Ever swear off repair or mod because it was too hard?

For a long time I would refuse to recap TurboCD base unit and even pay someone else because when I did mine, it was a bit convoluted. Multiple PCB boards with non-removable wires, lots of metal RF shields designed to cut fingers if you didn't throw it away promptly, and a lot of flipping the whole mess of wires and PCB to get every caps done.

It wasn't worth the effort for me, I'd sooner pay someone $100 to do any CD base I come across than to fix it again myself.

Today PSP was just added to the list. I had a black PSP 2000 but I didn't like plain black color and found an used limited edition PSP that was dead. It took me many hours to take it apart, find out the mainboard was fried and the UMD had ripped cable somehow so I had to move every single parts from my black PSP.

200 parts, 5,000 screws, and 8 aspirins later plus one very stubborn spring, I had to recheck everything and reseat the tiny cables before I got my transplated PSP working again. I figure I spent around 8 hours total, most of those wasted on that stupid spring that refused to let go and refused to come back in. Not worth it, and this was on an official Sony shell not some cheap POS chinese custom colored shell that people on Youtube described as worse.

No one could pay me enough to do any PSP models.

Is there any systems that you would refuse to repair or mod even if someone paid you?

 

Dreamcast. I've only modded 5 systems but had 3 that died, the drive units just decided not to read discs anymore during the process and only load to the main menu.

 

Some systems are very fiddly. I'd always decline handhelds, super tiny screws, tiny flex cable galore fuck it.

 

Especially older ones. If any of those ribbon cables break, you're basically fucked.

 

Strange, I always found the DC to be a very robust system, and I've worked on a lot of them. Is it possible you used the wrong screws to secure the GD-ROM drive unit? That's a very effective way of killing them.

 

PS3 controllers. I hate them. Its impossible too get it back together and working at the same time xD

 

I once sent myself cross eyed trying to solder a 0402 resistor back on a jtag xenon 360, definately get u good at soldering small SMD components. Also screen repairs on iPhone 4, never again, u have to strip it right down to the motherboard, spent 20 mins looking through carpet for a screw barely a mm in size. Other than that, if it needs fixing/ modding, I will keep going until it dies or I go insane.

 

hahahaha
Never opened a HTC it seems

 

Dude. Don't. You're bringing back nightmares.

 

My atomiswave motherboard must have a crack in a trace between pcb layers between a RAM chip and the BGA graphics chip :/ I even replaced the (pretty fiddly) RAM chip, to no avail. I have no idea how I can fix it, there's just no way I can physically do it :/

 

Any DS with a faulty top screen and Dualshock 3 controllers, those things just explode into a million pieces as soon as they're taken apart.

 

lol DS3 controllers aren't that bad, though I admit the first time I opened it it was pretty annoying. After you deal with a few of them they're easy to deal with.

I generally dislike working with phones and laptops (some are much worse than others), though I didn't "swear them off". They weren't designed to be easily user-serviceable.