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  1. #1
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    last night i decided to take another crack at this mac mini i bought back in 2017 and broke 3 months later trying to replace its HD with a SSD. attempting that upgrade i overlooked the IR/LED port and ripped it completely off the board as well as the fan's port and 1 pad from it. i initially thought i ripped the HD port off until i took another look at it last night.

    got my head lamp/magnifying glasses out, salvaged some old port off an old fan and went to town. the soldering job is pretty but you couldn't tell because i ended up hot gluing everything for durability/stability. got Catalina OSX up and running and have already benchmarked(cinebench & blender) the mini as well as making sure the fan is cooling fine.

    old mac but it's running great especially with the SSD i put in it too. thank the lord!!!

  2. #2
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
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    When it comes to ports, you can normally follow back the board trace to a solder joint (better to check conductivity with a working board, but sometimes that's not an option), and just bridge it directly.

    Replacing BGA chips is a different thing altogether, but I've seen people do it with a heat gun and being really good at it too. Not my cup of coffee tho.

  3. #3
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    When it comes to ports, you can normally follow back the board trace to a solder joint (better to check conductivity with a working board, but sometimes that's not an option), and just bridge it directly.

    Replacing BGA chips is a different thing altogether, but I've seen people do it with a heat gun and being really good at it too. Not my cup of coffee tho.
    i was going to bridge off some leads for the IR/LED but thought it; i don't care for either and it's a hassle anyhow when all you get is a led to tell you when the computer is on and an IR for a remote i wouldn't use anyhow.

    as for replacing BGA chips... no ing way!

    i used to mod psx back in the day and now just mess around with personal projects on pcb's but never did i want to attempt what i did last night. it wasn't all that hard but definitely difficult to see considering how small the pads are on that motherboard.

    last, contribute more to the Tech forum bud. always love reading your experience, knowledge, and insight here in this sub forum.

  4. #4
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
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    i was going to bridge off some leads for the IR/LED but thought it; i don't care for either and it's a hassle anyhow when all you get is a led to tell you when the computer is on and an IR for a remote i wouldn't use anyhow.

    as for replacing BGA chips... no ing way!

    i used to mod psx back in the day and now just mess around with personal projects on pcb's but never did i want to attempt what i did last night. it wasn't all that hard but definitely difficult to see considering how small the pads are on that motherboard.

    last, contribute more to the Tech forum bud. always love reading your experience, knowledge, and insight here in this sub forum.
    thank you brother, just busy with work these days

  5. #5
    coffee's for closers FrostKing's Avatar
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    Not sure Apple will still honor your warranty

  6. #6
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    Not sure Apple will still honor your warranty
    my warranty was voided the minute i initially opened that mac mini tbh. i've never been much of a warranty kind of dude anyhow. the best thing ever told to me as a kid, when it concerns computers, was when my neighbor told me, "if you want to learn how to work on a computer, break it!"

    i got my first real computer when i was 15 and it was an acer with like 1 gb HD & 64mb of ram. i broke that er in a matter of a month and fixed it somehow only to break it over and over again once i got into modding psx's. that computer alone taught me a lot and i have dealt with all sorts of tech issues since with numerous other electronics.

    i need to start messing with these pi's i got for free a couple yrs ago too but just haven't. as well, i need to start putting all my lab equipment to work finally too or else sell all my rigol equipment since it's all just wasting away in storage.

    the main thing i do, when it comes to electronics, is building A/C psu's.

  7. #7
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
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    I've gotten newer Macs at work, but the last one I bought for home was a Mini too... they were great until they started to solder the RAM to the mobo and basically made them non-user configurable. I can't think they made a lot of money on them though.

  8. #8
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    I've gotten newer Macs at work, but the last one I bought for home was a Mini too... they were great until they started to solder the RAM to the mobo and basically made them non-user configurable. I can't think they made a lot of money on them though.
    Yeah I wouldn't buy a new one for that fact alone but that's apple for you. The soldered in ram and CPU are both bummers.

  9. #9
    Veteran SpursforSix's Avatar
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    Have you tried turning it off and then back on?
    I think the kids call it "reboot".

  10. #10
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
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    Have you tried turning it off and then back on?
    I think the kids call it "reboot".
    ok The IT Crowd

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