“Baking” damaged reel-to-reel tapes renders them playable again

Re:“Baking” damaged reel-to-reel tapes renders them playable... by renewiltord on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @03:25PM (#23010777)

Yeah, it was a classic characteristic of the G84 series of GPUs from Nvidia (8400M GS in the XPS M1330 I owned was one). The Ball-Grid Array solder would crack in a heat/cold cycle and so you'd effectively get an open circuit. By baking it, the solder would reflow and close the circuit again.

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Re:“Baking” damaged reel-to-reel tapes renders them playable... by GuB-42 on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @03:55PM (#23011136)

According to Louis Rossmann, it is a myth. Baking GPUs don't re-flow the solder, the recommended temperature is too low for that anyways.

Instead it just "agitates" stuff at the molecular level, which can get the card running for some time. It is not a permanent fix though.

Worth noting that Louis Rossmann is a professional repair technician, so he may be a little bit biased, but he has good arguments.

I tried the heating trick on several occasions and on a variety of devices. Usually with just a hair drier. It tends to work. Great as a stopgap, but expect to replace the part later.

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Re:“Baking” damaged reel-to-reel tapes renders them playable... by throwanem on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @04:38PM (#23011669)

"Molecular agitation" is a weird way to spell "sintering".

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