7 Jun
2004
7 Jun
'04
10:49 a.m.
Only because those devices were repairable and because
there
are people
around who can repair them!. I would be very suprised if DVD
players last
in the same way (for one thing they're a darn sight worse
made than, say,
tape recorders, and for another they use a lot more custom
parts, and for
yet another there are no service manuals available).
I do have one or two service manuals but nothing with
a schematic. Admittedly a schematic may be of little
use given the nature of the components (a significant
proportion of which may well be made of unobtanium).
Having said that, the only problem with such devices
that I've had is one portable CD player that got
dropped and suffered some broken plastic. Having
received a little mechanical care, it now works
as well as it ever did. In my experience these
things seem to suffer from mechanical failure
rather than electronic failure. (So, yes, the
mechanical side is cheap to keep the costs down
but the electronics seem to be OK ... chips mostly
just keep working!)
Modern cassette players (OTOH) seem to need a
constant diet of fresh tapes :-(
Surface mounting (apart from BGAs!) is only hard to
replace
if you're a
salesdroid!.
Now that I look, I cannot find the link, but there is at
least one place which will allegedly re-ball the IC for
you. You obviously still will have some problems actually
getting the IC back onto anything without access to a
somewhat expensive rework station. (so that 7410 PPC
chip will remain just a pretty ornament for now ...)
That is a separate rant. Yes things are too cheap (If
they were made
correctly, and priced sensibly, then they would be worth
repairing, and
they would be able to be repaired...)
I think you are in a definite minority with this. I'm with
Einstein: "things should be as cheap as possible, and no
cheaper" :-) I'm happy that my washing machine is relatively
cheap (bad example: easily repaired anyway). I'd be even
happier if my cars were cheaper. I'd probably pay an extra
?10 to have my portable CD player made with a metal case,
but it's worth no more than that to me.
Well, to me something is not obsolete if it still does
the job....
Agreed. When I replace this 21" monitor with something, it will
almost certainly be a flat-screen (the weight and space savings
alone make this an easy win) but now that it's on the desk I
have no real reason to care about those potential savings ...
If at all. It worries me -- a lot -- that almost
nobody these
days has
any sort of clue at all about computer hardware. I really
wonder who will
be designing better computers in the future (or will we be stuck with
incremental modifications on the PC for ever :-()
Our hardware engineers seem to be able to build stuff that
works. Our stuff looks nothing like a PC so it's not a
modification of anything else. They may not be able to
do much with valves (I have no idea, I'm just assuming ...)
but that's not a terrible short-coming these days. You
just must be meeting the wrong professionals. Comes from
being in London and the Banking effect I guess :-)
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org