EU Adds Exemptions To User-Serviceable Batteries Rules

July 17, 2026 by Maya Posch 70 Comments

Built-in batteries put a timebomb inside devices, with especially the calendar aging feature of Li-ion chemistries setting a hard limit on when you’ll have to toss the device or figure out a way to replace the battery somehow. Here the EU’s Battery Regulation policy with the 2027 implementation of the user-serviceable battery requirement provided a lot of hope. Now six new categories of exemptions are diminishing what could have been a bonanza of easy repairability.

Most notable here are smartwatches, fitness trackers, wireless earbuds and other so-called ‘wet devices’, which as GSMArena also notes is an area where having a user-replaceable battery might affect features like being water-resistant. Something which is also relevant for e.g. outdoor wireless speakers. There’s also a new exemption for smartphones, where if its battery retains at least 83% of its original capacity after 500 charge cycles, battery replacement has to be only replaceable by professionals. Which is probably code for ‘glue, hotplates and prying tools’.

Considering just how daft of an idea built-in batteries are, this is somewhat disappointing to see. While it’s understandable that ‘wet devices’ get such broad exemptions, it should be noted here that advanced technologies like gaskets are neither complicated nor expensive. You can even hand the average user a tube of RTV silicone and let them go to town on a part in the happy knowledge that there’s never such a thing as ‘too much’ RTV silicone.

It is likely that there was some pressure from the industry on the EU to not change too much, but at the very least us happy few in the EU will be getting a new Nintendo Switch 2 with easily replaced battery in both the main unit and its controllers. For the average rechargeable device you keep kicking around the house this should also still apply as long as its manufacturer cannot squeeze it into one of these exemption categories.

The Right to Repair battles shall continue.

Hacking Around The Financial Pain Of New 3DS XL Top Screens

July 15, 2026 by Maya Posch 10 Comments

With Nintendo’s 3DS experiencing a bit of a renaissance lately, prices for functioning systems have shot through the roof. Getting a busted one with a broken screen is a lot cheaper, but then you run into the eye-watering price difference between a replacement top screen for the regular version and the larger XL variant. The latter costs about the same as a whole new used 3DS, while the former goes for peanuts. Here the solution is obvious, with [Skawo] demonstrating how they hacked the cheaper, smaller top screen into a New 3DS XL.

The price difference on AliExpress as shown in the video is on the order of $120, with the smaller screen going for less than $10. Since they both use the same connector pin-out and display technology, you can plug either display into the New 3DS XL mainboard.

Where you’ll run into issues, other than the replacement display being obviously not XL, is the physically shorter flat flex cable for the controls that forces the display to be installed in an offset manner. You need jailbroken firmware like Luma3DS here to adjust for the screen offset. Filling in the missing screen real-estate is the other issue you have to patch over somehow, which was done here in barbaric fashion with some cardboard.

Beyond that it does work, and as a fix to at least get a broken New 3DS XL back into the game it’s worth considering. Do note that there’s a difference between regular 3DS and New 3DS (second generation) screens with neither being compatible, so be careful before you try such a fix.

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Benchmarking Repairability Scores With An Asus Tablet

July 14, 2026 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

A few years ago, France introduced a mandatory repairability score for consumer goods like laptops and tablets. It involves five criteria that range from documentation and availability of spare parts to ease of disassembly, with the manufacturer using a government-provided checklist to determine their score.

Recently Asus determined that their Asus ROG Flow Z13 – model GZ302EA – scored a 10 out of 10 using this system. This led [iFixit] to run the same tablet/laptop hybrid through their own rating system.

You can find the filled-out spreadsheet for this device here, with this Asus-provided site showing a list of devices that all score a 10/10 or a measly 9.9/10 according to this system. As a self-reported score it is hard to take it as the objective truth, as there is every incentive for the manufacturer to tweak the truth to their own benefit and gloss over inconveniences. This is where it’s interesting to compare it with [iFixit]’s 7/10 score.

On documentation, Asus gives itself a perfect score but [iFixit] finds it to be incomplete. Removal of one fan requires the disassembly of the cooler with its liquid metal thermal interface on the CPU. The wireless card, and most ports, are soldered to the mainboard. On the bright side, after you get the screen off, the insides are quite modular, which is a plus.

[iFixit] dings three points: for documentation, soldered-down components, and a fan accessibility glitch. Parts accessibility outside of France is also significantly harder, but one can hardly blame the French system for that. Overall the French self-reported rating would seem to be a fair start, but depending on which criteria you define as required you may find yourself disagreeing with the score.

In the case of LPDDR5 RAM one could argue for example that with LPCAMM2 modules soldering RAM onto the mainboard ought to be a thing of the past, and Wi-Fi modules should always be removable as well. You can take that up with the French regulators.

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Fixing The Fix For A 3dfx Voodoo Card’s Overly Bright Picture

July 10, 2026 by Maya Posch 6 Comments

After previously fixing an overly bright picture from a Voodoo graphics card with a simple resistor on one of the RAMDAC’s pins to correct its faulty internal Vref, [Bits und Bolts] got called out for not taking component drift into account. Thus in an update video he shows how instead to use an adjustable AMS1117 voltage regulator to hopefully prevent either the original issue or something new and exciting from cropping up later.

The basic idea here is to use the external voltage reference (Vref) pin for this ICS5342 RAMDAC and supply it with a constant 1.235V. If unused – as on this Orchid-branded Voodoo card – it is connected via an 0.1 microFarad capacitor to ground. This fortunately means that the pin is routed to easily accessible pads that make this modification relatively straightforward.

Basically this is where the AMS1117-ADJ chip comes into the picture, as a widely available adjustable LDO option, even if the 0.8A current rating is very much overkill for this application. With the supplied voltage the lowest voltage this LDO can output is around 1.25V, which is within the 1.10 – 1.35 V range of the datasheet.

Of course, with the PCB never having had a provision for this part, much of the rest of the video is about planning out where to place and route the components. After that tedious work and testing that nothing explodes, the new voltage is used for the RAMDAC’s Vref pin, fixing the brightness issue.

While one could argue that this RAMDAC is likely simply defective and already beginning to break down inside, this should at least give it a bit longer on what seems to be a little used card anyway.

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Reviving Mystery Nintendo 64 Game Cartridge Found In The Woods

July 9, 2026 by Maya Posch 20 Comments

As far as things go that you are likely to find during a relaxing walk in the forest, Nintendo 64 game cartridges probably do not rank high on that list. Yet this is what happened to a friend of [BlueBox Tinkers] a few years back, leaving him dying to see whether the cartridge would still work, as well as what game it is since its labels got obliterated courtesy of its time spent enjoying the outdoors. Fortunately he recently got a chance to see whether he could revive this cartridge.

The insides look pretty much like what you’d expect after presumably months or years of exposure, with the metal shield severely corroded. The PCB does however look pretty decent still, with obvious signs of corrosion on the front-side vias, and a pretty gross-looking back side.

Unfortunately it wasn’t confirmed whether this friend tried to stick this old cartridge into an N64 console, but [BlueBox Tinkers] wasn’t going to take any such chances. First up was an inspection and deep cleaning of the PCB, showing that it had escaped real damage, with the shield having taken the brunt of the corrosion. Cleaning up the shield and the insides of the plastic shell is by far the hardest part, with the pitted metal and rust stuck on the plastic. For a full restoration you’d probably want to for a reproduction shell and shield here.

Ultimately the game turned out to still work, with the mystery game sadly fairly predictable, but with someone’s old save files still intact. Somehow it seems that what Nintendo did to make N64 cartridges dust- and child-resistant also makes it survive in the woods, so if you find one during a forest walk, it’s totally worth it to adopt it and take it home.

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Fixing A Dodgy Cheap Audio DAC

July 9, 2026 by Jenny List 14 Comments

One of the attractions of buying at the bottom end of the electronics market by mail order from China is that you never quite know what will come your way. Sometimes it’s a diamond in the rough, while with others it’s a mess. Occasionally along comes something which should work but doesn’t, and that’s the moment when you wonder if you could fix it. [Nyanpasu64] had just such a device, an HDMI to VGA converter with audio that didn’t work. What could be wrong?

The HDMI to VGA chip has an onboard audio digital-to-analog converter (DAC), and it’s a delta-sigma design. This type of DAC is frequently used in audio applications because it works by shifting its switching frequency many times higher than the input sample rate, thus reducing considerably the distortion. This one wasn’t performing as advertised though, and the problem turned out to be that switching frequency being all over the output. Clearly the filter wasn’t working, which led to the design of a new filter. The write-up is therefore an extensive dive into filter design, and in part also a discovery of the effect of impedance on them.

For a super-cheap module to cause so much work, one might ask why not simply spend a few more dollars and get a better one. But had they done that we wouldn’t have seen this write-up, so we’re sticking with team cheap.

We’ve looked at audio DACs, in the past.

Fixing An Elgato Cam Link’s USB Current Draw Issue

June 26, 2026 by Maya Posch 12 Comments

Recently [Bits und Bolts] found himself in a bit of a pickle, when on boot his PC would complain about a connected USB device drawing too much power, before shutting down again. After unplugging various USB devices, the problem was narrowed down to an Elgato Cam Link 4K video capture device.

Some prodding and poking around with a thermal camera on the disassembled device while powered showed that an onboard IC had sprung a power leak. Sadly, even asking nicely, Elgato support wasn’t going to provide board-level repair help, so this was left as an exercise to the owner.

Although the markings on the chip didn’t offer much help, it turns out that this is a more common issue, with a convenient repair guide by [Uldis Melderis] identifying the part as the TI TLV62585 buck regulator.

After purchasing a couple of spares, the defective IC could then be replaced. Following this a quick test showing decidedly less angry electrons. From there it was a matter of reassembling the device in its plastic case and seeing whether the PC was happier with the now hopefully fixed device, which fortunately turned out to be the case.

Any such analysis and repair obviously raises a number of questions, such as why these buck regulators are dying, and why you’re supposed to just toss out a $100 device instead of doing a repair involving a $0.20 part and a few minutes with a hot air gun.