Someone Destroyed EVERY PORT on this Mac Mini...
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- In this video, I go over the process of repairing an M2 Mac Mini that has had every single one of its ports intentionally damaged. I have no idea why such a thing would have been done to this machine, but it is not the first time I have seen one damaged in this way (on eBay, at least). To accomplish this repair, I utilized a set of ports from an A12Z-based DTK Mac Mini, which are identical to those used on the M2 (and M1) Mac Mini.
0:00 Intro
2:52 Close look at damage
4:42 Sourcing a donor set of ports
5:17 Desoldering donor ports
9:12 Desoldering damaged ports
10:00 Cleaning solder from board
13:45 Installing donor ports
18:44 Initial testing
21:10 Final assembly and conclusion
#applesilicon #macmini #repair - Наука та технологія
Looks like the work of an apple authorized repair facility.
some of the Genie-Arses finest work 🤣
Seems legit. 🤣
💯 What I'd think, they care not for their customers' satisfaction so much as their wallets.
all the holes destroyed gave it away
Isn’t this related to the thing where people were not permitted to resell so they would break the device to enable selling as parts only?
The way they destroyed it makes me feel like it was a developer unit or something…. As if they wanted to hit the bare minimum to clear “destructed” status for tax reasons…
That kind of makes sense
Intentionally destroying something should just make your stuff non tax deductible, we are creating so much waste from this behavior.
@@MrEdes7 "Intentionally destroying something should just make your stuff non tax deductible"
There are many reasons why you would WANT to destroy the hardware, often it even is a requirement. But this here is just slightly damaged.
@@ABaumstumpf ok then they just can't deduct taxes on that expense, if security is important to them then they can just pay for it.
@@ABaumstumpf Such as?
You know, considering it's a company that prouds itself on it's eco approach and recycling.
Apple: Destroy those prototypes! grind them and make them unusable!
dosdude1: Hold my beer
well keep in mind apple and all other Tech companies are obligated by law to destroy any prototypes after the validation is finished
@@bennaambo2716all the SOC’s should have been drilled then at the minimum before sending for recycling…
@@JamesTK Nope.
🫣
You are such a treasure being able to resource and repurpose e-waste parts so that broken hardware may live again. That box of intentionally destroyed boards must have thousands of dollars worth of donor parts just waiting to be tapped. You are a good man for being financially "green".
I wouldn't class an M2 logic board as "e-waste parts" at all.
Hope you find sobriety.
Great repair! Very resourceful using those DTK boards. 👍
Holy poo it's Mac84
Holy cow it's the guy himself mac84
Watching you dismantle and reassemble logic boards, I/O ports, etc. is like watching a neurosurgeon at work. I sit and watch in total amazement as you work your magic. Thanks for taking the time to do these videos.
Reminds me of something. Found a guy who was throwing away a G3 imac that had similar damage. He said he needed to destroy it because of HIPPA laws.
The thing still booted.
If he spelled it that way then he was probably a fake doctor...
Generally, it is the hard drives they want destroyed. I don't see why a x3 or x7 wipe wouldn't be enough. But bureaucrats.
It could have been owned by the state they destroy their devices when they get new ones
No need to damage them. Just leave an AppleID signed in, then the thing is fűcked anyway
I worked as an intern for a company, and one of my tasks was destroying hard drives. They told me that taking a flathead screwdriver and ripping the board sufficed. Given that we're now in the era of soldered-on SSDs, this is probably the same assignment I had ten years ago.
But this technique doesn’t work…
This is done to make it unusable so that it can’t be resold except for parts
@@askhowiknow5527 well... yeah. The hard drives were encrypted and wiped. I'm guessing it was only done to belay the superstition that wiped media is not truly wiped. The Mac here was wiped too.
Where I used to work I couldn't take anything from E-waste, I still did but I pulled the hard drives so they couldn't pull the "Data Breach" Card
makes sense, the method to make to "destroy" data does not need to be actually effective it just needs to be legally "effective" and that means as long as the common guy from the street cant get at it thats enough
@@SapphicCode -- It seems they should allow just removing and destroying the NAND array or whatever. Then there is no chance of recovering data, and the drives can be recycled without a data breach. Virgin storage chips could then be installed.
Awesome work Colin! Btw I highly recommend getting a good vacuum desoldering gun, it’s the cleanest ands fastest way to clear solder from through holes.
Wow, I had considered buying this very mac mini on ebay, and had even sent the seller a low-ball offer. Then I saw somebody bought it and was kinda like "Well I don't quite have the repair hardware to fix that so that's kinda a bullet dodged" that is so funny!
The damage is definitely unusual, but what’s more strange is that this isn’t even an old machine. How often do they need to upgrade to new Macs if this was from a company? It’s unfortunate to see that damage on a new Mac but at least it wasn’t completely destroyed. Great repair!
that's because it's a developer transition kit
@@keneshindev It's an m2
My guess is it was a surplus unit from an industry with tons of funding and a requirement that all electronics be "destroyed" before disposal. Government/military contracting, etc.
I know about the DTK units, very cool system. I was talking about the M2 Mac.
That makes sense, definitely seems like it had to be done in order to meet requirements of some kind.
It is always awesome watching you work your magic. Not only is it relaxing, but satisfying when you get a machine that has suffered such serious damage up and running again. Great job in keeping this beautiful Mac alive and well.
I agree he is awesome keepin a brand new computer running back again.i wonder why it was destroyed in the first place?
I'm so surprised, shocked, that they are using through-hole components for these ports. I didn't even know they made thru-hole USBC ports.
Every other repair video I've seen the last few years (Xboxes, PS5, Laptops) all use surface mount ports, which of course increases the chances of breaking the port off the pads.
I see the downside of using thru-hole parts is the ends of the legs act as antennas with the very high frequency signals, thats why they need the RF shields on the back of the pins.
They do. We use them in a (small run) product, perhaps someone decided they'd be easier to hand solder. Idk who that someone was, but they clearly didn't know of drag soldering.
Your soldering skills are amazing! Watching you bring old hardware back to life is inspiring. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and helping the community improve our own repair skills!
Low melt solder plus desoldering gun could have been great to that port replacement method. And that bit warping on USB-A ports could have been avoided. But still a great save on poor devices! Kudos! 😊
I don't think the usb ports were warped, I think that shape follows the curvature of the housing, no?
@@JorgeTamezPhoto yeah I dont think so either, didnt even think there was anything wrong with the end result until I checked the comments.
NAH !!!
Low melt is key.
I‘ve seen these damaged ports on amazon return devices that went to liquidation pallets.
Another very impressive repair.
Great job as always !
Awesome video! Your soldering skills are awesome!
Great job as always 👍
You are from another planet my friend. Congratulations
you are doing such awesome work
Desoldering through -hole components is quite easy with the proper tools. You need to get yourself a desoldering iron that has a vacuum to suck the solder off the lead and out of the hole at the same time. As someone who used to teach soldering and rework of boards, this video gave me anxiety.
Superb work
First time watching you, I love how calm your voice is!!
Wow, this is draconian!
The work you do is very important. I appreciate you sharing the information as you do your repairs, how informative and well researched you are. Keep on keepin' on! -Mark
There’s a special place in hell for people who destroy perfectly good electronics.
Impressive skills!!!
A high security area using the wifi only as a headless server type application and Remote Desktop. This prevents anyone plugging anything in to copy data off of it and prevents anyone from plugging in a monitor etc.
Could be it came from an institution with some seriously anal retentive security policies. A place where I once worked literally epoxied shut just about every port on any computer that they provisioned. Yes, modern OS's these days have user profile level controls that can lock out stuff like USB port usage, etc. Even so, some companies still insist on physically locking things down. I've never personally seen anyone go medieval on ports with a drill or whatever like in this machine, but I'm sure it happens.
Governments typically will do this too, but newer systems have a lockdown system that is software/account based.
@@Oyashiro_ChamaiCloud lock lol
I know the Dutch police literally shreds every retired device. While a lot of those are laptops that can have their storage devices removed, they just toss all of them in a shredder.
Literally millions of euros worth of e-waste. Perfectly good laptops, computers, tablets of maybe a few years old shredded to pieces. We should regulate the crap out of practices like this. All of us regular citizens are borderline bullied into being more aware of our waste, then government facilities come in with their “rules for thee but not for me” bullcrap.
@Dave102693 no, active directory it's enterprise wide.
@Oyashiro_Chama AD doesn't control the hardware however; the closest thing to that would be using AD to deploy BitLocker so you can't boot into an alternate OS and copy off data without having access to the BitLocker recovery key database.
Deep respect for getting this done. I fully understand the guy breaking them. I guess he had to replace one for himself and got mad 🤣
I work in schools. Kids would do this.
Well saved!👍👍
I've previously had success with desoldering combined 4 ethernet port thingies from routers with a soldering iron, without melting the little plastic tabs. You just get a really big copper soldering iron that outputs like 50-100w of heat (they're dirt cheap), put a big solder blob on there, kind of haul it around the pins with the soldering iron, and it eventually just falls off if you're quick enough. The little components in between the pins can probably be removed either with a small hot air nozzle or with the same kind of quick soldering iron application (preferably not the 50-100w one), where you heat up one end, then quickly go to the other and pull with your tweezers.
You can also probably do the same for resoldering the new ports to the board. Instead of wicking the old solder, just leave it there, and let the new port kind of penetrate it with the help of the heat from the 50-100w soldering iron.
Time for a Hakko FR-301 desolder gun? I know I want one :) And o man, that graveyard... Good you find use of them. Edit: awesome result
Awesome. Since watching you, Louis, etc picking up pointers and some confidence I have started trying with smaller and smaller components with better and better luck. Not quite ready to reball chips but getting there. Appreciate what you do. If you do more through hole I totally advise a decent solder vac. Not the plunger crap or the sucker bulb but an actual unit with a vac pump. I have a new chinesium hakko clone at work and an old pace at home. The latter has a foot pedal so it it's extra easy to deal with and couldn't work without it.
it's Louis Rossmann not Lewis
@@MrPnew1 I know I know. Habit/not paying attention. Feel better?
yeah! cheers dude
Great job. Another Mac resurected.
Dang, $200 plus repairs is a steal!
I love your videos, you come off cool as a cucumber. No problem too insurmountable. Thanks for the great content, keep it up!
I'm impressed how you managed to empty these holes only using wick, flux and the hot air gun. It has never worked well for me and I have to use the air pump, though it's not always great. Your video makes me want to try again and insist!
Fascinating
WOW!!! Someone was not happy. Good job. Apple would have most definitely rejected the repair.
Great job as always! Instead of using desoldering wick and air to get these type of components out. Would it help you to use a desoldering like the FR-301? I personally wouldn't do it any other way and it saves me so much time.
I found that a friend of mine did the same with the ports on his old iMac that had failed (and he removed and destroyed the memory cards), because he thought it would prevent anyone being able to access his data.
I enjoyed this video
A apple hardware test, booting with the D key, could be helpfull 😊
These used units are purposely damaged to prevent resale. However, they still manage to get to places like eBay from China. Often if it sounds too good to be true.............
Brilliant! So, with SOC it seems the only way to ensure on-board drive data can’t be recovered or scavenged by third parties is to effectively destroy a whole good machine. Wow! Love to know where sustainability fits in with this. That’s progress alright.
No, this isn't the only way. There's also the way Google does it with Android Verified Boot and their Pixel phones. You can set your own key with which the system image is signed, and only the correctly signed system image is loaded by the SoC. Thus, you establish a root of trust that originates with the user, and everything becomes completely replaceable by the user. From the OS to the flash memory. It's a crying shame that nobody but Google follows the standard properly for Android phones, and that there's no similar standard for PCs/laptops, at least as far as I'm aware. The secure boot nonsense on PCs/laptops seems to be a theatre more than a real good security measure.
Amazing...
What is the temperature of the board preheater?
The hot air with a soldering iron is what you need to do on some early boards too, like an IBM PC, for instance. They have ground planes inside the layers, and they act as heat sinks. So you'd need the hot air to heat up the ground plane and then the soldering iron gets the other layers.
Real nice repair but I'm quite surprised they're not SMD parts...
Nice job, dude. ★★★★★
You should get some low melt solder to help get the old solder and components off
Your videos are the closest thing I have to friendship.
Where did you find a replacement for the damaged back plate?
@dosdude1 I am in the need for a PMIC of an M1 MacMini.
Hard to come by that chip alone. Would be great if you could share the source of how to buy those DTK boards or similar M1 MacMini donor boards.
Thanks!
The PMICs on the DTK boards are not the same as what's used on M1 systems. However, the PMICs on all regular M1 machines (not M1 Pro/Max/etc.) are all the same, so you can get one off an M1 MacBook Pro or MacBook Air as well.
@@dosdude1 I've tried one from an M1 Air and even though it's starting (I can hear the chime) I get no display. I was told the PMIC on a MacMini is different hence why I get a partial working state. Are you certain here are the same please?
How did you check the serial number for activation locking?
The crazy part was I got one like this from the job I worked at let’s just say it “fell off a truck”. but at the end of the day all the ports worked, like everything worked fine. The only thing was the heat sink had like something jammed into it and it’s all messed up, but that’s only like a small part of it other than that it has dings and scratches everywhere, but I just use it as an extra computer that I mine on because I already have a MacBook Pro and a windows desktop PC. It also is a really nice looking desk piece, but I can’t wait to find more that fell off a truck, I did have to do a lot of troubleshooting and figuring out how to reset it and jailbreak it but otherwise it worked perfectly fine.😊😅
I think it might be a way to discourage people from buying stuff to be able to repair them so some sort of anti-repair because if they see reports they’re less likely to want to try and fix it
Use low-melt solder to make wicking process way easier than just using leaded solder
you really are increadbly talanted, thanks for putting these videos out, i cant imagine how much work went into getting it all done.
What series of adapters are you using to connect this Mac to your Cinema Display ?
Get yourself a Desoldering station. Yest they are expensive, but they make desoldering an absolutely a breeze. You need one that uses an air compressor to provide a vacuum.
I used one for years and they make the desoldering of large arrays of pins like this so simple.
Even cheap desoldering iron is great tool for through hole parts.
11:24 what do you do with the wick when it’s removed for a few seconds at a time?
6:02 Well, Apple really knows how to make stuff extra hard to repair…
It could have been interesting to do a deep scan to see what was on the storage.
I bought a couple of identical Mac's Mini's to an auction here in the UK for spares .. I was told the damages to the ports where made in order to make the machine unusable for some legal reason's or something to that effect.
Great job, but man you need a solder sucker plunger for through hole stuff, it would go 10x faster
He needs a vacuum desoldering gun - if you're doing any amount of through hole desoldering, skip the manual pump, and go straight to the powered one - it saves a TON of time
the guy who harmed this machine used a screwdrive 200%
dude can you post videos on ram upgrades on apple silicon mac
Why did someone do that to that poor Mac Mini?
Her: "We dont spend enough time together!!, Him: sorry, you know i gotta get this code done.... (later... he crawls into bed at 5:30 am to pass out as she's just getting up) 12:00 PM he goes back to his office to work... computer is acting funny... keyboard wont work, usb drive is missing and the network isnt connected.... she pokes her head in... "What's the matter?" him: "my computer is acting up and i cant get anything done", her: "guess you have time to spend with me now"
I almost bought this unit. You beat me to it
Probably this came from some enterprise setting or something and they did try to disable this mac mini, glad to see it survived! Crazy to see that the ports are actually through hole components! I thought they were just surface mounted! Even i could do this fix then :p
i think companies should pay a fine for having electronics with damaged ports, cus now its just e-waste
You know, if you can’t make my old and new Mac’s sing I don’t know who can, dosdude1!
Would a Hakko FR301-03P help clear the through-holes?
They often do this to make repairs uneconomical. Some companies have strange recycling policies, hoping their products won't end up on the second-hand market. But that doesn't always work, like in this case, they still ended up on the second-hand market. 😁
Hi there Dosdude1 my sister has a Macbook pro mid 2010 running Catalina.. the gpu doesn't come up on the task manager and gpu acceleration doesn't work so she cant edit her video using it. also i am also wandering if it can be upgraded to mac os sonoma?. using oclp etc..
I should have a replacement back panel in excellent condition if you need one.
A desoldering iron would make cleaning out those ports super easy. I flood fill the lead free solder with leaded till it’s blobbed out on both sides. Then I’ll put the desoldering gun on the solder then watch it melt on the opposite side, then hit the button. Instantly sucks all the solder through the holes. Way easier than wicking.
I've gotten a few enterprise systems like this, it's some person thinking they can save company money to earn a potential bonus by not using a known reliable secure destruction service.
Because in their mind: Ports unusable = computer unusable
Dude i though was hoarder of agp cards to cross flash for g4 power macs have about 50 of them , after seeing that box of logic boards zomfg hoarder dude
Owner was just looking for the screwdriver port in the dark
I wish I was doing stuff like this daily, I dont like macs though.
I found the port design unusual, seems like a game console with how robust they are
I'm wondering why you don't own a de-soldering pump with all this kind of work you do. It helps a lot with working on through hole components.
Apple Authorized Unrepair
Well, it could be an attempt to lower costs on importing. Back in the day we would take expensive cars cut them in half and import them as scrap to avoid excessive taxes and fees for imports.
And thanks to you and your mates in the pc industry, they now decided to solder the components to prevent this type of monkey business. 😅
You rewelded the cars back into one again?
I had something like this happen to my Mac Studio. They had to replace the entire Logic Board. I think it can be mechanical issue.
Could there be arc damage too?
It looks like the damage is following the ground plane.
I have seen things like this when I was a kid and the TV would go out because of lightening hitting our apartment building.
If it was any sort of arc damage than the board would be toast.
Apparently the same tech that worked on Snazzylabs’s iMac Pro, also worked on this mini lol
Companies destroy ports to prevent users sticking anything into them.
Might be Apple RMA devices. Apple way of preventing user repair
I had an iPhone that was RMA it was supposed to be destroyed but my boss gave it to me and I repaired it he said he just couldn't destroy it.
No sabotage, they were just showing the proper love for the basic 256/8gb model
The previous owner was caught cheating 😂
You can use a serial number to check if it wasnt reported and locked but that does not mean it does not have an icloud account logged in.