2 Aug
2004
2 Aug
'04
7:29 a.m.
In message <001801c478c1$de6b6d20$0500fea9@game>
"Teo Zenios" <teoz(a)neo.rr.com> wrote:
I think there are alot of kids designing websites,
programming, hacking, and
making the occasional virus. The fact that they put away the soldering iron
and took up the keyboard doesnt mean they are selfish or not creative, they
just get into different tools then older people who didn't have a computer
to play with when they grew up.
I think I fall in to the former category - I do a
lot of programming, mostly
in C and assembler. On the other hand, I do like "getting my hands dirty"
every now and again - my hardware repair skills need improvement, but I can
build - or rather have built - a 6502-based computer from scratch and had it
run code. Now I just need to find out why it's not running the BASIC
interpreter properly - which means I'm going to need an ICE or a set of pods
for my logic analyser :-/
pc card breaks its cheaper to chuck it and get a
new/used one then it is to
even think of looking for the parts to fix it, same with all other
electronics.
That is, IMO, the main problem today. People just throw things away,
they're
not repairable. Even my HP logic analyser is boardswap only - no schematics
or anything like that are present in the service manual. Thankfully my
Tektronix oscilloscope came with a service manual that included full
schematics. Nice to know I can at least fix the scope if and when it fails.
Electronics repair places were the first to disapear,
makes
sense that the surplus stores that supplied those buisinesses are next in
line to go. Even Radioshack does not carry much in the way of electronics
parts these days.
I've started buying parts through some of the industrial
electronics
companies, e.g. Farnell and RS. Farnell have been pretty good, but RS weren't
interested at all. I tried to place an order with them last year (about ?90
worth of stuff) and they refused to accept the order, despite the
announcement of the closure of RS-Electromail that was published in EPE
(including RS's "if you've got a credit card, we'll accept the
order" spiel).
Their loss, not mine.
Maplin are going the same way as Tandy (RadioShack) - selling insanely
overpriced computer components. They're OK for stuff like printer cables,
certainly much better than PC World, but I wouldn't buy a CPU or anything
like that from them. Their range of electronic components is so-so, and their
discontinuation of basically the whole "Hardware and Mechanical" section of
the catalogue was a bad move IMO. Still, at least they still sell heatshrink,
IIRC...
Later.
--
Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB,
philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice,
http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI
My other vehicle is a Galaxy Class Starship