19 Jan
2009
19 Jan
'09
2:11 p.m.
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
On Monday 19 January 2009 03:02:03 pm Tony Duell
wrote:
Alas my expeerience suggests
the reverse. Back when computers were
expensive, and chips were expensive, the manufacutrers took the trouble
to put all sorts of protectinon in their machines to protect said
expensive decices in the event of a failure. Now they don't bother.
I would suspect that a younger crop of engineers coming up might have some
bearing on this too. :-)
Roy, I disagree. Your opinion (smiley and all) sounds like the "Why, we
had to walk uphill to school through snowstorms, both ways! Today's
kids are wimps!"
There have always been both brilliant and stupid engineers, and
everything in between. People today are not more stupid than those of
40 years ago. The problems that need to be solved have changed, and so
have peoples' specializations.
Tony has it right. The market demands low prices and doesn't demand
ruggedness, so that is what gets built.
That depends, a lot, on the PSU design. Certainly
SMPSUs can do some
very odd things if a capacitor goes open-circuit or just high ESR. How
much damage that does to the rest of the PSU or worse the rest of the
machine depends on the design.
Do you think that the designers of this stuff have
learned which
approaches they might want to stay away from? :-)