On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 19:57:08 +1100 Franc Zabkar
wrote in Message id: :

On 24 Jan 2005 04:42:34 -0800, put finger to
keyboard and composed:

Have a Discovery 420 treadmill. On the upper PC board,
8 of the 9 ICs have the identification info removed; it
appears that the area which previously contained the ID
on each chip, had been irregularly abraded with a small
tool (such as a Dremel).

My treadmill (different brand) has been similarly defaced.

Seems time consuming for the board manufacturer to do
this on each board.

Why would a manufacturer do this?

beginning of rant

Because governments allow them to. These despicable practices are just
one reason why some equipment is uneconomical to repair and is
consigned to landfill. If the useless, whale watching, tree hugging
Greenies had any testicular fortitude, they would lobby for
legislation to make *complete* service information compulsorily
available in paperless format from manufacturers' websites or from CDs
included with the product.

end of rant

C'mon, now. Don't hold back on us