27 Jun
2013
27 Jun
'13
1:21 p.m.
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
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
(as a fix) and not a board? Is it the scale? Is it your belief that it
*should* be repairable? Because these days, an outfit like Google probably
doesn't even bother with board replacement---they replace the entire
computer (and heck, for all we know, they might replace entire *racks* at a
time).
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."
-spc
[1] Okay, a pin falls off, it might be possible to fix it. But if the
Magic Smoke is released, then all bets are off.
[2] Even *if* you could get inside a chip, what then? Even if the
"components" that make up a chip were large enough to view without a
microscope, the "components" are practically embedded in the
silicon.