Eventually, every electronic device breaks or gets replaced because it is too old. If that happens I really enjoy taking it apart not only to see how it works, but also to salvage some components I may need for future projects. In this post I take apart an old Sat-Receiver and a DVD player, that stopped playing DVDs. While taking them apart I explain what components I salvage and why / why not.
Other Parts
In the receiver there only was a single PCB, but in the DVD player, the Power Supply was on a separate PCB. If that is the case I advise you not to desolder anything form the board of the Power Supply, because it by itself will be very handy in other projects.
I also always keep the power cords and power switches.
Motors are not that cheap either, so I keep them as well. These motors are from the assembly, that spins the disc in the DVD player.
Components on the PCB
Normally all SMD parts are very cheap and way too tiny to desolder them properly. My advice is not to waste your time on those.
Generally, all through-hole components like any form of coils and transformers,
voltage regulators and especially the heat sinks,
large electrolytic capacitors,
film capacitors,
and sometimes large diodes are worth desoldering.
I only desolder large resistors
because the small ones are very cheap and easy to obtain through eBay or Amazon.
In the case of the receiver, I desoldered the display, because it was a 7-segment display which is easy to control, but the display of the DVD player had too many pins soldered to the board so that it wasn’t worth the time and effort desoldering it.
As the last step, I usually desolder the connectors like power connectors and audio jacks.
I also desolder any other components that seem to be useful, in this case, a bridge rectifier package.
