29 Oct
2005
29 Oct
'05
4:43 p.m.
Unless you know what/where the fault is, you can't know you've fixed it
IMHO (I've explained the problems many times before).
With a proper 'boardswapping guide' and strong documentation and
training, the tech can be assured that the fault is isolated to the
board in question. Then, as a _team_member_ he passes the faulty board There need to be 'grunt' foot soldiers who
know how to pull a board
from the chassis, replace it with a known good board, and ship the board
back to the repair depot where an expert will pinpoint the problem down
to a specific chip and send feedback to engineering so the new Rev. J
You know as well as I do that it doesn't work that way for most, if not
all, of the machines that _we_ work with, and probably never has. The
sort of failed servoids I've met just look at the symptoms, pull a part,
put a new one in, and hope the problem is cured. AFAIK the defective part
is _not_ analysed futher.
When was the last time you met a droid in a PC shop who sent the
defective board back to %far-eastern-country?
Hence my
comment that I don't have a modern PC because I can't afford the
test gear I'd need to maintain it.
A man is not an island. The fact that you _personally_ cannot tear
down and completely rebuild a particular machine should not prevent you from understanding that somebody can, and become a
part of the community
that somebody exists in.
OK, I'll go further. Not only do I not have the skills, documentation or
test gear to maintain a modern PC properly, I don't know anybody else who
can, or how to find such a person. And I am not going to trust my data
and my (in)sanity to some idiot who can't understand why a logic analyser
or 'scope might even be useful
I wear what I consider to be a fairly nice Gruen wristwatch. I don't
have the skill and capability of dismantling and servicing it. Not
being able to service it doesn't lead me to refuse to wear it. Yes,
there are high quality vintage pocket watches I could use instead that I
*would* be entirely capable of servicing.
Actually I am trying to think of anything I own and depend on (or even
use actively) that I am not capable of repairing.... I'd have problems
with a wristwatch, but pocket watches and clocks wouldn't be a problem.
Nor, for example, are real cameras.
-tony