repair

286 Articles

A New Life For A Rare Console

June 7, 2026 by 6 Comments

One of the delights of our tips line is that from time to time it brings us retrocomputing hardware that, despite years of reporting, we were not aware existed. [Hitmanmcc] has just such a machine, an NEC PC Engine LT. It’s a PC engine in a laptop form factor, and like many of this super-rare console, it has succumbed to capacitor failure. We’re treated to the process of bringing it back to life.

Replacing capacitors was only part of the story for this repair, as the electrolyte had caused damage elsewhere on the board. In particular there is a small transformer that forms part of an inverter to generate an LCD bias voltage, and this had been destroyed. Fortunately the art of switching power conversion has advanced in the decades since the console was produced, and a small module was procured to do the same job.

The result of all this surgery is another rare console rescued from e-waste, and an opportunity for the rest of us to take a look too. The PC engine is a relative rarity here, but we’ve had a few hacks over the years. This converter for its American cousin is one.

The Dismal Repairability Of Milwaukee Tools

February 18, 2026 by 64 Comments

Despite the best efforts of the manufacturers, there are folks out there that try to repair power tools, with [Dean Doherty] being one of them. Recently he got a Milwaukee M18 cordless planer in for repairs, which started off with just replacing some dodgy bearings, but ended up with diagnosing a faulty controller. Consequently the total repair costs went up from reasonable to absolutely unreasonable, leading to a rant on why Milwaukee tools are terrible to repair.

Among the symptoms was the deep-discharged battery, which had just a hair over 7 V while unloaded. Question was what had drained the battery so severely. What was clear was that the tool was completely seized after inserting a working battery with just a sad high-pitched whine from a stalled motor.

After replacing both bearings and grumbling about cheap bearings, the tool had a lot of drywall dust cleaned out and was reassembled for a test run. This sadly showed that the controller board had been destroyed due to the seized rotor bearing, explaining the drained battery. Replacing the controller would have cost €60-70 as it comes with the entire handle assembly, rendering the repair non-viable and a waste.

Perhaps the one lesson from this story is that you may as well preventively swap the cheap bearings in your Milwaukee tools, to prevent seizing and taking out the controller board. That said, we’d love to see an autopsy on this controller board fault.

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Fixing Sony And Philips’ Doomed CD-i Console

February 1, 2026 by 12 Comments

Although not intended to be a game console, the CD-i would see a a couple of games released for it that would cement its position in gaming history as the butt of countless jokes, some of which still make Nintendo upset to this day. That aside, it’s still a fascinating glimpse at the CD-based multimedia future envisioned in the early 90s, starting with its release in 1990. Recently [MattKC] decided to purchase another CD-i in a fit of nostalgic rage, and repair it to show the world what the future could have been like.

Although Sony and Philips co-developed the device, Sony would go on to release the PlayStation a few years later, which made the CD-i’s life and expectations for it that much harder, leading to it slowly fading into history. The Magnavox one that [MattKC] got is one of the later models, based on the CD-i 450 that was introduced in 1994 as one of the more gaming-oriented models.

As is typical with older devices that use optical media, it would not read discs. It also would sometimes boot up with a ‘Memory Full’ error. This is a common fault due to the built-in battery having run out, erasing RAM-stored values and causing random glitches like this when garbage values were read in on boot.

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Toasty Subwoofer Limps Back To Life

October 11, 2025 by 6 Comments

[JohnAudioTech] noticed there was no bass on the TV at his parents’ house. That led to the discovery of a blown fuse and a corresponding repair. When he opened it up, he could smell that something had gone on in the amplifier. You can follow the repair in the video below.

His first theory was that some glue became conductive and shorted the power rails. We were skeptical, to be honest. When he fed power to it through a current limiter, he could hear a sizzling noise and even see a little glowing from the hot component.

Disassembly ensued. Removing the suspect components showed some seriously burned components and some charring under a switching transistor. The capacitors looked much worse for wear, and the PCB needed some wires to jumper burned conductors.

At the end, there was thumping, so it seems the surgery was a success. However, testing blew a fuse again, which made us nervous. Still, seems to work if you don’t drive it too hard.

We always enjoy watching a teardown, and if there’s a repair too, that’s even better.

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Hackaday Links: September 28, 2025

September 28, 2025 by 14 Comments

In today’s “News from the Dystopia” segment, we have a story about fighting retail theft with drones. It centers on Flock Safety, a company that provides surveillance technologies, including UAVs, license plate readers, and gunshot location systems, to law enforcement agencies. Their flagship Aerodome product is a rooftop-mounted dock for a UAV that gets dispatched to a call for service and acts as an eye-in-the-sky until units can arrive on scene. Neat idea and all, and while we can see the utility of such a system in a first responder situation, the company is starting to market a similar system to retailers and other private sector industries as a way to contain costs. The retail use case, which the story stresses has not been deployed yet, would be to launch a drone upon a store’s Asset Protection team noticing someone shoplifting. Flock would then remotely pilot the drone, following the alleged thief back to their lair or hideout and coordinating with law enforcement, who then sweep in to make an arrest.

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IPhone Air Still Apparently Repairable Despite Its Compact Construction

September 22, 2025 by 13 Comments

Miniaturization is a trend that comes and goes in the cellular phone space. For a while, our phones were all getting smaller, then they started getting bigger again as screens expanded to show us ever more content and advertising. The iPhone air is going back the other way, with a design that aims to sell based on its slimness. [iFixit] reckons that despite its diminutive dimensions, it should still be quite repairable.

“Thinner usually means flimsier, harder to fix, and more glued-down parts, but the iPhone Air proves otherwise,” states Elizabeth Chamberlain for the repair outlet. Much of this comes down to clever design, that makes repair possible at the same time as ensuring compactness. A big part of this is the way that Apple made the bottom half of the phone pretty much just battery. Most of the actual electronic components are on a logic board up by the camera. Segmenting the phone in this way makes it easier to access commonly-replaced parts like the battery without having to pull a lot of other parts out of the way first.

[iFixit] refers to this as flattening the “disassembly tree”—minimizing the number of components you have to touch to replace what you’re there to fix. In this regard, the thinness of the iPhone Air is actually a boon. The phone is so thin, it wasn’t possible to stack multiple components on top of each other, so everything is easier to get to. The design is also reasonably modular, which should make routine repairs like USB C port swaps relatively straightforward.

Whatever smartphone you’re working on, it often helps to have a disassembly guide to ensure you don’t wreck it when you’re trying to fix something. [iFixit] remains a stellar resource in that regard. Continue reading “IPhone Air Still Apparently Repairable Despite Its Compact Construction” →

Looking in the back of the Tektronix 577

Repairing A Tektronix 577 Curve Tracer

September 4, 2025 by 5 Comments

Over on his YouTube channel our hacker [Jerry Walker] repairs a Tektronix 577 curve tracer.

A curve tracer is a piece of equipment which plots I-V (current vs voltage) curves, among other things. This old bit of Tektronix kit is rocking a CRT, which dates it. According to TekWiki the Tektronix 577 was introduced in 1972.

In this repair video [Jerry] goes to use his Tektronix 577 only to discover that it is nonfunctional. He begins his investigation by popping off the back cover and checking out the voltages across the voltage rails. His investigations suggest a short circuit. He pushes on that which means he has to remove the side panel to follow a lead into the guts of the machine.

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