If you&#x27;re lucky it&#x27;s off-chip and your soldering iron and a very sharp knife will come in handy.<p>The problem with &#x27;patching&#x27; hardware these days (oh, I&#x27;m that old) is that most of the time you&#x27;ll find your problem is located inside a chip, and it isn&#x27;t the traces are in planes that you can&#x27;t access (if you&#x27;re lucky they might run in a spot where you can dremel through and then cut and solder two small wires to the buried trace). Via&#x27;s don&#x27;t help either (especially not in layers that start and end under BGAs).<p>Patching hardware was never easy, but with todays degree of integration of components and SOCs it is harder than ever and frequently downright impossible.<p>Lots of things have gotten easier since the hole-through era, but hardware fixes aren&#x27;t one of those.