"brassplyer" wrote in message
...
For as many years as this technology has been around, why can't the
control circuitry be made more bulletproof?

Hmmm, do you think companies WANT their products to last forever? Of COURSE
these circuits can be made bulletproof, but have you heard of "planned
obsolescence"? Washing machine companies want to sell washing machines.
That means people's old washing machines need to irreparably break. So,
they design an electronics board with a finite lifespan, produce a finite
number of spares at the time of the original production run, and when those
spares are gone that machine is junk. Maybe that board is repairable, but
the labor involved to fix it is huge. Maybe they've stuck a proprietary IC
or 2 on there which fails so it CAN'T be fixed no way no how.