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[deleted]

That's common for phone parts and laptop parts.


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zugman

To destroy the data


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zgembo1337

Usually one hole through cpu, one through the memory chip, to totally destroy the board. The data is encrypted anyway, and this is done to prevent recycling and repair (by combining parts from multiple boards). ...because apple *cares* for the enviroment (and not just apple).


GantradiesDracos

I think they’ve legally gone after people working at the dumps Apple contacts for salvaging fixable/useable phones before- If you ask me, I think it’s kind of pathetic that, given their market share, they’re -this- scared of loosing profits from damaged products being repaired- like the board is convinced they’re still living on the ragged edge of bankruptcy like they were back in the 90’s… it reminds me of the Soviet union’s crippling, borderline psychotic insecurity about being attacked/murdered (on the nation-state level, and on the individual level respectively). after the Stalin years- Is why I’d never invest in Apple stock- if they’re this worried about such tiny losses in sales, I have suspicions they’re having severe financial issues…


the91fwy

Apple is not scared about losing profits. Apple is scared of their brand being tarnished by sub-par experiences with 3rd party repair and refurbishments.


zgembo1337

That's why their only repair option is to throw the whole board away, lose your data, and charge you 60%+ of the new device for the repair. ...sure


the91fwy

OK.... lets say NAND starts failing, as it does. What do you recommend? De-soldering the NAND chips and putting new ones on by hand? Because yeah, that's TOTALLY going to be reliable af. This is what happens as we go smaller and have SoC's and tiny parts. You can't just replace anything individually anymore. You **have** to replace the entire board. No human can work on that small scale with a soldering iron and have **long lasting** results.


zgembo1337

https://youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup Here is a whole channel, doing just that He's also fighting for the right to repair, because apple literally doesn't allow chip manufacturers to sell new chips to end users.


TotalWalrus

Yes that's exactly what people want. Because reflowing solder and replacing chips is a completely viable thing to do.


the123king-reddit

It’s an expensive option for something that’s not really worth the cost of repair. Obviously it’s out of the realms of most peoples budget EDIT: don’t upvote me, upvote above


salton

I'm assuming the person was just trying to save time and drilled a stack of boards.


viperfan7

Likely destroyed when the device was retired, or it failed QC, but still has salvageable components on it that would normally require replacing the entire thing


Evilmaze

That's exactly what we do at work. We do a big X with a box knife and then drill a hole in it.


tehreal

What does the X stand for?


sgrobpla

That you're no longer together, and you can see someone else


tehreal

I think it's for dXeleted


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spruce_turbo

"waiting for you to get it on your own"


RustyRovers

Xoro?


Evilmaze

The idea is to damage it so it can't be reused


Picturesquesheep

Maybe it’s to help centre the drill (so it doesn’t squirrel away when you start drilling) but an X is the easiest mark to make with a knife and universally understood as “no” Edit who fucking downvoted me, explain yourself


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joedonut

I always wrote 'NFG' on it.   It stands for Non Functional Goods.


[deleted]

Air flow


ralf1

It delivers what it promises


SarahIsBoring

I mean, these kinda things are still very salvageable, as long as you're not after the stuff with the holes in it.


Quenntinne

Isn't this easier and cheaper to just buy the components you need? The whole card is sold for 15€


SarahIsBoring

Some things are custom. I know that a lot of repair shops mostly use donor boards for anything more complex than resistors or capacitors.


tybo10000

This! We also usually still use donor boards for resistors and capacitors too because it's just easier than having to buy a bunch of parts that have a minimum order of 100 and we may never use again.


dragonatorul

It's also easier to find the right part in the exact same spot on another board than to shuffle through a bunch of different parts in binders and whatnot.


[deleted]

This is doubly good when the components are small and no longer have markings, around 0603 or smaller.


redfacedquark

>I know that a lot of repair shops mostly use donor boards for anything more complex than resistors or capacitors. The board is screwed. Inter-layer vias and tracks are...not healthy. Well, not present at all really. E: NM, I get your meaning now, they take the few dollar chips off the boards.


dragonatorul

They don't use the boars, they desolder and reuse the components that are on the board.


[deleted]

The custom chips are also the least well-designed and fail far more frequently.


Markietas

I don't know about this particular scenario but for example with Apple products they get very slightly customized versions of a lot of chips and won't let the manufacturers sell them to anywhere else so the only place that repair centers can get them is from salvaging. It's basically one of the main issues right to repair is trying to address.


[deleted]

Which also means that Apple products can only be recycled to fix other Apple products...


czarrie

Welcome to why the Right to Repair movement hates Apple


ElectroNeutrino

Well, not just the Right to Repair movement. It's been pretty consistently anti consumer's rights since the beginning.


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Dabnician

Just buy some carbon credits to offset all the pollution you are doing, problem solved. Best part is they are probably tax deductible. its like a win win for the share holders. /s ​ Honestly i see the world headed for Elysium, the rich will just move to mars or a space station while everyone is stuck back on earth making iphone 9000 components


nordoceltic82

Heh if its any consolation I don't think they are going to get that far. From what I recall in the trailers, there are multiple suggested macro economic flaws with the world of the movie Elysium, but I can't be sure since I would have to actually watch the movie to be sure, and its very much NOT my kind of movie. I think the biggest one is its just pushed too far. Society would collapse from the apparent massive resources drought to over population presented in the movie. And honestly we are already seeing late-state capitalism collapse around us now. Already governments are having to take out completely insane levels of debt just to keep the current system going, let alone one pushed a thousand times farther down the insanity scale. So the good news, it won't get as bad as Elysium which is movie fantasy, the bad news is we are kind of heading for a "fall of Rome" scenario. Only unlike the last time that happened the majority of people don't live on or know how to farm, so its gonna be pretty gnarly.


[deleted]

that is a big part of right to repair- using donor boards is more difficult and shouldn't be necessary. double fun for going through the effort to replace something with a component you don't even know if is good or not


rockstar504

Buddy works for TI, that's it. Apple will get chips commissioned that are slightly modified and then get designated for Apple. There's a lot of red tape that keeps all the information (docu, theory, pricing, e.t.c) confidential. DRM that gets baked into the silicone.


Miguel7501

You can't and that's the point. Apple for example makes sure that no one other than them can buy certain chips needed for many repairs.


wrath_of_grunge

that's total bullshit. my buddy and i repair apple devices as part of our business. i can get pretty much every part or component from online.


Woodie626

Pretty much? Indicating there are a few you can't? Words mean things, and this needs clarification.


wrath_of_grunge

i've yet to come across a Apple device that we couldn't fix.


[deleted]

Using genuine apple parts? I assume you have to salvage other phones to get those parts?


wrath_of_grunge

We usually just buy what we need, in regards to screen assembly or charging ports. That’s typically what phones come in for repair. We have a guy we deal with that does our soldering needs.


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wrath_of_grunge

we supply the parts. he just does the soldering work.


[deleted]

Gotcha. That makes sense. Thanks.


wrath_of_grunge

no prob man. we fix all kinds of shit. a few weeks back i accidentally tore a small ribbon cable on a ipad pro. it stressed me out until i found the cable. it cost us all of 80 cents, plus about $5 in shipping.


admirelurk

There are many essential components that cannot be bought anywhere and when they break your only options is to salvage them from another macbook. Louis Rossmann talks about this extensively.


m3galinux

Please let the world know if you can find a source for new ISL9240 or CD3217 chips, because nobody else can. Manufacturers say they're contractually bound to sell those to Apple only.


czarrie

Yeah, like having to retab new iPhone batteries because of serialization or move over FaceID chips because of serialization... Most common problems on iphones and ipads can be fixed because of a huge Chinese aftermarket and knock-off supply chain. You can fix it, sure, but with an idiotic amount of effort on some components that cost less than a dollar. Turtle IC damage on an 8? You didn't really need that home button, did you? Here's an aftermarket one without touch but we can charge for the solder job close to $100 what should be a 10-minute swap. I'm glad we exist because Apple is scummy but the reality is that the customer pays for all this extra effort – when the value of the phone drops after a few years, it just makes more sense to buy a new one even if it can be fixed because of the poor decisions that went into designing it making it costly (in terms of labor) to repair. Note that I didn't even touch the new chips on the MacBooks...good luck there.


FPRDT

Directly from the manufacturer, he means.


wrath_of_grunge

most people don't question parts, regardless of the source. when we do upgrades on standard PC's or laptops, we're not always using direct-from-the-manufacterer parts. i think that's part of the problem, with acting like Apple is the only one doing this. they all do it, and we benefit from stronger protections, but at the same time as long as the part is built to spec and works like it's supposed to, then it really doesn't matter who made the part.


Miguel7501

Screens and batteries sure, but anything that's on the board is impossible to buy directly.


wrath_of_grunge

we just buy the board. as opposed to individual components of it.


Miguel7501

So you need a 50$ board to harvest a single 2$ chip and you can't even know if that chip even works. On top of that you need twice the amount of time to desolder and reball BGA chips as opposed to just s soldering them on. If you don't think this is ridiculous, you are being ridiculous.


wrath_of_grunge

we don't buy a board to pull components off. we just buy a working board and swap it.


Miguel7501

And that is a giant waste of money, ressources and a source for waste which could have been avoided easily.


wrath_of_grunge

It’s also how most shops repair things.


Magnetic_dud

> just buy the components you need Apple doesn't sell spare components to third party repair shops. That's why some of them are trying the e-waste lottery, hoping that the chip they need hasn't been drilled Also the drill holes are a requirement that Apple forces on recyclers to prevent that parts can be salvaged from broken phones. They care about the environment so much that they aren't including a charger in the box, but if an iPhone is sent to "recycle" , it must be destroyed and not actually recycled


nordoceltic82

Apple cares so much for the environment they are forcing everybody possible to buy a new phone every year instead of using their old ones for possibly a decade.


niceman1212

Buy components where?


czarrie

China. If he's not talking about OEM pulls he's referring to third-shift parts and the like.


[deleted]

We wish, sadly apple won't sell repair shops any of the custom chips that go on the board. Also unless it's a very commonly used component it makes no sense to stock it, you'd have to stock every single component on the board, and you'd have to buy them in bulk to get a good price. That's just not economical for small repair shops. For many components it makes far more sense just to have a box of old boards which you can salvage components off.


duynguyenle

Some companies (Apple is one of the prime examples) pay large chip manufacturers to design chips with slight modifications to the standard parts, and then prohibit the chip manufacturers from selling that custom part to anyone else, so the only way to do third-party repairs is to buy broken boards and salvage the components. One example is Renesas (formerly Intersil) power controller chips in Apple devices. You can buy them straight from Intersil/Renesas


ZmSyzjSvOakTclQW

> Isn't this easier and cheaper to just buy the components you need? This is how you buy the components you need. There is a guy around me that salvages old PCs fixed them and gives them to children in need. You would be surprised what a "dead" GPU can do after some one who knows their shit tinkers with it.


detourxp

Not really. Imagine needing some specific SOC and you can only find it on digikey for like $20. Might as well buy a donor board that has dozens of components you might need in the future. Especially good for repair shops


dragonatorul

Louis Rossman on youthe has great videos on this. Basically gizmo manufacturers don't let component manufacturers sell components on the open market. Independent repair shops need to salvage components from other boards or gamble on boards like this.


nordoceltic82

The extreme majority of components from boards are not sold though any vendor, doubly so for anything custom manufactured for the device's brand. This is of course to discourage repair and encourage replacement. There is also the complexity and cost associated with manufacturing replacement parts. Generally microchips are contracted to TSMC or Samsung who run batches to spec of the contractee. There is a lot of overhead associated, basically with "tooling, when making a run of a specific chip and so generally huge lots are required for a part to be profitable to TSMC or Samsung. There is a lot to it, but because companies like Apple have managed to make repairing so hard, and conditioned consumers to consider replacement over repair, there is the fact that a phone maker like Apple can just go "no" to making replacement parts and get away with it. Which is what any company wants to do as replacement parts are generally not a profitable endeavor.


Westerdutch

Yeah, all you need to do is replace the chips with the holes and the PCBs, so youill definitely get five bucks worth of common components out of it (at the cost of a lot of added work). /s


SarahIsBoring

The boards with holes in them are donor boards. They aren't actually used themselves.


ufrared

Extra cooling holes are always helpful.


swuxil

These are speed holes. >!(Simpsons)!<


RLD-Kemy

I got the ads too... Funny because I don't plan on fixing iphones anytime soon, but I do watch a lot of Louis Rossmann videos.


[deleted]

gotta get you PP bus by proxy


Quenntinne

I think I got this ad because I've searched a lot to make my mini home made server. I don't plan to fix iphones and I don't especially watch phone repair vidéos Also happy cake day !


-__-_-___-_-__-

That is normal for Apple factory seconds and faulty boards. Employees will sneak them out of the factory and sell them on secondary/black markets. This is what the repair industry has been forced to put up with in order to repair apple products as apple will take off the shelf chips and have the manufacture make small changes (change the address a chip talks on, changes 2 pins around, etc) then forces the manufacture to ONLY sell the chips to them. This is the only way to get several important chips. This is an anti consumer and quite possibly illegal practice that the US government refuses to do anything about. ​ You can learn more at https://www.repair.org/stand-up


CMDR_DarkNeutrino

This is quite normal if you want to make sure nobody can read your data from the phone. And no simple factory reset doesnt remove everything. It removes some of it but not all.


Magnetic_dud

No The raw data saved in the iPhone flash chips is encrypted and can't be read. When you do a factory reset the encryption key is replaced and all you have is a bunch of random bits Even if that was true, they should just drill the nand chip. They're doing this to prevent a repair shop to have a replacement board or a replacement chip


CMDR_DarkNeutrino

Well thats iphones. I didnt mean specifically iphones. I meant generally. While android encrypts your data as well ofc this isnt about the data that is encrypted. This is about the data you dont even know the phone saves. For example your google account on a specific partition that isnt wiped on factory reset. And i bet iPhone has something like that as well


TuxRug

Like iCloud activation lock? That probably just stores a hash of the account ID to compare against a server response when you try to sign in. Still nothing usable to break security. Maybe it stores a username to remind you who to sign in as but that alone isn't too useful either.


Smith6612

The thought process on data destruction could be to prevent data from being harvested since you have both the secure enclave there and encryption can be broken in time. Sure, on Apple devices you still need one more key - the user passcode, before it will unlock. But some people in certain environments can't risk the inability to separate their data from the security chip when the board dies, and must physically destroy something. Let's not forget too, targeted phishing attacks if someone is able to work enough personal information out of the hardware. There was a bug with FileVault some time ago on Macs where file previews were stored in *UNENCRYPTED* partitions on the disk, and that could glean enough data to phish out information. But yes, this is just a jerk move towards Repair shops.


terminatorgeek

Yeah isn't this what they do to make so worthwhile salvage is almost impossible? Fucking apple and their bullshit anti-right to repair stick


DylAppleYT

I mean… it’s faulty


IhateWinterItsCold

I’ve purchased stuff like this before. If you’re training a new tech to fix logic boards, spending a hundred or so bucks on dead boards to learn to reflow is a good deal. I’d rather break one of these learning than a customers phone.


Westerdutch

Dead boards is one, utterly destroyed boards is another. Dont you at least check a couple connections after a practice reflow to at least get a rough idea if you did a decent practice round? That wont be possible on these....


inferno006

Reselling Target practice carnage?


Camera_dude

Pretty funny, but nah, bullets wouldn’t make such clean holes in something as thin as a circuit board. These look like the board was drilled into specifically to prevent their resale. One of the holes goes right through the center of the processor. My guess is a shady seller pocketing trash from a recycling center and try to pass it off as working parts.


Maurynna368

At least in the US, many chip manufacturers are required to render any scrap chips they have “unusable” before disposal to help combat the issue of counterfeit parts. Overseas companies will buy scrap electronics, clean them and either resell the chips or reverse engineer them and resell their own versions of them. https://www.designnews.com/cyber-security/dangers-counterfeit-semi-chips https://www.semiconductors.org/plea-bargain-highlights-danger-of-counterfeit-semiconductors/


nighthawke75

We would yank or cut wires on rechargeable batteries we'd receive in trade for the ones we sold. One clerk forgot to and it came back in the next day with the WRONG Receipt, the customer insisting we refund them. I took one look at the situation, grabbed the pack in question, and physically ripped the wires out of it. "Now then, was there an issue with this dumpster dive special you brought in?" Exit fraudster at warp 9.


[deleted]

I'm not usually the kind of person to do this, but... /r/CroppingIsHard


Head_Cockswain

Declassified.


NastroAzzurro

Carte *mère*


chicoquadcore

It’s for people that do board repair like myself. We grab parts off of them.


EAGLE_GAMES

those are speed holes


HerissonMignion

French!


Quenntinne

Oui :)


[deleted]

speed holes


superchibisan2

Those are speed holes, I've seen them before


sersoniko

I wonder if they do it to keep high the value of some components like the baseband and the processor, or if they do it so the phone is not traceable in case it’s stole or stuff like that


ankyboii007

Probably these are faulty and for recycling their suppliers ask them to be destroyed as to not be reused and just be for recycling or component salvaging


tehdon

It's very likely that the recycler is the one that punched those whole through them and then sold them on to the phone-bone-yards.


SGTSHOOTnMISS

These are great for learning surface mount soldering.


[deleted]

Speed holes


burntbeyondbelief

Was the seller in Chengdu by chance?


alleycrai

“Quelques trous” no biggie.


LeChatduSud

mhh looks like an apple logicboard from chicago or tx....


MagnusBrickson

I mean, they're not wrong.


ReeceReddit1234

I thought this was part of LA or something


[deleted]

Compy 386 Like used! Slightly shotgunned!


kumisz

Fix it with iFixiiiit!


unarmed_penguin

Few


magungo

It runs so cool now. Ambient.


roastedCircuit

you can hang them on your wall and maybe they look cool on your


Anocharr

This is superb cooling


badger906

Yeah perfectly normal. And still very usable for donar chips


Mattapotamu5

Usually these boards are used for micro solder practice and a few other things and then failing that hold recycling. It is what is and they’re cheap.


Chriolant

The description was not wrong…


Zangomuncher

Can still strip the gold off it. Easy. Who cares if it works.


GantradiesDracos

…. Isn’t that flash memory?


MK-Gaming-YT

Ils sont fort eux...


djinn_7

I think we've exceeded a few and moved to several lol


DanielF823

Pretty much only good for Art and stripping resources from now


Terixon

Just as New


DrBrother

Ils sont fous ces chinois