Help each other Fixit Log

[Riggerjack]

Also, when you get the light fixed, and want to replace the bulbs, all standard automotive bulbs are available in LED, now.

So as you need to replace bulbs, an upgrade to LED means far fewer replacements, and brighter lights, and less power draw.

My BIL just changed all the bulbs in his RV, and it made a very noticeable difference.

[ertyu]

https://youtu.be/2BmGMi0IEx4?t=356

5:50-6:50: how did he know that soldering a wire at precisely those two places was going to solve his problem? Why those places and not others? Youtube vid is of a dude repairing a game boy and should be cued to start at the right place.

[basuragomi]

The known-good one showed continuity between those two points, and the broken one did not. That probably indicates a broken trace somewhere. The nature of electric circuits are that if there's continuity between two points, there is also continuity at any two points on the path between the first two points. So there was a break somewhere in between. Depending on the board that may have been more elegantly fixed with a much shorter wire or solder blob directly over the break. But that takes more tracing work, so he directly connected the two points with a jumper wire.

It looks like he connected the battery holder contact with the power supply pins for the CPU. So that was literally the very first step he could take to fixing things - restoring power to the chips (the next step he took was restoring the battery terminals) and seeing if they still work.

It was entirely possible that everything would still be broken after restoring power, if the chips had gotten fried. It is also possible that other chips (display driver, audio, memory?) that draw power from the batteries still had broken traces. But there was visible corrosion on the battery terminals so he started there.

Diagnosing a fried chip is harder than diagnosing a bad power supply. If things still didn't work at that point the next step would be replacing the broken chips with known-good ones and seeing what else is broken.

[Gilberto de Piento]

So as you need to replace bulbs, an upgrade to LED means far fewer replacements, and brighter lights, and less power draw.

My car uses bulbs more than I'd like it to. When I looked into LED bulbs they were expensive but the bigger problem was that I couldn't really tell which bulbs would work well and which were garbage. Hopefully it has improved. The long life halogens last longer but are dimmer.