Subject: What ever happened to service manuals?
From: "Michael A. Covington" ess


Should a customer choose a $400 camera that is repairable over a $100 camera
(with equal performance) that is not? I don't think so.


Lots of people are under the impression that the $400 camera they bought a few
years ago is now $100. It's not; the new camera is a $100 camera, not a $400
camera. It's service life will surely reflect that. But there were still a
few $400 cameras that weren't any better than the current crop of Chinese junk,
and these shouldn't be repaired either. The last factory rep I spoke to said
the new consumer electronic devices are designed to last the warranty period.
Anything beyond that is bonus time.


In my opinion, the repair industry got spoiled in the 1950s, when everybody
had primitive TV sets that ate vacuum tubes at the rate of one every three
or four weeks.

I started out about 1970 repairing 50s through the 60s era TVs. While TVs
certainly needed a lot of attention, they didn't need tubes every three or four
weeks. A properly serviced TV would give 2 to 4 years of decent service before
needing some sort of attention, but ministrations of most sort were cheap back
then. BTW, IMO the most reliable TVs ever built were built from the early 70s
through the late 80s. I can't tell you how often customers offer to me a free
TV from that era that still works.


Nowadays, a TV lasts maybe 8 years without repair, and when
it fails, the cause of the failure is usually hard to find.

Not my experience. We see more major failures in newer items than we EVER did,
and they are no harder to repair than they were before.

This tells me
that all the components are much more reliable, and they are also much
better matched (to last the same length of time).

For the first time that I am aware of, manufactuers are using components (like
capacitors) with 1 and 2 thousand hour MTBF ratings. In the old days, we never
had to shotgun electrolytics like we do in TVs even 1 to 2 years old.

John