On Aug 13, 9:09*pm, Cydrome Leader wrote:

all that old stuff was made to last and be fixable. That's not the case
with modern electronics.-

I believe that is an unintended consequence of Surface Mount
Technology, specifically thermal stress cracking. I've worked on the
R&D side of electronic development and seen the shift from thru-hole
to SMT up close (literally & figuratively). In the lab a good tech can
replace almost any part with an iron or hot-air machine. But
prototypes don't suffer from environmental stresses like production
units, and temperature cycling a single hand-made example doesn't
predict the failure rate of 10,000 repaired units. I didn't hear the
dictum that consumer-grade SMT boards were to be considered
unrepairable until they had been out for several years. Higher-value
assemblies such as the medical battery packs I worked on recently are
still repaired.

Old stuff has the problem of parts availability. Often they only stock
an later model's equivalent part which isn't quite an exact
replacement. I am slowly becoming the parts maker for the old washing
machine and lawn mower.

Jim Wilkins