Electronics Barn closing - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

2 Aug 2004

Tony Duell writes:
...

  just get into different tools then older people
who didn't have a computer
 to play with when they grew up. When I was young I went out and purchased
 some ram chips to fix my dead C64 (was stupid and touched a staticy TV while
 my other hand was on the keyboard, ESD), equipment was expensive. Today if a
 pc card breaks its cheaper to chuck it and get a new/used one then it is to
 even think of looking for the parts to fix it, same with all other  
 We've had this before, and I still don't believe it. If you can honstly 
 tell me that it's cheaper (and quicker) to replace some large PCB costing 
 several hundreed pounds/dollars than to find the dead I/O buffer chip 
 (which sould cost a few 10s of pence, and which would take me about 10 
 minutes to find at most), then I have to wonder what planet you're on. 
How about replacing a card costing $25 to $50, vs. replacing the fried
surface-mounted ASIC (one of only two or three chips on the card), which
incidentally is only available to OEMs in the first place?

In order to make mass-market electronics so cheap, they have had to be tailored
to large-scale industrial producers, rendering them inaccessible to mere
mortals.  To take one extreme example, the single IC of modern calculators isn't
packaged at all in the conventional sense--the chip is mounted right on the
printed circuit board and encased in a blob of resin to protect it.

And, of course, the logical conclusion of integrated circuit technology is to
get rid of the circuit board and separate components entirely.

Colin