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Spent 4 hours chasing a phantom short on a laptop board only to find a single speck of solder under the BGA
Has anyone else had a tiny, nearly invisible piece of debris cause a massive headache, and what's your best method for checking for that before a full teardown?
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fiona9851mo ago
Oh man, that reminds me of a time I was fixing an old game console. I spent a whole weekend thinking the main chip was fried, but it was just a single, tiny whisker of solder bridging two pins on the cartridge slot. I felt so dumb. A bright light and a magnifying glass is my go-to now before I even pick up the soldering iron.
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the_aaron1mo ago
That's brutal. So the speck was under the BGA, not even between visible pins. Makes you wonder how it even got there. What's your cleaning process before you start a repair? Do you hit the whole board with air or a brush first, or just go straight for the scope?
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