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So what have you guys fixed lately?

I fixed 3 Sony Dualsense controllers with left stick drift. Rather than yet again buying another controller at £60 I ended up purchasing a cheap soldering iron and cheap tools needed and replaced the potentiameters myself with TMR anti drift ones then calibrated them using a website. It was a pain in the ass with my old eyes and lack of light and magnifying glass but I am very satisfied with the result.

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Had to do the same repairs to my Switch Joy Cons and my ROG Ally, although both of those are a lot easier with no soldering needed. Did have some issues with with the sticks I ordered for the Ally as I ordered the Hall kit. While the right stick worked great, the left stick gave way to much interference with the trigger. Ended up returning those and went with the original replacements.

I give you a lot more credit as I think i would burn myself trying to solder anything now days lol. Glad newer controllers have easily replaceable parts now.

On 04/08/2025 at 00:13, Jester124 said:

Had to do the same repairs to my Switch Joy Cons and my ROG Ally, although both of those are a lot easier with no soldering needed. Did have some issues with with the sticks I ordered for the Ally as I ordered the Hall kit. While the right stick worked great, the left stick gave way to much interference with the trigger. Ended up returning those and went with the original replacements.

I give you a lot more credit as I think i would burn myself trying to solder anything now days lol. Glad newer controllers have easily replaceable parts now.

If you ever need to do it again try TMRs instead of Hall Effect they're better and the magnets are said to be alot less powerful so may not interfere, the brand I use are Aknes Hallpi TMR and they're made in the same factory as the well known Gulikit ones but considered better and cheaper.

On 04/08/2025 at 03:31, SnoopZ said:

If you ever need to do it again try TMRs instead of Hall Effect they're better and the magnets are said to be alot less powerful so may not interfere, the brand I use are Aknes Hallpi TMR and they're made in the same factory as the well known Gulikit ones but considered better and cheaper.

Nice! I know they will fail again. Common issue with them. Will definitely look into those!

For another repair, just completed a rotor, pad, and hardware replacement for my Prius. Made me realize how old i am getting and all of the muscles that I let become dormant.

Stile worth it though, under $100 for all the parts and 45 minutes of actual work versus hundreds of dollars for a garage and a couple hours wait.

I fixed my Klipsch Pro-Media 4.1 PC speakers (but are pretty much 2.1's now since I have only used the standard speakers with the sub for a long time now etc), which I think I paid about $200 or so back in the early 2000's (nowadays the last I checked you can find them (the 2.1's) in the $75-150 range) on Nov 27th 2024 and are still holding up well now.

so it's nice to keep those speakers going since when I bought then back in the early 2000's I knew I would never need to upgrade them and it helps dodge me having to shell out more $$$ for new speakers.

with that said... that was my 3rd attempt as the first two attempts I tried to take the easy-way-out to 'fix' them and the 1st attempt lasted almost a month before the issue returned. the 2nd attempt lasted less than a week. but the 3rd attempt I took proper measures... like instead of trying to resolder the burned area of the board etc like I was doing, I took a small copper wire and bridged the connection so it's elevated off the board and then scratched off the green stuff on the board to expose the copper contact and connected it there then used wire cutters to cut off the excess. so basically I dodged the burned area of the board completely so that the connection is not routed through the suspect area anymore. we are about 8-9 months in and all is great, so I figure this should last ;)

additionally, I took apart the main control (volume knob area) and sprayed a little contact cleaner in the volume knob etc and now it's pretty much like new as it got rid of that scratchy sound when adjusting volume. for the record... contact cleaner works great for fixing stuff like that (as I also used it on my current mouse left click (or was it right click) years ago now and it's still working well and some other stuff over the years/decades).

but in regards to the fixing of speakers on circuit board... I got a little lucky that the area that was a bit burned was in a area that was not too small or too close to other stuff and just from a quick look after I took apart the back of the sub (since that's where the main stuff is) everything appeared normal besides one particular area.

p.s. in regards to the OP's controller issue... that's why I tend to prefer hall-effect sticks etc as they claim those won't develop stick drift. my 8BitDo Ultimate 2C wired controller, assuming it's built-to-last (as it's only $20 as I bought two in Dec 2024 since the price was not much more to buy two due to shipping), is a great all-around controller when you factor in feel/price etc it's hard to beat. it supports Dinput and Xinput  (I switched to Xinput since that's typically standardized on controllers unlike Dinput on PC's. I think Playstation controllers are Dinput). I am on Linux and that controller is supported out-of-the-box in Xinput put 'if' you use a kernel that's 6.12 or newer otherwise it requires a udev rule to get it working in Xinput. even on Windows 10 VM (through my QEMU/KVM on Linux) you can see the controller shows up to Windows (using the USB passthrough mode) as a XBox360 controller when in Xinput mode. when in Dinput it shows up in another area. but when it comes to racing games that use the pressure sensitive triggers (LT/RT) it's critical to use Xinput since that works as it should where as Dinput does not. but prior to that controller I was using a official wireless XBox360 controller from late 2000's until Dec 2024. so it's pretty much retired now, but it still pretty much works though even though there is a little stick drift in left stick but nothing I would consider a show stopper since it's very minimal to the point when it happens it's just a little and can be temporarily fixed by just pushing analog stick in opposite direction slightly. or... for some older games I have, you can adjust controller stick's dead-zone and I just raise it high enough to where even the slight stick drift no longer happens since the game won't register input til it's moved past a certain point which is outside of the range of the drift. anyways, besides the analog stick stuff, the 8BitDo's d-pad is legit upgrade over the XBox360's since it's more Nintendo-like which I think are pretty much the best all-around d-pad design.

haha - I fixed the doors on the panty from opening on their own last night.  I used some 20lbs rated neodymium cabinet magnets - lets just say their could be a 8.3 earthquake and they prob stay closed ;)

They use to have clips on the hinges that would keep the doors closed - but over the years those had broken, I tried ordering some replacement clips but they didn't fit. Or lets say I couldn't figure out to get them on.. I had tried some weaker magnets, but they didn't cut it.. These bad boys - those doors are not opening on their own - heheh

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On 06/08/2025 at 16:36, BudMan said:

haha - I fixed the doors on the panty from opening on their own last night.  I used some 20lbs rated neodymium cabinet magnets - lets just say their could be a 8.3 earthquake and they prob stay closed ;)

They use to have clips on the hinges that would keep the doors closed - but over the years those had broken, I tried ordering some replacement clips but they didn't fit. Or lets say I couldn't figure out to get them on.. I had tried some weaker magnets, but they didn't cut it.. These bad boys - those doors are not opening on their own - heheh

Exact same problem I had however I found my magnets too strong and it would pull 1 part off the door which was stuck on with a self adhesive pad.

I ended up using gorilla tape instead and put a rubber bump on on the magnet which solves everything.

these screwed on - don't think they are going anywhere.. The rubber bump is a good idea.. That might keep them from actually touching so not so much force needed to open them ;)

I fixed my laundry room light fixture. Not an easy job since its on a 10 foot high ceiling and being up on the ladder at 74 is tedious. Standard 48 inch florescent fixture but when I replaced the tubes I realized it was the ballast that was failing. So cut the wires to the ballast, removed it, connected the wires to the line wires. Wrote a nice note on the center wiring cover indicating there was no ballast, direct wire tubes only. Inserted the GE LED tubes designed for either direct wiring or ballast. And all is well. Main problem I have is that most led 48 inch tubes seem to stop at 4000K and I would prefer something closer to 3000K.

Yes, thanks! I left an email signup note for home depot to notify me if these are ever in stock so I'll see what happens. There are also supposed to be some Phillips tubes with 3000K but I may never know when those are in stock either. And in small 2 tube quantities. Nowadays they seem to have more of a selection in large quantities. With today's supply chain we never know how long it will take until anything is in stock.

  • 2 weeks later...

Most recently I had to fix my mother's Lenovo Ideapad 3. She spilled coffee all over the laptop and got coffee in it. Technically one of her German Shepherds knocked the end table that had her laptop on it. Sitting beside it was her cup of coffee. Luckily the laptop didn't short out. But the keyboard was sticky as all hell. When I went to visit her this past summer. At the time it happened. I had told her to power off the laptop and not use it. I was able to use Rubbing Alcohol and remove the dried on sticky coffee from the keyboard. I couldn't get to every nook and cranny because it's keyboard is sonically welded and not completely removable. I felt replacing the keyboard wasn't worth the cost considering the cost of the laptop. It wasn't warranted. The keyboard works, but still sucked!

 

While I was already inside working on the laptop at the time. I replaced the thermal paste on the CPU, added a thermal pad to her laptops SSD. I also added an 8GB stick of RAM to bring her laptop RAM to 12 GB. Although the laptop is hardly a powerhouse of computing power. Doing the work I did perform. It did improve the thermal temperatures, and did improve the performance of the laptop as well. It's a great little laptop for her to surf the web, check her emails, and do her Genealogy Research. I ended up giving her my Logitech Cordless Desktop S510 Keyboard. I had the keyboard for at least 20 years. That thing is a tank! I took really good care of it, and I took that apart and fully cleaned the keyboard with soap and water and cleaned the membrane and when I was done. It looked brand new. I ended up buying a new Logitech G915 (clicky) with ten key and I love it! Most laptop keyboard suck anyways. So, I wanted her to have a better typing experience with a nice keyboard.

Edited by NeoFyle
  • 3 weeks later...

image.thumb.png.b037404c141b86a868277a6aa722b18a.pngFixed a POE outdoor camera that had a bad connector. Ordered a new one end, snipped the end off and soldered about 9 or 10 wires.

Then put some heat shrink around it and wrapped it in electrical tape.

Did it back on March 31st, its till working great!

One of my exterior doors had a broken lock.  Replaced it and all is good now.  

Replaced my cables on my network rack with shorter cables.  Looks much nicer...though...

Next project is to migrate my network to the basement, have the equipment.  I tend to think, half rack, good, order that.  Got it, no, 3/4 rack, order, got it, no, now I'm thinking full rack.  What I really need is just a half rack, but a full rack looks nicer.  /sigh

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