Motherboard/System Board Testing?

[Mr. Kobayashi]

Hello Everyone,


Has anyone created a standalone Motherboard/System Board testing station? This is something I plan on working with my Electrical Engineering friend. I hope to have a device that can easily test that the power is making its way thru the Motherboard. I want to make the Volts and Amps have dials to adjust for different requirements. This will be a tedious process, so I don't plan on this being created anytime soon.


Mr. Kobayashi

[GuiltySpark]

Isn't that essentially a Voltmeter?

[Mr. Kobayashi]

(02-16-2016, 05:19 PM)GuiltySpark Wrote:  Isn't that essentially a Voltmeter?

You're probably right. I just need to learn the architecture of the motherboard and where to test.

[Britec]

Jumping right in at the deep end there. 

Here is the basics:

• Get motherboard schematics
• Test power on sequence to find the fault
• Where the power fails is where the fault is located
• Replace component or trace
• You might want to get computer post test cards and CPU socket tester. (spectrum analyzer is also handy)
  

A lot of people don't do this type of hardware repair. They do there testing on computer or laptop  and get to the point of testing where they know the motherboard has failed and just replace the motherboard with a second hand motherboard.

[Mr. Kobayashi]

(02-17-2016, 12:18 PM)Britec Wrote:  Jumping right in at the deep end there. 

Here is the basics:

• Get motherboard schematics
• Test power on sequence to find the fault
• Where the power fails is where the fault is located
• Replace component or trace
• You might want to get computer post test cards and CPU socket tester. (spectrum analyzer is also handy)
  

A lot of people don't do this type of hardware repair. They do there testing on computer or laptop  and get to the point of testing where they know the motherboard has failed and just replace the motherboard with a second hand motherboard.

The issue that I have being a tech is when a laptop comes in with it doing nothing. I had one yesterday that was getting power to the laptop, but it was not power on at all. I had tried replacing the memory and used a Multi-meter to test the power from the Adapter and everything seemed fine. The computer was a Dell and it was throwing a seven beep code, which implies the CPU or North Bridge issue. I'm assuming at that point ordering the customer another board would be the easy fix, only thing is the CPU if the problem, would then need ordered or see if I have a suitable replacement.

[Britec]

I am not putting you in any of these categories Mr. Kobayashi. Just stating what your up against. 

Computer Repair today suffers from people who don't know what they are doing and give proper techs a bad name. 

There are many type of techs.

• Part Timers
• Hobbyist
• Learn as you go type at the expense of the customer 
• 2nd job techs
• Friends and Family techs
• Pizza Techs ie: young kids
• Cowboy techs, just in it for the money and rip people off and say parts are failed when they are not. they then sell them parts and sting the customer at the same time and have no intention of building up a business or client data base. they are in it for the quick buck.
• And many more.
  

Now I am not saying that some of the above are not all good techs doing any time of them jobs above. But most are crap and bad for the business.

So now you see how hard it is to repair computers and laptops. You have a computer and it don't power on? as a tech you need to know what that is as quick as possible to get repair done as soon and as cheap as you can to stay in the game.

There are people doing computer repair jobs far to cheap.

$20 malware removal
$10 password reset
$40 DC Jack repair

There is no way you can run a business on them prices, but there is a lot of techs that are charging cheap price for the type of work involved.

Ok I will stop because I am going on a rant lol

Most techs will diagnose down to possible CPU or Motherboard failure without looking at a motherboard schematics, the CPU is probably the most reliable component in that computer, they rarely fail, so a lot of techs with take a risk a call it motherboard failure and buy at second hand motherboard from Ebay.

[Mr. Kobayashi]

(02-18-2016, 12:56 PM)Britec Wrote:  I am not putting you in any of these categories Mr. Kobayashi. Just stating what your up against. 

Computer Repair today suffers from people who don't know what they are doing and give proper techs a bad name. 

There are many type of techs.

• Part Timers
• Hobbyist
• Learn as you go type at the expense of the customer 
• 2nd job techs
• Friends and Family techs
• Pizza Techs ie: young kids
• Cowboy techs, just in it for the money and rip people off and say parts are failed when they are not. they then sell them parts and sting the customer at the same time and have no intention of building up a business or client data base. they are in it for the quick buck.
• And many more.
  

Now I am not saying that some of the above are not all good techs doing any time of them jobs above. But most are crap and bad for the business.

So now you see how hard it is to repair computers and laptops. You have a computer and it don't power on? as a tech you need to know what that is as quick as possible to get repair done as soon and as cheap as you can to stay in the game.

There are people doing computer repair jobs far to cheap.

$20 malware removal
$10 password reset
$40 DC Jack repair

There is no way you can run a business on them prices, but there is a lot of techs that are charging cheap price for the type of work involved.

Ok I will stop because I am going on a rant lol

Most techs will diagnose down to possible CPU or Motherboard failure without looking at a motherboard schematics, the CPU is probably the most reliable component in that computer, they rarely fail, so a lot of techs with take a risk a call it motherboard failure and buy at second hand motherboard from Ebay.

I could not agree more. Most of the times I can diagnose the issue for a customer in five minutes with probably a ninety-five percent accuracy rate (I do more testing to make sure). This area has a ton of competition either from chain tech shops, Best Buy or mom and pops. Most of the computers I work on are second-hand. We buy and layaway computers. This works out, because all the other systems I have to administer, I need the time. What I hope to get out of this forum is the time I would hope it will save me by using the communal mind here. Sure I can take the time to research and develop better techniques on my own, but with doing that and having what seems to be a very knowledgeable community, I hope to better my craft. Currently I'm working on a pricing chart for our sales people to go off of. We currently don't make much money on our repairs, but we do on the computers sold to us. There is quite a few techs that sell us the computers they can't fix. I fix them and we turn a nice profit. I do have several close friends that each have there specific field, electrical engineer, network admin, server admin manager, to name a few. Sometimes on here I will ask questions I have an answer for, just to bounce the issue off someone else and see how they handle it. Probably my favorite thing about this career path is, we never stop learning.