iAudio X5: scrambled display, broken RAM?

[jonkje]

Hi, I'm clumsy ... Some months ago I dropped my X5 on the floor, I think it landed on a corner. When booting it up after that, every second, vertical line on the right half of the display appeared white, but it was luckily still usable (just not for watching movies.) The left side and the other lines worked as intended.

However I thought and hoped that it was simply a loose solder joint so I opened it up to look, but couldn't find anything on the display. I theorised that it could also be a broken solder joint on the RAM chip so I fiddled a bit with it (pressing it, trying to see if it was loose etc.) After doing that I powered it on and voilà: the problem was worse ... Now the entire right side was white, or at least almost ... it looked like it was one, very bright, vertical line repeated for the width of the right half. Yet the player was still usable for playing music ...

Now however it has deteriorated further and the entire screen consists of colored vertical lines. The brightness of the left and right halves vary according to the animation that should have been there. Now however, even though it still plays music, the player is unusable. I even tried a X5 remote, but it seems affected too (it's just blank) thus confirming my suspicion of the RAM.

What I'm wondering is does anyone think it might be something different than the RAM? Is there hope?

If it is indeed the RAM then I have a possible fix in mind. This bugger is a BGA (a hobbyists worst nightmare...) and impossible to solder with an iron (I've tried ) However somewhere on the internet I read about a maniac who fixed a video chip on a G3 iBook or something like that by using a blowtorch (lighter fuel thing.) He basically isolated the chip from the rest of the board with aluminum foil and placed some pieces of solder around to "monitor" the temperature. Is this method worth a shot or does someone have another (not necessarily better) idea?

Please help with the madness ...