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Repair Business Toolkit: We're growing businesses-and need your help.

A couple months ago, I introduced the idea of a support community for repair businesses.

You all said you like the idea–so we went for it!

Since then, iFixit has been working on a series of wikis that form the iFixit Repair Business Toolkit. We believe it shouldn’t be difficult to start a business—so we aim to prove it by bringing together all of the information you need.

Now, we need your help. The project is in its infancy–and we need feedback to improve existing content and guide future project development. Please take a look at the Repair Business Toolkit wikis and let us know what you think. Be as critical as you possibly can. What are we missing? What did we get wrong? How can we make it better?

As you critique our work, feel free to add content where possible (specifically on location-specific pages like e-waste and business registration resources).

If you want to talk to me directly about the project, please email me at jeffs [at] ifixit [dot] com.

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I actually have one thing on my workbench I find very useful when I have to troubleshoot a computer

I keep a CRT monitor on the side of the desk, and I have a DVI to VGA to make it easier to diagnose computers without moving my dual core HP I use for looking up service manuals and don't have to move it

Why CRT? I can find them cheap, so I use the cheapest I can get, yet does what I need it to do. Plus they are all over the place.... I have a spare CRT for bench work just in case

For HDD wiping, I keep a copy of DBAN in the HP I can use to wipe a computer out and be done with it

As to what I repair..... I will touch things very few people would fix on the component level, like power supplies..... DO NOT OPEN POWER SUPPLIES unless you know how to work in them! They are not toys, and they can bite pretty nasty!

Here's one example of a OEM PC I had to stop using for my main Linux PC, but I still have just in case.... my HP A400Y has 2 major issues on it..... HP uses a MSI motherboard in it, and I can tell, but they did 3 things

1) Killed OC on it(this is common on OEM systems so novices don't cook processors doing it if you OC, you need to get a better cooler to handle it)

2) No AGP slot when the 64MB onboard graphics are a JOKE and can barely handle Unity on Ubuntu Linux..... Intel onboard GPUs sucked back then, and it showed when you got a GPU for it

3) capped the CPU FSB by using a different chipset, or BIOS limitation

I cannot tell if this is the case, but it seems like this is a design MSI used for OEMs like HP in the days of socket 478 CPUs that could be customized accordingly, nor can I find that model board online to see if I can flash a better BIOS and get this thing to take my P4HT with a 800MHz FSB

I had this CPU dropped from 2.6GHz to 1.6, just because of the BIOS or chipset limitation, if not both

dell issues

I had a 4500S with a bad motherboard and funky power supply pinout(the motherboard and PSU FF was different, but that's common in SFF systems), so I used a known weak PSU I had from that thing and a Intel PGA370 mobo with corroded chips, and I tested it to see what really happens out of boredom

It blew traces and made them black, so I am glad I used weak parts that were shot

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Jeff Snyder will be eternally grateful.