Austin Evans Broke These with a USB Killer - Can I Fix Any?!

recently Austin Evans made a video where he broke some Electronics using a USB killer so I reached out and asked him if he would send them over my way to see if I can fix them and he said he would so I have all the boxes I'm not even sure what all he sent so let's get them opened up and find out and here he is box number one okay looks like a laptop what is this a tough book I don't remember if that's what they're called or not but dead USB kill so we've got one laptop and what is in boxing number two a PlayStation 5 so this is the 1100 model and it does not work we also have looks like he threw in an Apple iPhone all right we'll have a look at that as well let's see what's in the last box okay and we have another laptop and another laptop a Chromebook okay what else we have in here another oh is this a tablet nope oh here we go we got uh MacBook Air it looks like okay so that's going to be a fun one that's actually in really nice condition too all right and we have a Nintendo switch light one more laptop and this is an older MacBook Pro so we've got our work cut out for us today I think now is an appropriate time to say I'm not a laptop technician I've fixed a few I've tried to fix a bunch that I couldn't so I don't know how this is going to go but let's get started and see if we can fix any of these devices all right I'm just going to plug this thing and we're going to go for it simple as that super super duper dead so let's start with this Lenovo Chromebook got a USB meter set up let's see what happens when we try to charge it okay it just turns off let's see that again yeah just turns off right away let's just see what happens when we plug it in on this side five volts zero amps yeah so just nothing going on over here okay let's get this thing taken apart and see if we can figure out what's going on so right over here is the charge port so I need to get this main board out so we can have a look at the other side and here we are under the microscope this is the USB port that the USB killer was plugged into and how a USB killer works is it takes power from the device and stores it in very strong capacitors inside the USB killer itself and then it pushes that power back into the motherboard all at once and that causes components to blow out so the first thing we're going to be looking for is any fuses or resistors that might be blown and I'm just taking a look at the board right now just to see if there's anything that looks obviously blown this Zer ohm resistor right here could be acting as a fuse let's check that real quick and we get 8 ohms so that is just fine let's check this resistor 1.19 kiloohms that looks just fine I'm going to change over to audible mode so now we're going to hear a beep Whenever there is a short to ground so there is a short to ground on the case of the USB port which we would expect let's check all these lines okay no surprises so far unfortunately without a schematic there's no way for me to really know whether some of these should be shorted to ground or not usually a big coil like this wouldn't be but it's just really hard to know let's check this control power management chip and again I'm just checking to see if there's a bunch of pins shorted out or something so far there's definitely not doesn't mean it's not bad but a lot of times when these go bad there will be a large amount of those pins shorted out so given the fact that this chip just doesn't have really any shorts on it I think what I want to focus on is this area up here so this coil is shorted to ground on both sides and these pins are all shorted to ground as well so is this zero Ohm resistor that is shorted to ground so I think what I want to try and do is remove this chip right here I don't know what all is on this circuit that could be shorted but this looks like probably the most likely cause but there's just no way for me to know for sure especially since I don't have any schematics for this board so let's try that and just see what happens there we go and let's see if that short is still there yes it is okay so I'm going to remove this chip next and see if that does anything and with that chip removed let's recheck these shorts unfortunately I just I don't like it is possible that this is how these are supposed to be yep everything's the same it is the downside of not having any uh schematics to go off of so let's see what happens when we plug this into a charger with that chip removed here we go whoa that is pretty up close you can say nothing at all happens all right so I'm going to put this chip back on and then actually so I'll put both chips back on let's see what happens once those chips are back on yeah and that short is still there again not sure if it's supposed to be or not but let's see what happens now when we plug our charger in just see if that happen to do anything at all all right and here we go and we get the exact same problem now unfortunately I don't have one of these chips to replace it with my guess is this chip is probably faulty I definitely could be wrong but without a schematic there's just no way to really test it and I can't find a DAT sheet anywhere for this chip so unfortunately for this Chromebook I can't say for sure what the problem is I'm guessing that this chip took the brunt of the voltage coming in from the USB killer and probably killed this chip now as you can see there's a bunch of little lines going to the chip from the USBC Port if there was some fuses on these lines that could possibly prevent this problem but unfortunately manufacturers kind of cheap out on this kind of stuff and just don't install those fuses so we're not starting out great but let's move on to the Gateway laptop and see if we can fix that one let's see what happens here goes nothing so now that it is plugged in I'm going to trigger USB K there went hear it all right I'm going to stop it so let's just see if it happens to turn on definitely no power see what happens when we plug it in definitely no power okay let's take the bottom cover off and see what's going on on the inside so that is where the power comes in right over here definitely got some fingerprints over here so this has been into before let's get this board out so we can have a better look at it actually before we do that though let's try disconnecting the battery and then reconnecting it and just see if that does anything see if we have any voltage in the battery 7.8 okay we got a little bit of voltage in there so let's disconnect it there we go let's see what happens if we try to plug the AC adapter in with the battery disconnected no lights no anything okay let's plug the battery back in now let's see what happens I don't think that's going to do anything but sometimes crazy things happen when you unplug it and plug it back in yep nothing all right let's get this board out and have a look at it so here is the ACN port and this is where the power comes in so let's check we've got these two zero ohm resistors that can act as a fuse and there is no resistance there which is good and zero there I'm testing voltage we need to be testing resistance on these what am I even doing today okay let's try this again all right 1 ohm that's normal and same there so those are both good that means that inrush of voltage and current didn't blow these resistors let's just check for a short on these capacitors nope good there and let's check these mosfets here and see what we have no shorts on those okay I'm just looking around the board to see if there's any actual fuses here let's check over by the battery connector so there's the battery connector and there's a triple zero resistor right there and that is good okay and one more over here I don't think this has anything to do with the charging circuit but let's just check it anyway yep that is good and this one is also good let's check this one no problems there so I am just seeing nothing obvious on this board that's blown or burned out the next thing I'm going to do is actually plug in the AC adapter and let's see where we get voltage okay there we go now we'll switch our meter over to DC voltage and let's see what we get and we have 19 volts in so we're good there let's check over here 19 volts there and I'm just going to do some checking around over here those don't have voltage which isn't necessarily a problem 18.9 on this guy so no obvious problems there let's go over here to near the battery connector and this guy right here is the charge controller and we have voltage on this I'm just kind of checking this thing for voltage and shorts just kind of I I don't know what this should look like when it's working but if it was shorted that definitely could be a problem but I don't see that at all on this chip it appears just from very rough prodding and poking that this is probably working fine 20 volt 24 volts out right there same there 18 volts so I'm I think this chip is probably fine as well so unfortunately I just can't find anything obvious wrong on this board none of the fuses or resistors that can act as fuses are blown so all of that looks just fine the charge circuit seems just fine that being said a proper laptop repair technique might be able to figure this out quickly but I'm just not seeing anything obvious and I just have no leads as to what might have gone wrong with this board so in this case and on the previous laptop the USB killer is a really covert way to kill a laptop board since this is kind of a cheapo laptop anyway I think we're going to stop here so we can put a little more time into things like the MacBooks so let's move on to the next laptop and the next laptop we have is this Dell Latitude rugged let's see how rugged it is on the inside all right here we go o and that is dead okay definitely no power let's get this thing taken apart this is a lot more intense inside than I was thinking it would be okay so I mean we can't really see much yet I don't see anything crazy going on here yet but we can't really see the board very well so I need to get a bunch more of this stuff off and then we can have a look at the board so in Austin evans's video this is the USB port that he plugged a USB kill into I'm looking back here and these two little guys look like maybe there's a problem there we'll get under a microscope in a second but that we definitely do need to inspect that also I'm seeing a number of places where there are fuses on this board anything with these Zer on them either are or can act as fuses so that's looking promising there I'm not sure why it doesn't turn on though that's the main thing and also in Austin evans's video you can hear the kind of like two clicks or two snaps when he plugs that device in I'm wondering if it's from these guys here but also where did that send power to make it just kill the whole computer that's one of the main things that I'm going to be trying to figure out in this video we have the DC in right here that's what uh that that connects right here so we'll we'll check that in a minute too but right now let's just kind of look over the board and see if there's anything obvious that looks blown or burned or anything like that other than those two little guys behind that USB port over there and on this top side I am not really seeing much and on the bottom side a number of fuses as well we'll check those here in a minute but just nothing that's really that really looks burned or broken or even sometimes components will have kind of a little bubble on the top nothing like that going on so let's check all of these fuses and just see if we find any that are bad so we'll start back here that fuse is good for sure good good okay no problems so far so that I don't see any fuses that are blown at least not obviously okay let's try the backs side I keep hoping we'll find one of these fuses that's blown because that would be an easy fix if that's all it was but man we are not having any luck so far okay I just don't see anything that's acting as a fuse that is causing a problem so let's get under our microscope and have a look at those two components by that USB port and see what they look like close up and here we are under microscope and these little guys are just totally destroyed these are probably the source of the two sounds that we hear in Austin evans's video and this I mean it's sort of good news because these blue but also the computer also blue so unfortunately these or even this fuse didn't really do its job if it if the whole computer blew instead of just these guys having these two components blown like this shouldn't make the computer not turn turn on so let's keep looking and see if we can figure out why it's not turning on all right let's plug it into Power oh we get some noise that's strange let's see what we get on a thermal cam right there we have a problem maybe we've got [Music] 133° right by that guy okay let's unplug we don't want to actually do any damage here so that was right near this guy right here I think it might be on the other side though so right in here somewhere let's plug it back in yep get the noise again and we've got right there 120 127 okay so that is let's make sure we get the right spot here that is right in that area going to mark this with a sharpie right in here okay so the heat is coming from somewhere in this general area I'm thinking maybe this chip but I couldn't really pinpoint it to that according to the thermal cam it looked more like it was like right in this area which doesn't really make a lot of sense because there's not really anything there so I think our best bet is to remove this guy and then we'll retest for shorts and with that component removed let's see how the heat looks we get no warm spot in that area there's just nothing that chip we took off is from right here that's right about where the warm spot was and without that on there we don't get a warm spot anywhere on the board so now the problem is that this little guy right here 4S 0101 there is nothing online about this so I can't find parts I can't find a schematic I can't find anything for this I don't have a donor board that I found that has this on it so unfortunately we can't replace this and test it anymore because I can't find one of these there's a chance that just replacing this could fix it but also there's a pretty good chance there are other problems on the board but unfortunately without one of these to replace it we just can't go any further on this one so while this one is potentially fixable since we can't get parts there's just nowhere we can go on it so let's move on to the first Apple computer plug it into our MacBook in three two one oh okay now that's very good very very good so we heard the click so it discharged now does the system actually work it does so far we're zero out of three let's open up this MacBook Pro and see if we can fix our first one and our screws are out back cover is off let's see if we have any clues on this board I dug out my old mag safe cable so let's plug it in and see what happened happens oh we get we get a green light and fan spin does this thing have a display no display and we get a orange light so the fan stopped I mean that's something though let's see what happens when we try to power it on okay we get nothing when you try to power it on try to hold the power button down yep just nothing but we do have a little bit of Life on this board so I think it will take this board out and have a look at the other side and just see if there's any burn components any components that are obviously broken and then we'll move on from there okay and I unplugged it and then plugged it back in and this is what we get battery's charging it is low charge I know that much but now this thing's working trackpad works I'm going to let this charge for a little bit and just see if this charge percentage goes up and see if the charging circuit is fully working or not we do need to have a look at that USB port though and see if we can figure out what's going on there and see if we can figure out what part of it is blown so let's get under our microscope and do that next so right down here is the USB port which attaches to the board right here and if we look at the board a little further back we see this guy right here you can see the the half of this thing has just totally been blown off now there is another USB port over here and this is the same component 050 02n and if we look at this component on AliExpress down here it says diode circuit protection now luckily I do have an old donor board for this laptop so I pulled that component off of that laptop and we're going to place it on this one and see if this USB port will start working again come on almost there we go and now we will place the donor component now we can start this thing back up and see if the USB port works and with that replaced let's first test the USB port that we didn't fix or didn't try to fix and we have 5 volts coming out of it just like that now let's test the USB port that we did try to fix and we have 5 volts so it looks like apple may have done something right and put circuit protection right in the USB circuit and probably save this laptop and this one is still working just fine and we're at 22% on the battery so the battery is also charging this is an older laptop though let's take a look at the newer one and see if they still have that same circuit protection there all right we going plug this into a USBC port in three two one okay I'm going to unplug it very good sign MacBook is still functional okay oh that's bad both USBC ports are not accepting a charge so ready and ooh that looks good ooh no it's not so the Mac safe cable thinks that the device is fully charged and good to go which seems normal but here's the thing the system says it is not charging right now but as soon as this runs out of charge it's dead forever now before we get doing anything too crazy let's just plug this MacBook Air in and see if it charges oh orange Charger see what happens when we try to turn it on definitely nothing so far okay so we get charging but nothing's going on on the computer itself and it's not starting up let's get this back cover off and have a look to see what's going on in here that is so clean looking got to give it to Apple that's a nice looking inside of a laptop right there but did they design it so it'll withstand the USB killer over here are the USB ports we got to get under here and have a look at the board and then we just pry off this whole metal plate right here just like that and there we have the logic board and I think it's time to get under a microscope and have a closer look at this so the USBC ports plug in here and here and right up here is where the mag safe plugs in and then over here on the board we've got a CD 3217 b113 my understanding is these are the chips that help determine what the input or output is on the USBC ports and that's what controls them so let's start checking around these chips for shorts I'm going to do these big capacitors right over here okay and no short on that one next we'll go up to this chip and do the same thing oh here we go that is definitely a short let's check this other one and no short on this one so this area right here seems to be a problem I think most likely this chip is faulty but unfortunately there's not really a good way to tell I'm guessing what probably happened is all the voltage came in through the USB kill and killed this chip and that is why this chip is shorted or one of these components around it is shorted unfortunately on this board there is no circuit protection so it's not just a matter of replacing one of these little chips it's this fairly large BGA chip that I think probably needs to be replaced I've looked around this board quite a bit and I don't see anything else that looks like any sort of problem at all there are no burned or blackened chips anywhere so I think my diagnosis on this one is that most likely this chip is faulty unfortunately I don't have any of those chips and I could take this chip off to see if that short goes away but I don't know if Austin Evans want wants this board back or this this MacBook Air back so I don't want to remove this chip because it is a BGA chip so once I remove it I can't just put it right back on so unfortunately since there is no circuit protection on this logic board we're not going to be able to fix this one but let's move on to one more Apple device an Apple iPhone 3 2 one o ooh o I heard a click and it didn't do anything I'm unplug it right now whoa whoa whoa oh well Frozen well hang on wait that's good that's good that's what happened with the Z flip it triggered and is restarting this looks fine let's just make sure that it still accepts power oh wow okay so what we have here is a still functional device but a lightning Port which no longer works while we're letting our blue heat mat heat up let's see if we get any voltage going into the charge port when we plug it in and we get nothing all right let's get this phone opened up see if we can figure out what's going on and there we go now we can start taking it apart and have a look a little closer at the inside okay so here's the lightning connector this is where the charge cable plugs in there's a bunch of little components back here that we can't see because it's filled with this epoxy that's basically impossible to remove without damaging anything else if you try to remove it you can damage these components or tear the cable itself that these are mounted on so we're not going to do that but just looking I mean I don't see anything obvious that's burned here not that we can really see that well um these guys over here all look fine don't see any problem s there so then if we Trace these traces over here they go all the way over here under the board and then they connect right over here with this connector that I've already removed don't see any burn spots on the connector on the cable side or the logic board side and if we move this this uh adhesive foam pad we can see a few more components down here that I mean we can't really tell very easily whether there's anything going on with them it's got kind of this um also epoxy on it so it makes them look brown but they're not actually blown it doesn't look like now unfortunately like I said I don't have another one of these charge ports and uh Flex cables to replace this with but I feel like it's probably unlikely that there's a problem on this part I think there's probably something going on on the board and that's also a much more in-depth and difficult repair so unfortunately we're not going to be able to fix this iPhone today but I think we have a better chance at fixing the next device coming up and that is the Nintendo switch light all right here we go switch light see what we got oh God that was the loudest snap okay oh my God first thing I noticed is there's I don't know if there's a faulty screen in here or maybe that I don't see a screen protector on here that could be a problem but let's plug this in and see what happens 14.8 volts. 3 amps okay that's not the worst thing definitely getting nothing when we try to power it on but it is taking a charge okay I think the only answer here is to take the back cover off of this thing have a look at the board let's start by checking the voltage on the battery we have 3 volts so that is a very discharged battery so that's part of the problem so the first thing I'm going to do is get this battery charged up then we can go from there now while this thing is charging I decided to get out a thermal camera to take a look we got 143° right there on the board and right about here is where the heat was coming from because it was right here and right here kind of around this connector and if we flip the board over that's right where this power management chip is I'm going to plug it in and let's see if we can pinpoint it any further it is possible that one of the capacitors around here is shorted but I feel like it's probably the chip itself so looking at this when I have it on the chip itself we have about 100° but then when I go up from the chip slightly we have 144° and here is that chip under a microscope let's take a look at some of these capacitors it seemed like over in this area is where the problem was so we go here yeah we got a short there not there so we got a short on this one a short on this one a short on this one so that's I don't know that ship definitely could be faulty but also there could be a bunch of other stuff shorted let's go take a look at the M92 chip that's what uh sort of controls the charging no short so far okay that's shorted and that's shorted now I'm not totally sure this one maybe that's normal to be shorted I don't think it's normal for this one to be shorted so that kind of makes me question this chip but the other thing we have is look at this little guy this guy is toasted and there is no continuity here this should be this is uh there's basically little coils inside here and so this should be basically very little resistance from this point to this point that goes through that little guy so that is definitely a problem and that looks like maybe it acts as the fuse but clearly it didn't do a good enough job in this case so I think the first thing we'll do is remove the M92 two chip and then see how many shorts we have left and with that chip removed let's see if our short is gone it is not okay so the other thing with this chip over here is that this capacitor right here I checked with another board and it actually is shorted too so this just may have low impedance this capacitor however was not shorted so that is definitely worrying I think what I want to do next is remove this capacitor and and then just see how this chip responds and whether this hot spot is still here so I'm going to do that next I will replace the M92 chip and just put it back on where it was and then also I need to install another one of these little guys right here this little uh coil so I'll do that as well and the M92 chip is reinstalled I went to replace this and I totally blew it because my hot air blew it all the way off the board and somewhere into my workbench and it's so small I have no idea where it went so we'll worry about that later and we do have this capacitor removed so let's see if this board still gets really hot so when I plug in the board let's see what happens oh that immediately lights up yep that gets hot real fast now as I'm looking at this where this other hot spot was it was right around here and looking at this capacitor it looks like maybe there's a crack in it I mean I can't tell for sure but let's remove this and see what happens and let's test this without the capacitor ah still shorted that's a bummer uh let's try removing this coil and see if that does it now we'll check and see if this still gets warm with that coil removed and I think I misspoke in the previous scene where I was removing the coil coils are going to be shorted from one pin to the other just because it's just a coil of wi wire there's going to be very little resistance there but with that removed that disconnects this chip from this circuit right here so let's see if it still gets hot with it removed and yes it does we still got a hot spot there okay so let's just remove some more stuff and with two more components removed we still have a hot spot we got 150° here and 120 is all around it so there's still something going on here I'm not sure what component is causing this Hots spot because we've taken off all four of the the little components that are the closest to this so maybe there's a problem on the other side of the board I don't think so but yeah it's just more generalized heat on the other side and we only get 120s on the other side of the board so I feel like it has to be on this side and it has to be one of these components right up here so I guess we'll just keep taking stuff off until we can get this thing to go away so let's try something else here instead of of looking at the heat since it's really hard to pinpoint I have a cotton swab soaked with isopropyl alcohol I'm going to put on this whole area and I think it's pretty clear what's getting the hottest the fastest that chip just immediately dries this alcohol right up this area over here definitely does but the chip for sure does it much faster faster so I think that heat we're seeing on the thermal cam is being generated by this chip so I think the next thing we need to do is remove this chip and replace it with a different one let's just see what happens okay there we go so I'm going to kind of line it up about where it needs to be and even with a known good working chip we still have that hot spot right on that chip that tells me that there must be something else going on somewhere else on this board but unfortunately there's just no way for me to know where it is so once again instead of having a circuit protection component somewhere near the input charge port the manufacturer of this board has not done that and so that high current and voltage traveled through the board and blew something out somewhere but there's really no good way for us to pinpoint it other than the things we've tried and unfortunately for Al that just hasn't worked so I'm going to get this switch light put back together let's take a look at the PlayStation 5 and see if we can fix that one I'm pretty sure I already know we can't because I sort of know how the USB ports work on the PS5 but you never know let's take a look three two one no oh my God since I already know probably what's going on with this PlayStation 5 I'm just going to take this thing apart have a look at it so right here is one of the USB ports on the board and right behind that we have where it mounts to the board and over here we have a little device that kind of looks similar to the switch light and then we also have this device right over here so you would think that that could be a circuit protection device but if we come through and test there is continuity through it like there normally would be so that's not blown this little guy right here is also not blown let's check the other one same same so then these Trac is go through the board right here so we'll go to the other side of the board which goes to right here and if we follow them back they go right into the Apu so instead of Designing these boards with some very cheap circuit protection devices that actually work they've decided to exclude them and make it so a power surge whether it's from a lightning storm or a USB kill device or something else that power surge can cause the entire board to burn out and your $ 500ish device is now useless so unfortunately I was only able to really fix one of these eight items that were killed by the USB kill device now there are more skilled technicians that probably could have fixed a couple of these but ultimately I think this video shows how manufacturers are kind of skimping out on circuit protection for their devices the other thing that we learned today is that the USB kill device is very dangerous and not something to be messed around with as it can kill devices very quickly and easily without really being able to tell what actually killed them thanks again to atin Evans for sending these devices over I have huge respect for Austin and his team for what he's doing over on his channel if you want to see the video where they killed all of these devices using the USB kill device I'll put a link for that video up on your screen now so you can go hang out over there and see how it works thanks again for watching today and I hope you have a good one

Channel: TronicsFix

Views: 468,019

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Id: oYdZKbFbExQ

Length: 41min 57sec (2517 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2024