HANDHELD NEWS – David, a Reddit user, brought Valve’s portable PC to working order quite cheaply.

Thanks to the public’s push for the right to repair, some companies are probably being encouraged to make popular products that are very upgradeable and repairable. David recently shared his “$80 Steam Deck” on Reddit. He explained that he bought the handheld PC on the cheap after the previous owner tried to solder new buttons and failed.

After spending many sleepless hours fixing the tracks and replacing the buttons, David replaced the trackpad for $30 and finally got the device to work. The previous owner’s failed button replacement attempt had ruined about 70% of the pads, but it wasn’t the worst thing David had ever seen. Since he didn’t have an official Steam Deck button to swap with, he resorted to using buttons from his console’s button vault. Luckily, an old controller had buttons that fit pretty well; he just had to modify them a bit.

80$ Steamdeck finally complete
byu/Existing_Housing4845 inSteamDeck

An old Nintendo DS Lite had the same shoulder buttons as the Steam Deck. Since the handheld was beyond salvage, he unlocked the buttons and neatly mounted them on the Steam Deck’s circuit board. He then bought the trackpad from a dubious Chinese website because it was too expensive on eBay. It cost about $30, shipping included. He had to wait a few months for it, but it worked perfectly when it arrived. The hard part was repairing the broken tracks. He had to scrape off the solder mask to expose the copper and reattach the tracks. It sounds daunting, but for those with steady hands and patience, it’s an easy task.

David says the Steam Deck is more usable than most modern hardware and consoles. If anything could be improved, making the deck diagrams available and selling more parts on iFixit might be a solution. Still, he got the Steam Deck cheap enough.

Source: PCGamer