John Oldman

Writes about the things he takes apart - src.gdn

John Oldman writes src.gdn. He repairs game controllers, mostly PS5 DualSense joystick modules, on a bench that has a desoldering station, a cartridge iron, and a magnifier visor he is slightly embarrassed to be photographed in.

He learned this the way most people do: by ruining things. The guides on this site carry the scars. When the DualSense desoldering guide tells you that hot air will melt the module body through the board, or that the ground plane will outrun a cheap iron before you have finished reading the sentence, that is not received wisdom from another article. It is what happened on this bench.

That is the whole point of the site. There is no shortage of repair content written by people who have never held the part. What is scarce is someone telling you which method not to use and why, which is usually the more useful half of the advice.

Away from the soldering, he tests graphics cards and writes about what actually limits them, uses GoPros more than is reasonable, and follows machine learning closely enough to explain it to people who do not want the hype.

Every photograph on src.gdn is his own, taken of the actual board, tool or failure being described. Where an article recommends a product, the link may earn a commission, which never changes what gets recommended or what gets warned against.

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Corrections are welcome, and a correction that changes the advice gets the article updated and dated. If something on this site is wrong, or you have taken a board apart and found otherwise, say so.