2 Aug
2004
2 Aug
'04
4:16 p.m.
Plus... many folks can (probably..) work out how to
replace a board,
or modular part of the system (power supply) with another one from an
also-dead system.. but would NOT be able to actually track down the
real problem and do component-level repairs, simply by lack of skills
The actual job of soldering in a surface mount device (or even easier a
pin-trough-hole device) doesn't take much skill. The skill is in finding
the dead component.
And alas, I will _never_ believe you can fix a machine unless you
actually know what component has failed (even if you then have to replace
the board because it's a direct-on-board chip or something horrible).
I've seen problems caused by randomly replacing parts too many times.
Look back through the archives for the stories, I don't feel like posting
them again tonight,,,
in that field. In the service industry, time is
money, to field techs
did (and still do) board- or system-level swapping, and the (skilled)
Which is why you'd think the customer would want it fixed right first
time....
folks in the repair departments (try to) do the rest.
Not good per
se, but also not bad. I cost $500 an hour (OK, 475, really) so me
spending hours on locating a problem in a module from a Catalyst
stack would quickly grow extremely expensive. Rather, I'll come in,
determine which board to pull, and then pull it. Often, this is
already known because of system monitoring and reporting, so I know
I have never understood how you can trust diagnostics running on a
machine that's malfunctioning (and yes, I have seen this problem too).
-tony