Help Is my flytouch3 good for trash now?

[FN73]

Hi, I bought a flytouch3 off ebay, and it worked very well for a month or so.
Now, when I boot it, everything is ok for some minutes, then the tablet freezes and looks like this :

I tried to open it and see if there's something obviously wrong, to no avail.
I think my motherboard has a failed component, and looks like it depends on temperature - when it was a hotter weather, the tablet froze after seconds, sometimes even without completing boot. Now that we have cooler weather, it takes some minutes to freeze.
Any suggestion apart from selling it as replacement components ?

 

[lfc4ever]

Possibly it is beyond repair.

If it was me I would fight & fight with my supplier for a refund/partial refund and I would not stop complaining to paypal or credit card (whoever paid the bill on your behalf?) until I was happy with the outcome.

It should at least work for a few months, possibly 12 if you check your guarantee properly?

 

[FN73]

Hi, thanks for replying.
The problem is, I've already gave good feedback to the seller as the device worked perfectly at first, and I have installed tim's rom 5 on it, don't know if it contains any overclocking so that technically I fried it by myself.
Paypal's protection works on items not sent or not corresponding to description, from what I've understood.
So if it is not repairable, I think I am at a dead end

 

[dart16]

Hi, thanks for replying.
The problem is, I've already gave good feedback to the seller as the device worked perfectly at first, and I have installed tim's rom 5 on it, don't know if it contains any overclocking so that technically I fried it by myself.
Paypal's protection works on items not sent or not corresponding to description, from what I've understood.
So if it is not repairable, I think I am at a dead end

If the item was sold to you as new by a trader then you have rights under the sale of goods act and the distance selling regulations. You should expect the item to be fit for purpose for a period exceeding 1 year. Read up on the above regulations before writing to the seller if he is indeed a trader and not just a private individual.

Tims firmware doesn't 'overclock' the hardware.

If the seller discovers you have re-flashed the firmware then he will be within his rights to void the warranty.

The fault is most probably beyond economic repair unless you are very lucky and can isolate the heat sensitive component(s) with careful use of a freezer spray, it looks possibly RAM based to me..I would start there! However, finding the fault and being able to replace the component are two totally different problems!!

 

[FN73]

Hi,
unfortunately the seller is a private individual
If the problem was indeed RAM based, I saw on some posts that the ram is simply an sd card inserted on the back of the PCB in a socket.
Do you think it would be rational to try and swap the sd card with a new one?
Anybody knows how to extract the big silver ribbon cable of the touch screen? I found no way to do it in a "zif" mode, and it is the only way to check visually the components on the back of pcb.
What about the battery? Will I have to desolder it?
How this sd card would need to be formatted?
Am I right to think that the procedure should be:
-prepare an sd card with original ROM or TIM's rom for future flashing
-prepare an sd card to replace the original, possibly faulty one
-after replacement and reassembling, try to flash the tablet, boot and see what happens

What do you think?

 

[dart16]

Hi,
unfortunately the seller is a private individual
If the problem was indeed RAM based, I saw on some posts that the ram is simply an sd card inserted on the back of the PCB in a socket.
Do you think it would be rational to try and swap the sd card with a new one?
Anybody knows how to extract the big silver ribbon cable of the touch screen? I found no way to do it in a "zif" mode, and it is the only way to check visually the components on the back of pcb.
What about the battery? Will I have to desolder it?
How this sd card would need to be formatted?
Am I right to think that the procedure should be:
-prepare an sd card with original ROM or TIM's rom for future flashing
-prepare an sd card to replace the original, possibly faulty one
-after replacement and reassembling, try to flash the tablet, boot and see what happens

What do you think?

The internal tf card is NOT RAM although it is often mis-called that. The FT3 has 512Mb of RAM soldered onto the system board, somewhere near the cpu.

If it's a case of trying a different tf card or chucking it in the bin then by all means have a go! nothing to lose!

The ribbon cable to the touch screen is released by GENTLY moving the clip back from the body of the socket by prising it from either side one side at a time, be very gentle with it!

The last time i took mine apart I did it without disconnecting either of the ribbon cables or the power cables, just remove the two tiny screws and lift the pcb onto the other case half.

The procedure would be replace the tf card, reassemble the tablet, insert a tf card with the firmware files on into the external tf socket and switch on..it is all done automatically.

Good luck.. if it crashes during the re-flash it could well toast the tablet!

 

[Rabid1]

I agree with dart it is probably RAM overheating, or maybe the gpu. it looks like an Xbox360 with the bad solder joints.

One thing you can try that isn't too expensive is go to an electronics store and get some thermal paste and you will need a small piece of copper about 4" square, or do a search for copper thermal pads, or copper laptop heatsinks. The thermal pads are nice because they are already about the right size and you could even place them over the cpu and ram individually.

Either way what you would want to do is use the thermal paste to connect whichever you get over the CPU and the RAM. I used a small piece of copper i trimmed down to the same size as the whole processor daughter board. I put the thermal paste on top of the RAM and the CPU and pressed it down. You have to be carefull putting it back together but if you give the paste a chance to set it will hold good. I got a piece of copper about a 16th of an inch thick for about $6 at a hobby store. You could go a little thicker.

If you go with thermal pads you would just stick them individually. I wouldn't trim them to fit. This would be the easiest, but make sure you get copper and not silicone. The silicone don;t work as well. They are also called thermal shims.

The laptop heat sink you would really want to be careful picking out. It would need to be very thin, like the ones Dell uses. They have a small copper leech tube coming off them that you would want to position so when you put the motherboard back it is pointing towards the closes edge of the tablet.

I did the copper plate on a FT3 that would get progressively slower and get force closes until it locked, the longer it was on. It fixed it. It could be heat but it also could be a voltage problem, But for a few bucks it doesn;t hurt to try versus losing out on the price of a pad.