On Sun, 3 Mar 2013 00:57:45 -0800 (PST), wrote:

"better computers that prevent users from hurting themselves? I
suspect the latter"

There is the biggest problem. I hope y'all don't mind my two cents here but people might be getting stupider. I have a set of beliefs which of course are not adhered to, but they should : Practically all safety devices should be illegal.

I was watching the boob tube a few years ago (can't stand it at all anymore) and they had this dandy table saw. It had some sort of sensor that made it stop the blade within microseconds should someone touch it.

Well there are millons of table saws out there without this feature and if you happen to buy one of these new dandy ones, and then for whatever reason have to use a different one, what might happen ? And how do they get someone to demonstrate the thing in the first place ? Do they look for salesmen wearing a Jefffoxworthyesque stupid sign ? (two bucks apiece, two for five)

Well in my opinion this should apply to everything. Instead of seatbelts and airbags in cars they should have pointy, LETHAL things sticking out the dashboard. On the other hand the doors should be triple reinforced, like with railroad tracks or something. net result : If you drive like an (_|_) and hit things, you might die. If you get Tboned, the person who hit you might die but you will live. Within a couple of years there would be no car accidents. People would actually watch where they're going instead of having a contest to see how many other things they can do while driving.

It ****es me off, all this automatic ****. When I open the car door I want the courtesy light to go on, and I want it to go off immediately when I close the door. Period. I will lock and unlock the doors thank you. I know when to turn on the headlights. I know the seatbelt is there, and I swear one of these days I am going to start a business doing one thing - getting rid of those damn beepers that bug you to put on your seat belt. I'll probably make a fortune. One thing I will accept is a beep if the door opens and the keys are in the ignition. ONE BEEP, got it ? Can the engineering department count to one ?

And brownwares ? This is getting ridiculous. You want to hear a wierd one about a TV ? OK, a Sony XBR direct view, CRT. The CRT had been changed. The set was back becasue the picture would gradually turn all red, that is the green and blue would drop out. The cure ? Adjust the vertical height and centering.

This one required discovering the failure mode to cure, but in some cases you might not have to. In this unit, the CRT installed was rebuilt and apparently there was something a little different about the envelope. I scoped the AKB pulses and though there was no green or blue on the screen there was plenty of feedback going to the AKB pin of the jungle.

A slight convergence error OFF THE SCRREN at the top was causing the beam to hit some element in the tube, most likely the frame around the shadow mask, and it was getting more feedback from that for whatever reason. I suspect in the CRTs made for the sets with AKB that frame or whatever it was had a coating on it to prevent this occurance.

Once I had to change a chip in a vertical circuit because the set would not switch to video input. That was easy, internal leakage was partially shorting out the data bus. The normal stuff worked, like the picture controls etc., but the option codes had not loaded so it didn't know about any video inputs.

This is all automation working for us. If you think diagnostic codes are bad in cars, they are worse in brownwares. Now that they want to detect shorts by absence of supply voltages it mucks things up. All hail one shutdown circuit. Long time ago a coworker quipped that it's getting to where a bad speaker can cause no high voltage. Well XBR to the front again. A CRT based RPTV, I detected no vertical as it shutdown. I repaired that and it still shut down, even though I scoped it and confirmed that the vertical was now up and running.

Above the chassis was the amp for the subwoofer which was down at the bottom of the cabinet. I had left it unplugged and the set sensed it and shut down. So there you have it for sure - a bad speaker can cause no high voltage. I just happened to temporarily introduce high resistance to the voice coil at the time.

In the end, it is all about control. At one time I was going to build some things, actually advanced diagnostic devices. I thought about how to not only protect my ideas, but being on the other side of the fence I wanted captive service if possible. That can take some doing when the customers are techs in the first place. After all none of this stuff is made to be serviced anymore. Look at the service manuals for plasma TVs and find the waveforms that are supposed to be output from the Y and Z sustain boards. They give you clk timing on the main board which you almost never fix but replace, they give you the flat lines on the 5 volts, 3.3 and so forth, but what really makes the thing work is absent.

Cars may be different but not much. You can't just drop an ECM in a car anymore, it has to be programmed for it. One third of brownware problems are now due to software issues, many of them not fixable. Sometimes you can flash the firmware but usually not. They need you to need them.

At this moment I am thinking about my next car. Most of what I want is expensive now, and it would probably have ignition points. Stickshift. Power NOTHING.

Oh, and us hillbillies have advanced from the baling wire etc. The most modern methods now include duct tape and coat hangers. I notice it is getting harder to procure metal coat hangers, an fact I suspect a conspiracy. In fact the entire computer revolution was a conspiracy to eliminate paper clips. There was a time I could make almost $100 with a paper clip.

So much for my 3 AM rant.
I have mixed feelings about the new technology used in automobiles.
Overall, I would have to say profound improvements have been made.
That does not mean some of the 'improvements' don't drive me nuts. I
detest airbags. The idea of driving holding onto a device that will
do it's best to smash my arms into my face in case of an accident is
crazy. Protecting me in case I forgot to wear my seatbelt is
unnecessary - I refuse to go anywhere without my seatbelt fastened.

Yes, some of the power features will go bad before the rest of the
vehicle wears out. On the other hand, the power train is more
reliable than ever.

I compare two vehicles we have owned - a 1969 Dodge station wagon, and
a 2002 Honda Odyssey.

Throughout it's life, the Dodge had to have the oil changed every
1500 miles, spark plugs and points replaced every 15,000 miles, the
muffler and tail pipe were both replaced twice, brake shoes had to be
replaced, etc. In addition, it had a number of annoying failures.
The heater control cable would buckle, diodes in the alternator
failed, the heater blower motor failed (requiring pulling the entore
heater assembly). And in spite of the best efforts, by teh time it
had 100,000 miles it was ready for the junkyard.

The main maintenence item on the Odyssey is the oil change every 3000
miles. And the brake pads had to be replaced twice. No points, no
new spark plugs, still has the original exhaust system. Of course, it
had it's own set of annoying failures. The power window mechanism
fails in a particularly annoying manner - a plastic retainer breaks,
releasing the actuator cable. One of the remote 'fobs' failed. The
engine mounts failed. The alernator mounting bracket broke!! On the
other hand, I didn't have to replace the spark plugs until after
100,000 miles, it still has to original exhaust system, and at 150,000
miles it still is running well.