8 Oct
2007
8 Oct
'07
10:07 a.m.
On 06/10/2007, Antonio Carlini <arcarlini at iee.org> wrote:
Liam Proven wrote:
Absolutely. I think you slightly misplace the direction of my argument, though.
I did say that cheap commodity hardware is the reason I don't repair
defective components, I just swap them out. However, that's not the
reason why I don't try to repair collectable kit. The thing *is* that
for pretty much my entire working life - i.e., the last 2 decades -
this has been the case, so I never learned electronics or how to do
component-level diagnosis or repair. And what's more, the skill is
more obsolete now than ever.
--
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But as I said elsewhere, for my clients today, if
a machine is less
than a couple of gigahertz, it's skipware. It's not worth my time to
try to diagnose a fault; if it fails, swap it out and replace it with
a new machine.
I think we've done this to death before. You are talking about a
commercial situation where time is money, Tony is talking about the
vintage gear at home, where money is usually more scarce.
No business I've worked in would consider component-level repair:
it is simply not economical. But at home things are different, at
least for the vintage stuff. Even if you do have a spare PDP-8 to
swap in, at least you've said you'll pass the old one on to us :-)