Putting together a kit to work with boards

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Robertmurr

Joined Oct 30, 2021
1
Since childhood I liked to solder, and now I have a business plan to restore video cards, miners destroy them, and I will buy back and fix them) Anyway, the soldering iron I have, I want to take desoldering, which would increase convenience at work.<Mod: Deleted link> advise ENGINEER SS-02 On youtube, too, many people talk about it, is it really a good device or just touted?
 
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Papabravo

Joined Feb 24, 2006
22,070
Since childhood I liked to solder, and now I have a business plan to restore video cards, miners destroy them, and I will buy back and fix them) Anyway, the soldering iron I have, I want to take desoldering, which would increase convenience at work. They advise ENGINEER SS-02 On youtube, too, many people talk about it, is it really a good device or just touted?
With modern manufacturing techniques making the soldering iron obsolete you should consider a Hot Air Rework station. Talk to the people who do PC board assembly how they do board rework.
 

MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
27,361
Certainly restoring failed video boards is an interesting concept,but I offer a caution about actually paying anything for them. That is that every new generation of PC computer hardware uses a different connection scheme and buss arrangement , and mostly they are not compatible. So you will quickly discover that most of the boards you have do not have buyers waiting for them. You will also soon discover that, at least here in the US, most of the discarded video boards are not failed but are obsolete. In addition, there is a serious issue that as operating systems change every few months, the new system does not work with the driver software for those video boards.
So in summary, even if you are able to repair whatever hardware failures exist on a video board, it is not likely that you will find a buyer for that board. Sorry to be so discouraging, but that is the reality of the situation here.
One other challenge will be in getting replacement parts, especially the more complex ICs.
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
18,289
Welcome to AAC!

+1 for getting a hot air tool. It's really the only way to be able to remove large pin count surface mount components.

What do you intend to do with these video cards after you think you've repaired them. I say think because how will you be able to tell that there aren't other not so obvious problems that you could miss if you don't have the ability to test all components?
 

MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
27,361
Really, the most suitable scheme for verifying a complete repair will be a performance evaluation. Probably that will require the least capital investment and the most personal time.
And it is not clear where the video boards will arrive from, or what the logistics of the business will involve. That will depend a whole lot on what part of the world this will be located in.
 

MaxHeadRoom

Joined Jul 18, 2013
30,605
The OP mentions Video cards but this is not necessarily PC based!?
Are these aimed at a specific/unique application? Miners?
Maybe a pic of the boards would help!
 

AlbertHall

Joined Jun 4, 2014
12,624
One other challenge will be in getting replacement parts, especially the more complex ICs.
I worked for a company which planned to do LCD repairs. Installed a clean room and the equipment for replacing the layers on the front of the dispaly and for replacing the driver boards on the back of the display and got people trained on how to do the work and me trained on maintaining this equipment.

Then discovered that we could not get the necessary parts to do the work - oops!
I do not know the answer to the obvious question.
 

MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
27,361
Part availability, especially service part availability, has been a very sore point for quite a while. Custom versions of processors with the code in ROM no longer available, or even the royal 8047, with the eprom, is hard to find. FPGAs that the code to program replacements are not being available. And almost every VGA or better video board has at least one IC with the custom code for that board and that specific version.
So I was able to win quite a few points when I had to be in a meeting to discuss the replacements for a product that we had sold to an auto company quite a few years earlier. One supervisor was complaining about "older stuff with unavailable parts", and then I pointed out that every single part of that product was still available from several suppliers, produced by at least two different companies, and that especially the ICs were all in stock at Digikey, available by the hundreds. It was a bit more effort to design with all multi-sourced parts, but it can save you from the pain of "parts not available".
 
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