SlashGear

It’s usually a pretty safe bet that any of the elements plus your prized electronics equals repair time, but Geektechnique’s Mark Hoekstra has turned that handy formula on its head by using the power of fire to fix his ailing iBook.  The poor little notebook was suffering from an apparently common issue for the range, where the solder balls holding the video chip onto the logic-board break free and you end up with garbled, temperamental or just plain absent images.  Apple’s warranty fix programme finished a while ago, so instead Mark decided to hack the thing back to life himself: remelting the solder with a pot of burning pure alcohol sat directly on top of the chip.

Check out a video of the flaming repair, after the cut… 

Happily after a couple of burns (with Mark using the CPU fan switching on to judge when the whole thing was hot enough) the chip reseated itself and, after giving it a chance to cool down, he now has a laptop that appears to be working fine.  Of course, SlashGear doesn’t recommend you cavalierly open up your notebook, slap a tub of burning liquor onto the motherboard and merrily melt the connections, but we’re always impressed by the crazy people do do.

Geek Technique [via MAKE:]