Little Tricks And Tips

Before you toss those CD and DVD carcasses in with shred, if you like to do a bit of "treasure hunting", there's a tiny hole in the front that's for doing a manual release. It doesn't need to be plugged in, or operational, just push a tiny wire straight in, and it will eject the tray. You'd be surprised the number of useful disks gets left in those things. A straightened paper clip, or "bathroom door key" will work, possibly many others too


Here's another little tip I've found handy is all those plastic cards you might get along the way. I used this one to mix some JB Weld. You can also cut small strips off to use as a tiny putty knife, I've spread cooling grease on lots of CPUs in time past with them. Then just toss em ; )

Haha, maybe I shoulda done em in videos eh ; )

Found a tower back in aug. or sept. When i opened up the cd drive it still had the start up disc in there.

I needed to do some heavy lifting and only had my truck and a heavy nylon rope to do it with. Not wanting to just drag a heavy laden rope across the rough bark of a tree limb, and unable to just go buy a pulley I had to use what was available. Came up with this shackle and cut a piece of pipe the width of the shackle eye. The first pipe I cut was larger, and I became concerned it could cock up sideways and cut the rope, but finally found one that was a closer fit to the pin

Here's one many have probably already arrived at, but just in case there's any other stragglers like myself, who have in times past most often separated these the old fashioned way, with an allen tip wrench, a chisel and a few strikes from a hammer will pop em right off of there

That's quite a compliment there Tater, I do appreciate it man.

Many times a blown fuse is all a non-working electrical contraption needs, and I don't think you'll find one at the local Walmart. My microwave blew one several years ago, been a great one for 10 years then, 13 now. I looked for one online, and it seemed Radio Shack was the only common place that carried it, but there's no RS for a hundred miles around here. Luckily at the time, my sister was working in Kansas and due in for a long weekend, so she picked me up a pack of two on her way home, and it is working still today.
Just this morning I was stripping TV and electronics boards and decided not a bad idea to grab some of those fuses, so I began me a little pile of them on the side. Also, just this morning my cordless battery charger had gone out, and when I pulled it down, found the fuse was blown. Looked through the fuses I'd just begun saving and found them to be the same size. I replaced a 125V/4A with a 250V/2.5A . Not sure how good of a match that really is, but at least the charger is charging once more ; )

That's interesting Jack. I've known caps were usually the problem, but never really considered myself ready to begin fixing them. What does it take to replace them? Could they be scavenged from other monitors?

Originally Posted by Bear

That's interesting Jack. I've known caps were usually the problem, but never really considered myself ready to begin fixing them. What does it take to replace them? Could they be scavenged from other monitors?

I fix a lot of electronics by replacing the caps. It is really simple. You can visually see the bad caps. You flip the board, desolder the caps, put in a new cap, resolder and your done. There are a lot of good videos on youtube you can watch to see how simple it is.

I personally would not reuse caps, but you certainly can. There are a few problems with reusing caps. The first is that what is used in electronics from the manufacturer are junk. That is why they fail. These second is that caps/fuses are so cheap, it's not worth the time/effort to pull them off a board.

While you will find a lot of caps at Radio Shack that is the last place I would look. Your best bet is to order them off ebay. There are several sellers in China that sell quality caps for next to nothing. I can pick up 10 for 3-4 dollars (shipping included) while Radio Shack will often run about 5-8.00 for 2-4 depending on the model. Your best bet is to wait the 10 days shipping. The same goes with fuses.

While you may think you only need 2 caps, you will find that most electronics use similar caps.

I do recap a lot of LCD/Plasma TVs, but this problem, while common in pre-2007 TVs, was fixed by a lot of manufactures (Samsung had the biggest problem). I would NEVER buy a TV thinking it could be recapped. Most of the newer sets (last 6 years) had problems with the MosFets, not the caps.

Aside from TVs, I recap a lot of motherboards. Dell is notorious for having bad caps on their boards. When things are slow I'll recap a board, test it, then throw it on ebay with the processor, fan, memory, ect.. attached and they sell well.