Welcome to Gaia! ::

Alright... to start this off...

Sibby had a decent video card in his compy (a long while ago, >1 year). And it up and died. Was working one day, stopped the next.

So... he took it out, replaced it, and just let it sit somewhere...

Now... typically, when these things die, they're gone for good... there's not a lot on them to go wrong, and if it does... well, they dun come back (usually overheating or something...)

Anyways, I very recently saw online where a guy "fixed" his "broken" video card... by sticking it in an oven. At 285*F, for about 10 minutes. Apparently, this will melt the solder (reflow) and let it cool again, so that if a connection was broken somewhere, it'll be fixed (this is apparently a big problem with silver solder... no, we can't use lead solder, we HAVE to use silver. @_@)

So, Sibby thought, what have I got to lose? And grabbed a cookie sheet, stuffed it in upside-down (as the guy had did it), on top of some paper things to keep it from burning... and let it bake.

Sibby checks on it every couple of minutes... (so to make sure it doesn't catch fire or something...)

Aaaand... about 8 mins into it, it smells funny, and Sibby notices that 2 capacitors and an inductor have fallen off of the card... OH CRAP.

Sibby pulls it out (the solder has OBVIOUSLY melted), and lets it cool...

And today, Sibby soldered the caps and inductor back on the card...

And tonight, he went to test it.

Now, the *best case scenerio* I thought, would be that it just wouldn't work... worst case; card would burst into flames, kill the test compy, and... yeah.

Anyways, I threw it into the test compy, powered it up... and it worked.

...let me repeat. IT. ********. WORKED.

*insert Sibby dancing here*

Soooo... yeah. I managed to fix a broken video card... by baking it. For 8 minutes. At 285 Fahrenheit.

^__________^

how the hell did baking something, and having some capacitors fall off... make it WORK? xD