Refurbished hardware

[oldman420]

i have just received my ati 9600 back from ati rma.
It wouldn't even post and now its better than it was brand new.
Upon close inspection i could see that all the caps had been remarked with a sharpy but other than that what could they have done to repair my card?
Most of todays pcbs seem to be non repairable.
i have also seen refurbished cards and even cpus.
can someone enlighten me as to what actually happens when they repair or refurbish a piece of hw?
thanks

 

[Pulsar]

Not much to explain.

They probably throw it on the same bench test they use to 100% test functionality at the end of the assembly line. From there they get an error code, and they probably have a standardized repair proces of exactly what to change out in the case of particular codes.

It's usually highly doubtful that the traces in the PCB board itself are bad - it's probably caps / resistors / inductors / silicon that can be easily replaced.

 

[puffff]

we have a department in our company that repairs pcb's, i know and have watched some of the guys do it. while i cant say this is what ATI does, i do know that the majority of our repairs are just broken resistors or shorts on the board, which can be easily fixed.

 

[dkozloski]

Refurbishing can mean anything you want it to mean. It could be anything from a complete disassembly and rebuild to blowing off the dust and a rewax. For the most part, refurbish has a nice ring to it so it is the buzz word of choice.

 

[oldman420]

Wow so they can replace components on a PCB.
I figured they have a test machine for diagnoses but i still cant see how they could replace a cap or one of those tiny assed chips you find.
i guess i don't know much here worth a little research.
Thanks for the input guys.

 

[irwincur]

Here is the real secret. It probably isn't the same card.

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: irwincur
Here is the real secret. It probably isn't the same card.

bingo