It was thus said that the Great Tony Duell once stated:
But how ywould _you_ feel if sombody kept on saying 'Oh, go on, you'll
like this steak'. Becasue that's _exactly_ how I feel when people offer
to fix my things by boardswapping. It is against the way I choose to live
my life.
Okay, I'm curious. You are fine with replacing chips and and far as I
Actually, I am not 'fine with prpleacing chips'. It does irritate me a
little that I have to rpelace a lot of still-wroking parts in soem cases.
I do prefver (as I have said many times) machines built from simpler ICs...
Of coruse ICs can't sensibly be repaired and it is not uncommon for al
lthe circuitry on an IC to get daamged at ocne (e.g. by power supply
overvoltage).
So yes, I do repalce ICs, it doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer to repace
indivdual transsitors
know, it is impossible to repair a non-functioning
chip [1], since that
isn't part of the design parameters [2].
So, what exactly, is different with a modern board? It's not really
designed to be repaired, but replaced. What makes a chip okay to discard
I have nevber let the manufacturer's intentions get in the way of what I
do :-).
For example, I don;t think the motors in an HP9125 plotter were designed
ot be rewound. There are no instrucitons i nthe service manual for doing
so. But I did it. Partly ebcause repalcemetn motors are no longer
avaialbe, partly becasue I'd ratehr repac soem wire than the whole thing.
(as a fix) and not a board? Is it the scale? Is it
your belief that it
It think it;'s more that 'darn it I should be able to fix this'.
There are atualyl 2 aspects to baoad-swapping, soemthign that is not
generally realised. The first is that you repalce a lot more than is
necessary, soemthing that you have already mentioned. But more important
is that people swap boards (modules, whatever) wihtout ever doing
sufficient tests to find out what is wrong -- you know 'let's try a new
video card, if that doesn't work we'll try a new motherboard, then a new
PSU, etc). The problem is that you never really know waht the fault was.
It appears to have been cured, the machien works again, but has it? Was
it perhaps jsut a bad connection? Or some marginal parameter in a part
you didn't replace that works with the nbenewew example of somethign you
did repalce but not wit hthe origianl one. And so on.
The latter problem doesn't apply to IC repalceemtns, at last not the way
I do them. I don't repalce socketed (or otherwise) ICs at random unti
lteh amchine works. I do sufficient tests to know what IC has failed
before I desolder it. Or at least I try to.
I'm not trying to denigrate your choice here,
Tony. I'm just curious as
to where you draw the line between "swap" and "repair."
Basically, I will repair anything if there is any way I can do so. Yo
umay have noticed that 'my' scheamtics for the HP9000/200 machiens even
incldue the scheamtic of the PCB isside the cooling fan./ This is a
simple 120mm 'muffin fan' that you could easily replace. But I include
the scheamtic beacuse _I_ would take it apart and repair it
-tony