Pro tip: a piece of dry spaghetti saved a laptop motherboard

Had a client bring in a gaming laptop with a shorted 5V rail... the usual nightmare. After an hour of checking caps with my meter, I couldn't find the culprit. Out of pure frustration, I gently poked around the board with a piece of uncooked spaghetti from my lunch. The brittle tip caught and snapped off right under a tiny MLCC capacitor I'd missed. Heated the area, replaced the cap, and the rail came right up. Has anyone else used a totally weird, non-conductive probe like that to find a short?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_zara29d ago

Wait, you just had dry spaghetti in your lunch box? That's the part that gets me. I'm picturing you fixing a laptop with a side of plain pasta.

milatorres29d ago

What, you've never heard of emergency tech support carbs?

theajackson23d ago

Remember the time I had to fix my truck's radio with a ballpoint pen and a gum wrapper? Sometimes you just work with what's in your pocket! I bet @milatorres gets it, we've all been there with weird fixes. Honestly, dry spaghetti sounds like a step up from some of the stuff I've used. At least it's clean and you could probably use it to poke a reset button in a pinch!