Showerthought: Hit 1,000 motherboard repairs last week without even realizing it

I was just cleaning up my bench and decided to count the repair logs I've been keeping since 2018. Ended up at 1,023 boards total, mostly dead capacitors and blown MOSFETs from that one bad batch of power supplies a few years back. It didn't hit me until I saw the pile of old boards in the corner, all stacked up from different jobs around town. Made me think about how many machines I've kept out of the dump just by swapping a few parts. Anyone else keep a running tally of their work?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim.stella29d ago

I read a piece recently in an old electronics magazine about how one repair tech in Chicago had logged over 5,000 TV repairs before he retired, and he said most were just bad solder joints. It really puts into perspective how a few dollars in parts can save someone from tossing an entire machine. Those capacitor runs were something else, I remember a forum thread where people tracked the failure rates and it was nearly 60% on some cheap brands.

quinn_fox29d ago

That's the wild part about this kind of work... you don't really notice the numbers adding up until you actually stop and look back. I bet if I started counting every check engine light I've fixed on my own cars over the years it would be a similar shock. Those dead capacitor batches were brutal though, I remember a whole run of monitors from a couple years ago that would just randomly flicker and die because of cheap parts. It's funny how something that seems so small and routine can actually make such a big difference in keeping things running for years longer than they should...