User:C3/The maintenance and repair page
About
Since March 2024 I started learning more things connected to maintenance and repair, I've been reading about these topics over the past years but I started to practice these skills only recently.
I am using this page to log my experiences and notes of my learning journey.
Logs
ASUS eeePC 1215B
date: March 2024
status: done
This was my first ever repair! I managed thanks to the person that introduced me this practice, Massimiliano De Cinque. I found this computer in my basement in Italy, it was used by my grandma mostly to send emails. I remember that it stopped working when I was around 14. At the time I found this old device I was experiencing some failures and errors with a computer I just bought, so while dealing with that frustration I became interested in the idea of fixing the old one, even though I did not know where to start.
Under Massimiliano's guidance we did some basic troubleshooting and found out that everything was working exept the so called CMOS battery (a small coin-shaped battery that powers a chip, which stores the date, time, and hardware settings in the CMOS memory.)
We replaced it with one he had and the computer was working again. Before closing the pc we cleaned it and replaced the thermal past on the CPU.
After that the computer was back to normal, but someone installed Windows 10 on it and it was definitely not the best fit for the hardware capabilities of this computer.
I swapped the old HDD disk with an SSD and together with my friend Ramin we installed Debian, this was also the first time installed Linux.
Poco phone
date: February 2025
status: done
Eleni had some issues with her phone battery not lasting long, so she got a new one and we swapped it. It is interesting how brands make a big deal out of simple things like opening a device, using low quality glue instead of simple screws and even absurdly specific adhesive for the battery. We wasted a lot of time understanding the way we could "lift the battery correctly", a process that apparently has three phases...
ASUS X509F
date: February 2025
status: done
Eleni's computer fan was making really weird noises, it sounded like it was about to take off at any moment during classes. She checked how much would a replacement fan cost and in the end she got one for 5$. We swapped it and kept the old one as a replacement. It was a pretty simple job as the fan was not placed under any other component.
PSP 3000
date: May 2025
status: done
I had this psp for more than 10 years, the battery does not hold the charge too well, but it is still very usable. I did not play with it for a long time because the buttons were punched in and did not click anymore, I've thought of doing a full host swap but, to be fair, there was no need for that. I've found a broken psp at a street market during king's day for 3 euro! No battery, no battery cover but very clickable buttons!
I opened up both, did a superficial cleaning as the pieces inside looked more fragile than what I am used to, and then swapped the keys, I wonder if I can figure out why is the other one broken, but for now, it's ok, I am satisfied with having recovered some functioning keys (but to be fair, I don't really have any time to play videogames lately...).
Notes
- Most contemporary tech devices are basically glass crackers, you have to surpass a feeling of anxiety or fear about damaging them as they look very fragile. Some of the first phones I had were looking pretty easy to open (having a removable cover and a couple of screws) the latest I opened for other people have the most overly complex way to fix both the screen and the battery (these are usually fixed with different types of adhesive).
- Older devices have a wider range of screws. Compared with newer devices, which might have 3/4 types of them, I opened a couple of computers from the 2000's that had 13 different types of them, which makes it harder to put things back together when you are done doing what you need to do.