heat the chips up to a higher temperature this time and see how long the PS3 works following it. Our goal would be to find a temperature that does not damage components but ultimately fixes the PS3 for at least a year. As with all good things, patience is a virtue.
UPDATE:
The PS3 finally displayed YLOD again after about two weeks of successful operation. It was disassembled and reheated until our temperature probe read 100 C on the chips. Unfortunately this attempt lasted even less time that the original at only 3 days. Our next attempt will be to bring it up to 200 C after some research on professional solder re-flow technologies.