A weird trick with a toothpick saved a MacBook Air logic board

Had a 2020 MacBook Air come in from a customer in Denver with no power, and the usual checks pointed to a short on the 3.3V rail. Instead of jumping straight to a hot air rework, I poked around the board with a plastic spudger and felt a tiny bit of give near a capacitor. I used a wooden toothpick to gently nudge it, and it was actually a stray solder ball from a previous bad repair that was bridging two points. Cleared it off, and the board powered right up. Anyone else ever find a simple poke-and-prod method that saved you from a full component replacement?

3 comments

3 Comments

wendy_clark19d ago

A stray solder ball from Denver? How does that even happen?

the_thea18d ago

Reminds me how often the real fix is just clearing out the junk.

patrician864d ago

My buddy had a PS5 that wouldn't turn on after a botched HDMI port fix. He spent an hour looking for a short before spotting a single tiny strand of copper wire, like from a brush, stuck between two pins on a chip. He pulled it out with tweezers and it fired right up.