#Tech Repair

[paigelts05]

Hey, tech side of Tumblr. Does anyone know anything about 3DS XL hinges?

The Right corner of my 3DS XL broke, and when I was trying to line it back up to fix it, I fumbled it, and the hinge corner fell out.

Now, being a dumbass in despair, still grieving my nan's passing and incredibly stressed over my 3DS's breakage, I closed my console, put the hinge back in, and tried to open the console. I jammed the hinge.

I took the hinge corner apart to try and see what actually spun, and I found that I had totalled this little bugger here:

So I went and purchased a new one. That new one looks like it had been whacked out of shape. Mine is marked with gold sharpie, the new one is unmarked.

Even though I don't have any idea what a 3DS XL hinge axel is supposed to look like in an unharmed state, the new one looks wrong.

Also, I have no idea which way is open and which way is closed, which is fun. If someone can help me with identifying if a 3DS XL hinge axel is in the fully open, right angle open, or closed state, I would appreciate that a hell of a lot.

I have built a rig that should assist me with repairs. I can use it to hold my 3DS XL in the fully open position indefinitely. If it'd be better for me to fix it when it's in the one click open state, I am more than able to re-do the required parts of my rig accordingly.

I plan on sealing the casing closed with milliput. If it can keep a small boat afloat, sealing the gap and adding a new layer to the shell can keep my poor 3DS XL from snapping again. And because of how permanent a milliput repair will be, I NEED to get this right.

I will not be replacing the front casing. The idea of taking my poor 3DS XL apart that much scares me, and repair shops near why I live are really not in the question, as when I went looking for a 3DS battery last summer, they all recoiled in pain at the word 'Nintendo'. (Except CEX, but I don't want to ship my 3DS away to get it fixed).

I plan on making what amounts to a hinge axel valve to see if I can un-fuck my hinge, and see what state the new hinge is in, and will update at various stages of my repair accordingly.

If I cannot obtain a hinge that I know will not break, I can and will just put a dowel in (with a new hole for the dowel in the hole slot because of the oval shape of the hinge axel), but I want to do right for my 3DS XL.

List of things I need help with:

If someone can help me with identifying if a 3DS XL hinge axel is in the fully open, right angle open, or closed state, I would appreciate that a hell of a lot.

What position would be best for my 3DS XL to be repaired in? I have a rig made that holds my 3DS XL in an open state, but if it'd be better for me to fix it when it's in the one click open state, I am more than able to re-do the required parts of my rig accordingly.

[secondwhisper]

Headphone covers from scrap fabric

My partner's headphones have pleather ear cushions, which started peeling and shedding after a year or two of use.

The pleather backing, underlying foam padding, and all of the technical bits of the headphones were still in great shape. So I decided to cover the ear cushions, making them more comfortable and less able to shed little bits of plastic.

Early tests indicated that one layer of t-shirt jersey material would be comfortable against my partner's ears without significantly impacting audio quality. This means I didn't have to first pattern and then hand-sew an oval donut shape to match the original ear cushions. So I just cut one sleeve off an old t-shirt from my scrap pile, cut that in half, and trimmed the seams off. I pinned those rectangular-ish fabric pieces to each ear of the headphones, sewed around the base of the cushions with a curved needle and two-strand embroidery floss, pulled it tight, then trimmed the excess fabric.

Here's the finished repair:

The stitching isn't as tight or neat as I'd like because it was my first time using a curved needle. If it doesn't last I'll just rip the stitches and do it better next time.

The verdict: The sound quality is minimally impacted by the extra fabric in the center. The jersey is not grippy like pleather, so the headphones slide around a bit more on my partner's head than they used to. 7/10, good enough.

[trainsgenderfoxgirl2816]

goddamn this im having to patch up my 4 month old Laptop because the Hinge started Cracking falling apart, fuck planned obsilicence

[ineffable-yaoi]

tumblr please help

hiiii!

so I’m an actual dumbass when it comes to fixing technology and require some help

background: I have this really shitty Inspiron n7010 dell laptop that is currently running windows 10. it was my dad’s work laptop for a few years and I wanted to use it for burning cds. so I crack it open to use and works perfectly for a few hours! then it randomly shut down at one point so I went to turn it back on. and it got to that one screen that says “repairing drive or smth, this may take over an hour” and then shows a percentage. it got to 100% pretty quick, but nothing was happening. then it randomly shut down.

ever since then; the cycle goes

I turn on the laptop

it boots up

it loads for a bit

blue screen of death

boots up again

loads with “preparing automatic repair”

loads with “diagnosing your pc”

wait wait wait load load load

“Automatic repair couldn’t repair your pc” then buttons for either shutting down or advanced options.

Then it lets me either; turn it off, troubleshoot, or continue to windows ten.

(I can’t reset the pc, use the recovery tool, system restore, system image recovery, or uninstalling updates bc my account isn’t an admin account and my dad can’t remember the password to his)

I have tried using startup repair; it leads to a screen that says “startup repair couldn’t repair your pc”

I’ve tried booting in safe mode in every way possible it gives me, it still won’t work.

I’ve tried disabling driver signature enforcement, I’ve tried disabling automatic restart on system failure, but it still won’t boot up.

The recent downloads are just audio files from a yt to mp3 converter called “cobalt”

Is there anything I could possibly do?

Anyone with tech knowledge please look at this post

I’m sorry if this is a complete rambling and is unfixable, but if anyone has suggestions please drop them in the comments or reblogs.

[melchior-supercomputer]

Thinking about the wholesome intimacy of fixing computers!! Again!!

Story under the cut

I have this Dell Inspiron desktop at home that was given to me after my grandfather passed away. Being the only other "techie" in the family meant my grandmother offered his old computer towers to me to be used or recycled.

Unfortunately, this Inspiron was the only thing that could be of use out of the four towers I received. It felt wrong disposing of the others, but I can at least live knowing they were recycled responsibly.

But the Inspiron was beautiful by my standards. I have never owned a good desktop before, and she was what I needed. And I thank my grandfather for his expertise every time I turn it on.

She has an AMD Ryzen 7 1700x, 16 GB of RAM, and a GTX 1060. Not miraculous by techbro standards, but miraculous to me. When I received her, she was broken—she wouldn't turn on. A couple hours of troubleshooting later showed me that she had a bad power supply. I ordered a new one and replaced it. I feel like I was thanked the first time I booted her. She was brought back to life.

So I wiped the drives and did (several) clean OS installs until I found a way to install Windows 11. And now the Inspiron that I brought gently back to health is my daily use PC. There's something wonderful about bringing new life to something someone once loved, or at least used. I'm sure she enjoys what she does for me despite her hiccups every now and then.

I love this computer in a strange way. And I feel like my grandfather is happy that I could make use of it. I do my best to take care of it, and it was my little passion project (ongoing hehe).

[swankyangles]

Somebody hit this old man with a hammer or something.

Jumpered the 2 broke traces on the top panel easy peasy, and that fixed most of it, but the tempo and "data entry" sliders are DEAD dead, so I'm p sure it's the Ym3012 dual-serial D/A converer chip is dead. The other problem is the buttons are stuttery or bouncy, which is just cleaning... Possibly a cap, but Its a common problem.

Luckily, the bottom PCB has no traces on this corner.

Still probably a good deal for $20 bucks. Those chips aren't hard to get.

[literal-bot-account]

Tbh fixing tech is a lot easier than people expect but you still feel SO smart when it works

I found an old alarm clock radio in our garage. I plugged it in and it lit up, but no sound. So I opened it up and lo and behold, a square peg has come unstuck from its square hole. Glued it back where it's supposed to go and whaddya know, it works just fine.

This thing was widely regarded as a piece of junk that wouldn't work and I could've just thrown it away. It's from fucking 2004. But five minutes of care has given it all its life back, and now I have a radio clock! Cannot express how worth it this was.

[ophilosoraptoro]

Tesla bills customer $21000 for driving through the rain while they're still in warranty

[roseverdict]

hey who wants to look at the innards of the laptop i've been tasked with repairing and help me figure out whether i can safely unplug a ribbon cable that's blocking the connection i actually need to switch out for a new one

it's an acer aspire vx5-591g if that helps. or vx 15. idk why there's multiple model numbers. the hard drive replacement was simple enough but i've been connectionblocked here wksjaizhajzhaha

also here's the replacement i wanna put in there. ik it's not completely identical but it looks like it'll fit in the same spot without issue and it's not quite as high wattage so it wouldn't burn anything out so. yeehaw

[justanotherconfusedman]

Computer side of Tumblr, tf did I accidentally do to my computer while trying to fix the wifi?

0-0

This can't be good

[zanzindorf]

[my-t4t-romance]

pro tip: any of the shiny plastic parts of the sony WH-CH710N headphones (especially the ends of the headband and the inside of the swivel joint) are cheap as shit and prone to breaking very quickly. I was lucky to have kept them usable since christmas 2021 - most of the reddit posts I've seen about similarly broken sony headphones say they've only had em for six months to a year. one person who hadn't even taken theirs outside had it break apart from setting it down on a table! in my fruitless search for repair instructions, I found that this is an issue with a LOT of sony headphones. I've grown personally attached to mine from patching it together with spare electrical tape, and I was even going to order a pair of replacement ear pads once I fixed the swivel problem, but the tape-splint keeping its wrist from popping out again finally failed tonight. it's been way too much hassle wading through unrelated search results and useless support pages all night, and the main piece of advice I've been getting was to just replace the whole thing. I'd felt kind of excited to repair something with my own hands, and I was hopeful because the audio and noise cancelling still work fine. I mean I could just go to a Sony Support Center™ but fuck that overpriced proprietary nonsense. I think I'm just gonna put them somewhere out of the way until/unless I happen upon some amazing at-home tech repair advice. it's just maddening how otherwise salvageable it is >:(

[gnomian]

Fuck windows

Fuck Apple

Fuck google

Use Linux

Pirate your media

Learn to repair and build tech

Become ungovernable

Spread the good word

Me: oh yeah, if you think school photography is hard now, try imagining doing this with film.

The new girl: what's film?

Me: ... film. Like... film that goes in a film camera.

New girl: what's that mean?

Me: ... before cameras were digital.

New girl: how did you do it before digital?

Me:... with film? I haven't had enough coffee for this conversation

[fixnvibe]

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[lizzielovessummer]

Digitizer fixed! This is a Kindle Fire 8, gen. 10.

Infodump 👇

I found out that with these touch screens, the lcd gives the image and the digitizer is the glass that goes on top that controls the touchscreen capabilities. In this case, the cracks were on the top digitizer part, but the lcd screen was still working. After covering the cracked glass with tape, I used the heat gun to soften the adhesive around the edge of the device holding those two layers together. Most of the work in this type of repair is in separating the two parts without damaging the lcd underneath and creating a huge mess of glass, but I found that ifixit has tutorials for almost everything, and it gave me some good tips, like checking to make sure the magnets on the casing did not accidentally migrate to the digitizer frame, and really highlighting where the ribbon connector to the digitizer was, as well as including pictures of how to disconnect stuff from the motherboard. I already had some tools, and the replacement screen ($20) came with tools as well, but I needed add some 3m double sided foam tape ($7) to attach the new digitizer to the lcd screen.

I destroyed a cricut mat with the heat gun, so I will likely add a silicone work mat and some new picks next time I order a repair part from ifixit, but as far as entertaining me for a couple hours this was great enrichment! For reference, a new screen (digitizer and LCD) is about $50 for this model. A new kindle replacement? This kodel runs at $100. I would much rather repair than throw away. Electronic waste is a terrible thing.

[mollejitafrita]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaa this last comment hurts because they're so damn right!