Viewers Sent Me 5 Broken Switches and Challenged Me to Fix Them!

I bought these five broken Nintendo switches all from viewers to see if I could fix them this video is sponsored by iFixit more on them in a minute I bought this Nintendo switch from a viewer named Sean whose son Nash challenged me to see if I could fix it so let's just get right into this one Nash challenge accepted so they said the battery went dead and then it never charged again they took it to get it fixed they said they replaced the power source whatever the power source is and it still doesn't work I'm assuming they replaced the battery so what I want to do is see if it's charging at all we have 5.1 volts zero amps so this is taking absolutely no charge so let's get this thing taken apart and start doing some tests Nintendo switches use tri-wings to remove the back covers so we'll be using my iFixit Pro Tech toolkit this is one of my favorite tool kits it's small and Compact and yet has basically any bit you need to get into almost anything and then of course it's got pry tools over here and over here and then a suction cup for removing things like screens on phones so we need to get out the driver and then we're gonna go with a Y double zero I believe that's the size it's been a while since I've done any Nintendo switch repairs and that size works good then we got a Phillips double zero to remove this screw here and this one here and then these ones on the side as well these ones you have to push in pretty hard or else they can be easy to strip so that one came out pretty good though one on the top and one under here now we can get the back cover off and get to the metal shield under it somebody didn't install this SD card correctly this part right here is kind of flipped up it's not really loose but I have to see if they damage that when we get this off these are easy to damage and let's see no damage okay let's see what this repair shop replaced under here okay so they removed this for sure some of this foam has been torn off but oh looks like looks like this guy's been replaced it almost looks like maybe it's missing some pieces down there so I have to look on another board to make sure we need to get this under a microscope too and just look at this and see if they did a good job replacing it I feel like some of the solder down here does not look great so that could be the source of our problem right there let's check with the multimeter and see how much voltage is in our battery and we have zero volts so the battery is completely dead okay so at this point as far as I can tell the repair shop replaced this chip I can't see anything else they replaced but once we get this board out then we can see if there's anything else so we do need to remove this heat pipe and heat sink the fan the card reader all these little connectors and then all the screws on the board and then we can pull it out and have a look at it and they definitely didn't install the perfect amount of thermal paste in fact I'm not sure they installed any at all this might be the thermal paste from the factory I think this board can just come out now yep okay let's have a look at the other side yeah I see some flux on this so it looks like they replaced the USBC Port the video chip and the battery charge chip over here so let's get this thing on our microscope and inspect their work in addition to their super high quality Precision Tool kits iFixit also sells lots of Parts specifically for the switch they sell batteries this SD card reader which I could have bought from them if I would have needed one joy-con batteries and a whole bunch of other parts for your Nintendo switch but they don't just sell switch parts they sell parts for all sorts of electronic devices and a lot of them have lifetime guarantees the thing that I love about iFixit is they test their parts to make sure they're working before they ship them out if you buy parts on other websites a lot of times you don't even know if they're going to work when you get them so I highly recommend iFixit if you're looking for any parts for your electronic devices go to ifixit.com tronixfix to make your order I put a link right in the description that'll take you right there and we can see that the M92 chip is on here crooked as far as I can tell that's not affecting anything but we may need to remove that just to test or even just heat it up and get it scooted over where it needs to be this side is just way lower than it needs to be and you can see how this side is also lower so the whole thing is kind of Twisted but let's test and see if we have any shorts on this chip and the way you test that is right on this capacitor right here this side should make a beep because this side is connected directly to ground and it does this side should not make a beep because this side is connected to the chip and this part of the chip should not be grounded and it is grounded so we could have a faulty chip or we could actually we need to test the other capacitors around here that side is grounded oh that side's not okay if I remember right when I'm working on switches if this capacitor is shorted that's not necessarily a problem a lot of times that can be fixed if this one is shorted that can be pretty difficult to fix and sometimes impossible also while we're down here let's look at this chip this is another chip that has to do with the battery management and these capacitors are not shorted that's good news okay let's flip it over and have a look at the video chip I can't tell for sure if this has been replaced there's definitely a lot of flux on it but since they did replace the port that could have just dripped down from that possibly and this guy right here a lot of times likes to short out oh there we go so we do have a short either on this or possibly this chip or the other chip on the other side the M92 I think what I'll do first is remove this chip and see if that removes our short I'm going to use my hot air soldering station to heat up the chip and remove it and then we'll recheck for a short and it looks like our short is gone so let's replace that video chip with the new one and maybe if we're lucky that'll fix it now since I'm using a brand new chip to reinstall onto this board I need to do what's called tinning the pads and that's where I come in and put some flux on the chip itself and then with my small soldering iron I'm just going to put a little tiny bit of solder on each of these little pads and then also a little dab of solder in the middle and spread that all out with my large iron and then it's ready to install onto the board now we've got our new video chip installed everything looks good let's check and make sure that short is still gone so we put both probes here you hear the beep that means we do have a short which we would since they're both on the same pad now let's move it here and nothing and here and nothing okay let's flip it over and see if the short is gone on our M92 chip and it is gone okay so that's enough for me to get this reinstalled into the switch and see if that's all it took to fix it and here we go come on give us something oh still just zero power let's try it with a known good battery and see if that will get it working when the battery is just at Zero sometimes that can cause a problem where it won't charge now let's see what happens come on that's not giving us anything okay we do have power on it that's good news okay so that's all good news we just had to figure out why it's not charging and I feel like maybe the charge port might have something to do with that well we got 5.1 volts coming in okay so maybe we do need to replace this chip as well before we do that though let's just unplug everything and make sure that chip is not shorted again if it is then we might have a different problem let's see if there's a short no short okay so let's replace this and see if that'll get it working we might even be able to just reposition this because it's so out of position that could be the only problem I think I will just heat this thing up and get it installed on there correctly and just see if that's enough to get it working [Applause] okay good battery installed I did try to just straighten the old M92 chip off camera I forgot to film that part I did try and straighten it it didn't do any good so now we have a new one installed let's see what happens come on so oh here we go 1.43 amps okay so and the fan came on yeah that's because it's really hot okay let's try it with the old battery that has zero volts in it and see if it'll charge that one up there we go 0.42 amps that's normal charging for a battery that's dead we've got .41 amps it's going to charge it's going to slow charge like that for quite a while and then it should go to fast charging and charge this one up so Nash I think I won this challenge but thank you for selling to me and sending it in let's move on to switch number two and see if we can fix another one and switch number two just came in this container with it looks like most of the parts and pieces we need uh they even took out the metal mid frame down here I don't know what exactly is wrong with this one but let's get all these pieces sorted and see if we can figure it out so I don't see any problems with the board itself it is possible that there's something here that I don't see but I did notice that on this screen we got a broken ribbon cable here and a broken ribbon cable here so I think what we're gonna do with this one I don't have any of these screens right now but I'm thinking one of these other switches might need parts once we get into it so I think what we'll do is is we'll save this one to use for parts on some of the other switches so let's move on to switch number three and see if we can fix switch number three number three is gonna be a Nintendo switch OLED Edition so for this OLED switch the seller bought it from someone who tried to mod it and they failed the seller said that there's a capacitor that's knocked off the board but I feel like there's probably a few other things going on inside this now I've only taken apart a couple of these OLED switches so this is at least sort of all new to me as well but once we get it all opened up I feel like we're going to be able to see what's wrong right away and so far I don't actually really see too much going on here to be worried about but I can't really see much of the board yet either so I think that's where the real worry is is down here on the board let's get this metal plate off and nothing too bad yet I mean that's good I guess oh we got something going on down here uh so we have some extra solder on down here looks like this cover's been removed oh boy this could be bad if they messed with the the main chips on this or the memory that could be a problem let's get this battery disconnected and then we can get down to the board and we're also missing a speaker or the speaker cable that's it might be under the board let's let's find out okay the board is out and the speaker cable was underneath the board how does it look underneath somebody was definitely messing with this chip right here I'm not sure what they're trying to do though but let's remove this Shield right here and see the damage if there is any to the main CPU so when I bought this I mean the seller did say that somebody tried to mod it apparently I should have asked what exactly they were trying to mod okay I don't know what they would be doing right here let's get this thing under microscope and see if we can see exactly what they were trying to do so here's a close-up of the part of the board where they were attempting to solder some stuff to not really sure why they needed to cut this away other than maybe so they could solder to this right here so yeah I'm not really sure what they're going for here I think they were soldering with basically no flux that's what it looks like because there's just big Peaks and this solder just looks really dry I wish I knew what they were going for let's check the other side all right here and same thing this has been cut away like We already knew and then it looks like they were trying to solder to this point right here it's a bunch of oh this looks kind of like flux but judging by the soldering they either use the wrong kind or not enough because the soldering just looks terrible and then they put this solder mask over over this right here I don't know why they would do that but they did so I think what we need to do is come through and clean this up and make sure that capacitor is okay it looks fine but what we really need to find out is if there's any damaged components over here the seller did say there was a capacitor that was missing I think I don't see any that are missing right here but it definitely doesn't mean there isn't so let's come clean this uh soldering mess up and then we can get a better look at what we have going on [Music] and after cleaning this up and cleaning the other side up I don't really see any problems I don't think unless there's something I'm missing somewhere I found it here is the other problem this capacitor needs to be cleaned up these two are bridged and that may or may not be a big deal but over here we've got some major issues I don't even know what was going on here but I'm gonna get my soldering iron in here and clean up this excess solder clean this up and then we can clean all this off and really see what we have going on here so all these I think we got cleaned up okay all the way this one I think is good but we got to figure out what if anything goes here I feel like maybe there is another capacitor that went from here to here possibly this one also cleaned up pretty good so this must be the missing capacitor but we have to figure out for sure if that's what goes here or if there's just nothing at all that goes here it looks like this circuit Trace right here comes in between those two and then returns back over here which makes sense so that means that this is all one plane right here and this is probably ground so I'm guessing that a capacitor goes from here to here kind of like we have right over here and I need to clean that one up as well this one here was just totally bridged there was sold all the way from here all the way to there so there's a possibility that this chip is even just totally fried because this created a short on whatever this plane is right here which looks like maybe one of the main power planes because all of these are connected to the same one which means there's a lot of capacitors on this one plane right here so I don't know this all this work may not lead to this thing being fixed but I think we gotta try so let's get a capacitor placed on here I'm not totally sure what size goes here but I do have a another chip that I can take it off of so I'm just going to replace it with one from another chip now when I was working on cleaning this I noticed this middle piece was loose that's because it is bro it has broken off from each end there's usually a silver cap on this end and on this end and that's what you solder to this part right here you can't solder anything too so this capacitor is just totally done for so we need to replace this one and this one thank you okay and not too bad those are attached on there nice and securely so are all these solder looks good let's get this thing back installed into the case and see if it's going to turn on I have a feeling once we install the perfect amount of thermal paste this thing's gonna work just fine there we go I'm going to use a replacement top plate for this because I have one I need to clean it up first though once I get it cleaned up then I'll put it on there and that's gonna go around this sharp piece right here I tried to clip off that sharp piece as well as I could but it's still pretty sharp so just got to get most of this thermal paste off not going to be able to get it all but I need to get most of it there we go I don't know for sure if this is going to fit on here I hope it does and hey it actually does wow Nintendo actually used a part that you can reuse from one model to the other that's crazy and you can see this came off of a parts board so let's also get rid of that real quick if we can I'm gonna have to let the IPA soak a little bit probably ah it's getting it actually I should leave this on here because this might be a parts board anyway with all those capacitors that were shorted I really hope it didn't short out this chip but I don't know it certainly could have plus who knows what the mod they were trying to do who knows what that did to it that alone could have caused some problems so okay that's going to be good enough we can clean that up more later if this actually works there's a ribbon Cable cable down here is almost destroyed I'm hoping it's still gonna work but that does not look good down there we got to take this back out so we can take a closer look at this connector and see if we can repair it you can see right here on this ribbon cable is where it's been damaged by this pin so hopefully that's something we can just bend and repair and sorry this is going to be a bit shaky but in order to show you I've got to set this thing up kind of strange so this pin right here and this one right here have both been bent down from right up in this connector so I've got to bend these things back up I'm going to use this little pick try and bend them back up and unfortunately I can't really show this on camera because I just can't get a good shot and still be not shaky oh and then we got another pin over here that one I think I can maybe show sort of we gotta bend it back and down that's just so hard to get on camera okay there we go I got that one so these ones we need to bend back up into the into their place up here and hopefully without breaking them off I'm gonna do this part off camera I'm going to use this pick and maybe like an X-Acto Knife blade and try and bend these things back up here okay and we got those reseeded so I think that's gonna work just fine now so let's get this back into the case and get this ribbon Cable in and see if we can get it in without bending those things up more okay now the other thing I want to do is straighten out this ribbon cable it's hard to see but it's actually bent a little bit right there so I want to kind of actually I think I mostly got it I want to try and re-bend that part so it doesn't just push on that pin again so here we go push in very carefully well did we get it I think maybe oh I think we got it yes okay now I'm assuming this ribbon cable is good it's pretty banged up down here so I'm not sure that that's even good but hopefully it is we just got that part installed now I got to get the rest of the ribbon cables and the screws in and then we can finally test this thing out okay metal plate on Wi-Fi cables plugged in I really hope this works that took so long let's plug this thing in and see what happens okay here we go 0 amps oh 0.35 good point four oh we got a screen and charging come on is it gonna start up though turned off ah there we go so this Nintendo switch is working I can't believe we actually got it working that took so long but I love seeing it start up after all that work let's move on to switch number four this Nintendo switch I bought from a viewer named Steve he bought it from a rent to own store he paid over 700 in total so kids remember don't buy from Rent to Own stores soon after it was paid off it stopped charging so he took it to a repair shop who said it was not fixable but we'll be the judge of that all right and here we go it looks like this switch has seen some stuff first let's plug it in and see what the amp meter shows okay and we do just have zero amps charging so let's get it apart figure out what's going on okay so far it looks like we don't have any missing screws that's always nice but we need to get under this metal plate see what's really going on on the board and this actually looks really clean inside Let's test these capacitors and see what we got going on after we disconnect this battery before we do that let's see how much charge is in the battery just out of curiosity we have a fully discharged battery okay let's check this capacitor right here that capacitor is not shorted interesting this capacitor is shorted which leads me to believe we might have a problem on this chip right here and I don't see any other problems other than this capacitor being shorted so I think the next thing we need to do is just replace this chip and let's see if that alone fixes it the nice thing about this chip is we don't actually have to remove anything else on the board we just need to and after all that talking about how I can do it all in the case I have actually melted this bottom plastic before so I think in order to avoid melting anything like that I'm just going to remove this board it doesn't take very long to do so I'm going to remove the board and then we can get to that chip and replace it much easier and with that replaced let's see if we still have a short oh we do that's a bummer but you know what I just noticed this board has this mosfet right here and on the other side I believe it's this one is known to go bad on these so I should have thought of that first but I'm gonna replace this and see if that will get that short to go away I need to protect this led though so we'll use some tape on here one of the problems with using this yellow cap on tape is the surfaces have to be nice and clean and as soon as some flux runs under them then they just immediately unstick so it's not always the best choice for protecting these things but it usually is enough to to get get the job done so that's what I'm going for here [Music] and with that replaced same problem so let's dig a little bit deeper this is where I was hoping this wouldn't go but let's check these capacitors here and over here and see if those are shorted if they are that is very bad news let's start down here no problems here good yeah that's not good so unfortunately this board looks to be actually shorted on the CPU which means this one's not going to be fixable but we do have that other one that we saved to use for parts I haven't actually used it for parts so I'm thinking let's remove this board put that board in this switch since this one probably has a good screen and let's see if we can fix it with that one I don't know for sure that this is a good board but I do know that it doesn't have any shorts at least anywhere that I saw so I think it might be so let's use this one in in place of the bad one and see if we can get this switch working still okay and here we go we'll just install this one in place of that other one I hope this works that would be nice to get another one of these fixed so I've got the new battery installed let's see what happens when we try and turn it on ah no we got a blue screen this means usually the CPU or the emmc needs to be re-balled that's not something I do here just because a lot of times it's just not worth it so unfortunately we're gonna have to call this one non-fixable we fix two and two of them are non-fixable we've got one more to go let's see if we can fix that one and number five is this fortnite special edition from a viewer named Nate he said that the SD card reader was broken if that's all it is we should be able to fix that but let's get it open and find out okay and this is in pretty good condition a little bit of a scratch there but really not too bad the back's kind of scratched up a little bit kind of scuffed up but also really not that bad let's open this up and see that SD card reader slot see if we can see anything yeah we can't see anything from here so I'm gonna get this back cover off and the middle plate and then we'll take a look at that okay everything looks good so far now let's take a look at this card reader okay and as far as I can tell it actually seems fine it felt like maybe it wasn't plugged in all the way though these can be really tricky to get plugged in all the way what I'm going to try is just plugging this in again making sure it's in there all the way and then we'll start it up assuming it will start up and see if that's all it took to fix it okay that's in there all the way yeah we'll get the screw back in make sure it's on here correctly okay there we go we'll save this we'll put that on a little bit assuming that actually worked okay will it start up okay it will now I just need to get an SD card so we can plug it in there and see if that'll work okay here we go let's see what happens when we plug an SD card in oh that's what I'm talking about so this means that the SD card reader is working just fine so it seems like the only problem with this Nintendo switch is that the SD card reader was not plugged in all the way that was a super easy fix but I'm glad to have it after some that were pretty difficult so we were able to fix three out of five Nintendo switches today obviously I would have loved to fix all five but three out of five ain't bad if you like this video you might like the video where I bought 23 broken Nintendo switches to see if I could fix them I'll put a link on your screen now so you can come hang out with me over there and see if I could fix them thanks again to iFixit for sponsoring this video links are right in the description thank you for watching it and I hope you have a good one [Music] thank you foreign

Channel: TronicsFix

Views: 337,474

Keywords: tronicsfix, broken nintendo switch, 5 broken switches

Id: XITl2wGrBJw

Length: 30min 14sec (1814 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023