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Some Facts About Troubleshooting And
Repairing Mainboard

There are three types of Mainboard in the market. The first one is
purely using standard components (not Surface Mount Devices- SMD)
and generally is considered old already (most probably use in the 70s
and 80s). Second one would be the combination of standard
components and SMD components and the third Mainboard is purely
using all SMD components (currently manufacturers producing this
type of Mainboard).



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Click Here
















Some repair tech call this mainboard as motherboard while to some
they called it as cards. Once in a while I have customers came to me
and showed me the mainboard that was used in their industry such as
printing, PABX and etc and asked for a solution. They wanted
to know whether these types of Mainboards can be repaired or not. For
your information, Mainboard can also comes from consumer
electronics products such as LCD TV, LCD Monitor, Plasma TV,
Computer motherboard and etc. There are some facts that an electronic
repairer needs to know before he or she can proceed with the
troubleshooting and repairing job.

Fact Number One

If you want to successfully repair any Main Board, you must get the
whole system with it. That means, you need the power supply board
and whatever boards that are connected to the mainboard. If the
customer just send to you the mainboard, it will be hard for you to
repair because you do not know the correct voltage that needs to be
applied to the mainboard and without the right voltage there will be no
signal waveform for you to check.

system
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Of course you can connect an external source to power up the main
board, but you have to understand that certain Mainboard would not
run properly if it did not connect to a load. For example, if you are
troubleshooting a LCD Monitor mainboard, the power supply/inverter
board, backlight and the LCD panel have to be connected in order to
get the right voltage and waveforms. Missing either one of the boards
may produce different result. Tell your customer the truth that without
the complete system, it will be difficult to repair the main board.

Fact Number Two

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Nowadays many mainboard ICs are using programs to run. Some
typical examples are the ROM, Microcontroller Units (MCU) and
EEPROM ICs. These ICs have programs in it in order for it to function
well. If the programs have corrupted the whole function of the
mainboard will go haywire. It will produce weird symptom and very
hard to troubleshoot and repair if you do not have the exact program
data and the programmer.



Fact Number Three

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Schematic diagrams, service manuals and other related information to
the mainboard is usually hard to find from the market. If you can
locate the schematic diagram, that means it can cut short your
repairing time because you will know what sort of voltages and
waveforms to be present in the points of the components.

Fact Number Four



Many new mainboard are using the BGA(Ball Grid Array) ICs and the
normal SMD rework station is not suitable for removing this kind of
testing
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IC. You need the BGA IC rework station to do this job and this
machine is not cheap. Without the proper tools even though you have
confirmed that the BGA IC is the cause, there is no way to remove it.
If you cant remove the IC, which means you cant make the
mainboard to work again.



Fact Number Five

Many testing equipment companies like the Huntron, Sencore, Polar,
ABI and etc have developed specialized test equipment just to tackle
problems in the mainboard. Well, of course you can do the repair job
without them, but do you know that if you have such good test
equipment in your work bench, it will definitely speed up your
repairing time. By comparing a good and a bad board in term of
voltages, waveform or even signature analysis, you can easily identify
the problem. These specialize test equipment is a big investment and if
the board that you are charging does not justify with it then dont
invest in such expensive equipment. It will take years to recover back
your investment.

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I have a repair friend who told me that he had a Polar test equipment
and a high end Digital Oscilloscope. He used it to repair the
mainboard from the Aeroplane control tower. He replaced only a cap
and charged USD600.00 because the original mainboard price was
about USD30,000! With only few of this repair jobs, he already gained
back his investment on the high end test equipment.

Facts Number Six



Even though you have the BGA rework station and you have
successfully removed the IC, you still need a replacement part.
Without the right parts, there is no meaning in removing the IC in the
first place. If you have good sourcing of parts for the mainboard that
you are repairing, this will guarantee the job can be done. It is better
still, if you could locate the exact mainboard that have a reasonable

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price. Instead of repairing you just sell the whole board to your
customer and buy back the spoilt board and salvage the parts for future
use.

Conclusion- Im not writing this article to discourage you to repair the
mainboard. These are the facts that we must accept as an electronic
repairer when we deal with mainboard. Now, if you have the total
solution for the above problems even just for a particular
equipment or a model, you or your company will stand tall over
your competitors and make lots of money in this repair field.
Thats all for this month repair article and will see you again next
month. Have a blessed day!



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Repair And Read The Real Testimonials From
Satisfied Customers


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Testing Electronic Components

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Monitor Repair

Recommendation:

Recommended Mr Steve Cherubino Laptop Repair Videos For
Beginners!

Recommended Mr Kent Projection Television Repair
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Recommended Mr Kent Plasma TV Repair Membership
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