A funny example of why board repair are still very human skills.
Someone posted in my Facebook group asking for help identifying a ripped pad on a PS5 fan connector. The connector had been torn off the board, and they wanted to know what signal the missing middle pad belonged to so they could run a jumper.
A commenter decided to let AI handle it.
They fed the photo into ChatGPT and got back a nice-looking annotated diagram showing all the pin functions. The problem?
It was completely wrong.
The AI labeled the missing pad as the TACH signal when in reality that pad is ground.
The scary part is that if you didn't already know the answer, the diagram looks convincing. It has arrows, labels, colors, callouts, and all the confidence in the world. Yet it still gave bad information that could send someone down the wrong path.
This is one of the reasons I don't lose sleep over AI replacing board repair technicians.
AI is incredibly good at summarizing information that already exists publicly. But in our industry, a huge amount of knowledge doesn't exist in easily searchable public sources. Many solutions come from years of hands-on experience, reverse engineering, private group discussions, lab testing, and trial-and-error. A lot of the most valuable information is buried in technician group chats, private forums, repair communities, and people's heads.
When AI can't find an answer, it often does what it does best: it generates something that sounds plausible.
For common topics, that's usually fine.
For board repair, data recovery, and electronics diagnostics, that's how you end up with a beautiful diagram that's completely wrong.
Could AI eventually get there? Maybe.
But for now, if your PS5, iPhone, Samsung, or data recovery case is depending on the answer being correct, I'd still trust the technician who's actually repaired hundreds of them over a chatbot that confidently guessed.
Sometimes experience is still the best database.
Are you worried about AI taking your job?
If you have a Seek Thermal Cam, you're missing out if you don't have a VCC Seek Stand: https://www.vccboardrepairs.com/buy-seek-stand
Injured Gadgets just got these back in stock, so get them while you can!
It can take us a while to build these out sometimes, so they're sometimes out of stock for a while, but we're working towards always having inventory ready to build more as they sell out.
This stand makes using a thermal cam so easy. So much better than any other thermal solution on the market.
It allows you to get real close up (using my Macro Lens), and easily find where the short is coming from.
Plus it's hard free, so you can have your hands free to try to boot the device from DCPS, while having an image that is in focus & not moving around.
You can even record a video through the app, while you inject voltage into the short, so you can go back & see exactly which component was it that was heating up.
Save yourself lots of time by getting a Seek Cam, Stand & Macro Lens! ...
Anyone who is doing game console repairs, knows how many screws you need to remove to access the motherboard.
Especially the PS5, with the 5,000 screws or so.
If you don't already have an electric screwdriver, GET ONE ASAP.
🌟 Cordless Screwdriver with T9 Bit: https://amzn.to/3E5duCj
🌟Extended T9 Bit: https://amzn.to/3c4YJac
It's rechargeable through micro USB and allows you to easily swap the tips out. You can also fold it to be straight or L shape.
Let me know below if you are already using an electric screwdriver 👇👇
Had an interesting iPhone 16 Pro Max data recovery come in and wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this....
The phone came in heavily smashed and completely dead. After troubleshooting, I found a VDD_MAIN short. Once I cleared the short, I was able to get the phone booting again.
My original plan was to connect it to a PC and see if I could get the usual Stolen Device Protection prompt so I could proceed with the recovery. However, the phone wouldn't establish a USB connection.
After troubleshooting further, I eventually discovered the board had a sandwich separation issue, which explained why USB wasn't working.
Before digging into the sandwich repair, I started playing around with Stolen Device Protection just to see what would happen.
I noticed Stolen Device Protection was definitely enabled. Out of curiosity, I tapped "Set Up Alternate Appearance." Normally I'd expect it to immediately reject me since I'm obviously not the owner, but instead it actually looked like it wanted to proceed ...
One of the perks of being an active member is access to our private Facebook Messenger group chat.
We’ve got a solid group of techs in there discussing panic logs, 3 minute restarts, board level repairs, troubleshooting, tools, weird cases, and sharing fixes.
It’s not a training course, just a chill place for techs to help each other out and talk shop.
If you want in, comment your Facebook profile link below or DM me on Facebook and I’ll add you.
This 15 Pro came in for data recovery. It came in smashed badly.
I split the sandwich & tested in the jig with a known good bottom board & all known good parts
But yet, it still restarted.
That means it had a board level issue causing it.
I found the panic log said the sensor array code was 0x80000
This was not a previously documented error code, so I had nothing to go by
Based on the backstory, I started checking everything on the board. Diode mode all the common connectors. But nothing.
Then I remembers the 14 Pros require the Gyro to work. Sure enough, rotation was not working
I found the Gyro IC & noticed it was loose
I pulled & it had some ripped pads.
Rebuilt the pads, placed the IC back & it worked! I backed up the data.
Since the Repair Wiki is not longer updateable, I will be posting the new panic logs I find on my Panic Log Cheat Sheet, only available to active members
You can access my Panic Log Cheat Sheet here:
https://www.vccboardrepairs.com/cheat-sheet
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