14 May
2010
14 May
'10
6:35 p.m.
On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Mark Tapley <mtapley at swri.edu> wrote:
At 12:00 -0500 5/14/10, Brian wrote:
But the items that are getting replaced are the wear items. No one
replaces the ECM in a car unless it breaks. Most don't.
My complaint about the amiga battery wasn't so much that it wore out,
but that it was soldered to the motherboard. And to add insult to
injury, it was a battery type that was prone to leak long-term.
Electronic systems should be designed with replaceable (without a
soldering iron) batteries. With a few notable exceptions (i'm looking
at you, ipod) they usually are these days.
brian
Cars have made it much (much)
longer than that and still worked, why not computers?
Well, wait a minute, cars pretty routinely have people go under the hood and
replace stuff. If you look at caps the same way you look at motor oil, the
computers might deserve a little scheduled maintenance too. And not many
batteries have a service life measured in decades (double-takes as he looks
at his Casio wristwatch...).