Replacing a diode - TOP SECRET!

Welcome to the rigors of being 'too smart' in a 'dumbed-down' world!   My guess: GB's actions have actually nada to do with 'trade secrets', and everything to do with the fact that they want to discourage, as strongly as possible, people 'fiddling with' their hardware; simply the 'tiering' of dreadful support points to the fact that they want these thing treated as 'toasters'; I nearly fell off my chair laughing when the 'nutzo' overclockers found that a hardware mod would allow more PCIe frequency, which allowed higher (and more stable) memory speeds on the X58s... The mod was 'hidden in plain sight', with the apparent intention that, if you couldn't find it, you didn't belong on your SMT board with a soldering iron in hand   I could just cry for the days of my old Z80 KayPro - when six bucks, and, like, fifty cents shipping and handling (apparently, back in those days, they didn't do as much handling - and I always wonder about that - who's doing the 'handling'? - did they wash their hands, first?   ) you had an actual schematic to your actual board - with all components clearly listed! Of course, the day after it arrived, I was soldering 'piggy-backed' TTL chips onto the floppy decoders, to double the frequency (and the storage), then hacking the (eminently hackable, as we had source!) ZCPR-based BIOS to accomodate them... You can plainly see the effect from the (ever shrinking) list of component parts available from Radio Shack; I used to be able to go to pretty much any city, and fix industrial output boards with TRIACs picked up for a buck at RS - but no longer; I'm pretty sure the lawyers put the kabosh on any parts that operate at line voltage, as they don't remotely intend to allow themselves to be sued by someone who's electrocuted himself! Their "Digital ICs & micro controller" category contains three items, and not a single microcontroller - either they're too dangerous, or, the number of people who could conceivably make use of one has, nationwide, shrunk to a number that can be counted on the fingers of one hand! I recently complained to the pimply kid behind the counter about the paucity of component part offerings, and was told "that's because nobody knows anymore what to do with them...", like we were some kind of ancient alchemists who've fallen out of use or favor!  

@bilbat:
Wow... i'm amazed, truly... just a question... how was it that you got to know ALL that you know?? Can i get that knowledge from a book, or many?? Can you recommend me some?? I' curious and wish to get in-depth knowledge as you

If you are replying to me, I'm making the point that Gigabyte should not obfuscate the specifications of its components. Please don't add extraneous comments.

grossemesser was replying to bilbat, not you. Note the first line in grossemesser's post that says "@bilbat:"

Good luck with asking people to refrain from adding extraneous comments. It's a free world out there and people generally do what they want!

"ALL" is a tall order!   I have to think about that for a while, and get back to you... I think, at its heart, it's because I'm a nosy bastard, and lazy to boot! When I was a kid in school, they were always comparing my test scores to my grades, and telling me "bathke, we know you're smart - you're just lazy!" To which my reply was pretty much "you're putting the cart before the horse - the guy who gets up at seven in the morning and mows his lawn every Saturday never invents anything - the guy who's swinging in a hammock, the third Saturday, drinking a gin and tonic, notices the grass tickling his butt, and figures out how to build an automated lawnmower!" As for nosy, I grew up spending my summers on my grandparents' farm, and (as you don't have the luxury of 'waiting on' a repair facility to get around to it - the hay's gotta come in before it rains!) my grandfather taught me that if I was very careful, and observant while disassembling something, I'd usually be able to see how it worked, why it wasn't working now, and either how to repair it, or what part needed replacing... This whole philosophy was put ajar when I first stumbled across electronic junk - you could look at a circuit board for the rest of your life, and get not a clue as to how it accomplished its task! Just hadta' know!! Which, of course, led to math - and lots of it, as I found out, much to my general amazement, that the 'waveform' dance that these electronic 'thingies' was doing, was, in essence, higher mathematics in action... Nowadays, unless you're particularly interested in DSPs, or DtoA/AtoD stuff, the maths are much simpler - it all boils down to 'is it on or is it off'?

The book thing is much easier - I always recommend Forrest Mims' excellent "Getting Started in Electronics", available at Radio Shack:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3...
(you can get a 'preview' here - especially glance at the table of contents...)
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Electronics-Forre...
it is, hands down, my choice for starters; if you're interested in programming, one of the 'Idiot's Guides' to whatever programming language available to you, followed by Nicklaus Wirth's seminal "Algorithms + Data Stuctures = Programs"; this will teach you why programming is a 'discipline' rather than a science, and get you off to a rigorous start at making life progressively easier for yourself (again, that 'laziness'!)...

now you need a book on how to use paragraphs ;-)