I am in Hawaii where power surges are unfortunately common. Having lost
several PC power supplies, I now use line conditioning battery backup units
to protect my PCs.
Several months ago I salvaged a Westington flat screen [LTV-32w6 HD] that
had been abandoned because the tuner failed. As the tuner is part of the
motherboard I didn't fix it was easier to use an external VCR as the tuner.
TV functions fine. I assume the tuner died in a power surge.
Yesterday, the power failed and I awoke to find that the TV had turned
itself on but no sound. Toggling mute and adding external speakers did not
work. I assumed the worst but guessed that maybe this was a microprocessor
locked into mute. I unplugged the set and tried again after 15 minutes.
Sound was restored. Whew!
I wonder how many consumers would be so lucky? Is this type of sensitivity
common? [I have a nice old 32inch CRT that has been immmune from these
problems and provides a great picture.] I'll probably add a line
conditioner, but, really, are consumers expected to be that cautious?

Yesterday, the power failed and I awoke to find that the TV
had turned itself on but no sound. Toggling mute and adding
external speakers did not work. I assumed the worst but
guessed that maybe this was a microprocessor locked into
mute. I unplugged the set and tried again after 15 minutes.
Sound was restored. Whew!

I've experienced this sort of failure with several items -- including an LV
player, a TV set, a PDA, and a DVD player -- over the past 25 years. I call
it "CMOS lockup", though whether that's the actual cause of the problem, I
don't know.

Basically, the product "misbehaves" in some way -- including apparent
"death". Removing the batteries or unplugging it, and then letting it sit
for a while, causes it to be "recalled to life" (Dickens). Sometimes you
need to yank the power cord while the device is running.

I don't know the exact cause, but I suspect it happens often enough that
people discard products that are otherwise perfectly good.

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 07:11:18 -1000, "John Keiser"
wrote:

I am in Hawaii where power surges are unfortunately common. Having lost
several PC power supplies, I now use line conditioning battery backup units
to protect my PCs.
Several months ago I salvaged a Westington flat screen [LTV-32w6 HD] that
had been abandoned because the tuner failed. As the tuner is part of the
motherboard I didn't fix it was easier to use an external VCR as the tuner.
TV functions fine. I assume the tuner died in a power surge.
Yesterday, the power failed and I awoke to find that the TV had turned
itself on but no sound. Toggling mute and adding external speakers did not
work. I assumed the worst but guessed that maybe this was a microprocessor
locked into mute. I unplugged the set and tried again after 15 minutes.
Sound was restored. Whew!
I wonder how many consumers would be so lucky? Is this type of sensitivity
common? [I have a nice old 32inch CRT that has been immmune from these
problems and provides a great picture.] I'll probably add a line
conditioner, but, really, are consumers expected to be that cautious?

There are big differences between the 32" CRT and the 32 inch flat
panel. First, the CRT is the product of more than 50 years of
refinement. Comparitively speaking the flat screen is in it's
infancy.

Second, the CRT set is almost certainly primarily analog. The flat
screen has several processors, and is much more susceptible to
interference.

Third, most flat panel sets are put together out of crappy components,
especially the capacitors. While the power supply might have been
adequate when new, the caps have deteriorated and are allowing noise
from the SMPS onto the power supply rails.

PlainBill

Third, most flat panel sets are put together out of crappy components,
especially the capacitors.

Dell is hoping there are no more of those crappy-caps around!

Hi John,

John Keiser wrote:
Several months ago I salvaged a Westington flat screen [LTV-32w6 HD] that
had been abandoned because the tuner failed. As the tuner is part of the
motherboard I didn't fix it was easier to use an external VCR as the tuner.
TV functions fine. I assume the tuner died in a power surge.
Yesterday, the power failed and I awoke to find that the TV had turned
itself on but no sound. Toggling mute and adding external speakers did not
work. I assumed the worst but guessed that maybe this was a microprocessor
locked into mute. I unplugged the set and tried again after 15 minutes.
Sound was restored. Whew!
I wonder how many consumers would be so lucky? Is this type of sensitivity
common? [I have a nice old 32inch CRT that has been immmune from these
problems and provides a great picture.] I'll probably add a line
conditioner, but, really, are consumers expected to be that cautious?

Most modern devices use mmicroprocessors or microcontrollers. Often
*several* (VCRs typically had three or four; my cassette deck has
one just to count capstan revolutions!).

If power fails -- wholly or partially -- it is possible for any
of those processors to reset. Or, *partially* reset. Or, "get
confused" (and head off to never-never land doing something
unintended -- like "executing" *data*).

If the processor doesn't have brownout detection (or it isn;t
implemented properly), a processor can get stuck in one of these
confused states. If the processor doesn't have a hardware
watchdog (or, it isn;t implemented properly), once confused it
can fail to get OUT of that state.

Regardless, sloppy code in one or more of these can result
in them running, but failing to move to their *correct*
operational state. This is a common sort of bug -- the
code makes assumptions (implicitly or explicitly) that,
suddenly, are not valid (because something unforseen has
happened -- e.g., a power glitch between instructions
102,678,993 and 102,678,994). Because the programmer made
those assumptions, he didn't code to protect *against*
them being incorrect.

So, for example, if there are two processors in the set,
they *always* are powered up at the same exact instant
(there is ONLY one power button, right?). And, the code
that they execute never changes. So, 23.0257 milliseconds
after RESET, processor #1 has done blah and can now
send the "OK, I am ready to fire up the display" message
to processor #2. Meanwhile, 24.6802 milliseconds after
RESET, processor #2 goes looking for the "OK I am ready"
message, *sees* it (since it was delivered about a millisecond
earlier) and correctly fires up the display.

Now, if something happens that causes processor #1 to come
out of RESET a bit later -- perhaps, 3 milliseconds (e.g.,
maybe power at *it's* reset circuit glitched a bit more than
at #2's; or, it's brownout detector fired *twice* instead of
once) -- then it (#1) might not issue the "OK" message until
26.0257 milliseconds (since it's RESET was 3 milliseconds
later than #2's). Meanwhile, at 24.6802 milliseconds, processor
#2 went looking for the message AND IT WASN'T THERE!!

Had the programmer NOT *assumed* the message *would* be there,
he would have told #2 to wait for it -- for some amount of time.
Instead, he might just crash; or, *incorrectly* (buggy) "wait";
or, fire up the display prematurely causing some other fault
(that shuts him down -- or, something *else* gets shut down), etc.

The heat of almost ALL software bugs is one or more bad assumptions.
When the world behaves in ways programmers don't expect, you
get "anomalous behaviors" -- things that seeem unexplained and
that change without any action on your part to "fix" them.

shrug Makes you wonder how *anything* works properly! :-/

(of course, there can also be hardware issues that are causing
this -- like a cap not completely discharging so the circuit
it connects to never sees the "reset")

Thanks for the details.
Doesn't instill consumer confidence in buying new expensive electronics!



"D Yuniskis" wrote in message
...
Hi John,

John Keiser wrote:
Several months ago I salvaged a Westington flat screen [LTV-32w6 HD] that
had been abandoned because the tuner failed. As the tuner is part of the
motherboard I didn't fix it was easier to use an external VCR as the
tuner. TV functions fine. I assume the tuner died in a power surge.
Yesterday, the power failed and I awoke to find that the TV had turned
itself on but no sound. Toggling mute and adding external speakers did
not work. I assumed the worst but guessed that maybe this was a
microprocessor locked into mute. I unplugged the set and tried again
after 15 minutes. Sound was restored. Whew!
I wonder how many consumers would be so lucky? Is this type of
sensitivity common? [I have a nice old 32inch CRT that has been immmune
from these problems and provides a great picture.] I'll probably add a
line conditioner, but, really, are consumers expected to be that
cautious?

Most modern devices use mmicroprocessors or microcontrollers. Often
*several* (VCRs typically had three or four; my cassette deck has
one just to count capstan revolutions!).

If power fails -- wholly or partially -- it is possible for any
of those processors to reset. Or, *partially* reset. Or, "get
confused" (and head off to never-never land doing something
unintended -- like "executing" *data*).

If the processor doesn't have brownout detection (or it isn;t
implemented properly), a processor can get stuck in one of these
confused states. If the processor doesn't have a hardware
watchdog (or, it isn;t implemented properly), once confused it
can fail to get OUT of that state.

Regardless, sloppy code in one or more of these can result
in them running, but failing to move to their *correct*
operational state. This is a common sort of bug -- the
code makes assumptions (implicitly or explicitly) that,
suddenly, are not valid (because something unforseen has
happened -- e.g., a power glitch between instructions
102,678,993 and 102,678,994). Because the programmer made
those assumptions, he didn't code to protect *against*
them being incorrect.

So, for example, if there are two processors in the set,
they *always* are powered up at the same exact instant
(there is ONLY one power button, right?). And, the code
that they execute never changes. So, 23.0257 milliseconds
after RESET, processor #1 has done blah and can now
send the "OK, I am ready to fire up the display" message
to processor #2. Meanwhile, 24.6802 milliseconds after
RESET, processor #2 goes looking for the "OK I am ready"
message, *sees* it (since it was delivered about a millisecond
earlier) and correctly fires up the display.

Now, if something happens that causes processor #1 to come
out of RESET a bit later -- perhaps, 3 milliseconds (e.g.,
maybe power at *it's* reset circuit glitched a bit more than
at #2's; or, it's brownout detector fired *twice* instead of
once) -- then it (#1) might not issue the "OK" message until
26.0257 milliseconds (since it's RESET was 3 milliseconds
later than #2's). Meanwhile, at 24.6802 milliseconds, processor
#2 went looking for the message AND IT WASN'T THERE!!

Had the programmer NOT *assumed* the message *would* be there,
he would have told #2 to wait for it -- for some amount of time.
Instead, he might just crash; or, *incorrectly* (buggy) "wait";
or, fire up the display prematurely causing some other fault
(that shuts him down -- or, something *else* gets shut down), etc.

The heat of almost ALL software bugs is one or more bad assumptions.
When the world behaves in ways programmers don't expect, you
get "anomalous behaviors" -- things that seeem unexplained and
that change without any action on your part to "fix" them.

shrug Makes you wonder how *anything* works properly! :-/

(of course, there can also be hardware issues that are causing
this -- like a cap not completely discharging so the circuit
it connects to never sees the "reset")

"John Keiser" wrote in message
news:FYWdnYqJUrg7Cp_QnZ2dnUVZ_i2dnZ2d@powerusenet. com...

Thanks for the details.
Doesn't instill consumer confidence in buying new expensive electronics!

D Yuniskis did a nice job but only touched on a few things that can go
wrong. In any case, my thanks to him for taking the time to explain the
issues.

Consumers are becoming more clueless as software takes over their lives.
This is a problem that is becoming more serious. If the doctors and nurses
and technicians in a modern operating room get confused or misled by
software glitches, it could be really, really serious. Has already
happened.

Hi John,

John Keiser wrote:
Thanks for the details.
Doesn't instill consumer confidence in buying new expensive electronics!

I'm not claiming that this is what you *actually* experienced.
But, it is the sort of thing that is commonplace -- increasingly
so, nowadays.

E.g., I have a pair of Nakamichi Dragons (high end cassette decks,
now very "dated"). They are "autoreverse" decks -- when the
tape reaches the end of side A, side B is played (i.e., AS IF
the tape had been "flipped" -- though this is done without
any mechanical motion).

The tape counter, on reaching the end of side A, should start
counting *backwards* as it begins playing side B (i.e., the
counter should end up wherever it originally started once
side B is complete -- assuming you started at the beginning of
side A).

This is, in fact, how it works. There are two "play" buttons
on the deck -- "play forward" (side A) and "play backwards"
(side B). While play forward is active, you will see the
counter increasing. If you press "play backwards", the
counter will *decrease*.

*BUT*... if you stop the tape just as it reaches the end of side
A, open the tape door, remove the tape, flip it over (so, now
side B is "in front"), close the door and press "play forward",
the tape will COUNT BACKWARDS (i.e., as if the tape was still
installed in the deck playing "side B" BACKWARDS). So, the
tape MOVES "forwards" (the machine has no way of knowing that
this is "side 2" of the tape... it may be a completely DIFFERENT
tape!) while the counter counts BACKWARDS!

If you had stopped the tape a second BEFORE it reached the end
of side A, ejected it, flipped it, reinstalled it and pressed
"play forward", the counter would NOT count backwards.

I.e., this is a bug. (technically, a "race") Would you
expect that sort of thing in a $2K device? On something
so *trivial*?? :

Makes you wonder next time you get on an aircraft ("fly by wire"),
have a surgical procedure ("Doctor, the patient's blood pressure
is 9843 over 2"), etc. :-/

Maybe the Luddites were onto something, afterall! :

Makes you wonder next time you get on an aircraft ("fly by wire"),
have a surgical procedure ("Doctor, the patient's blood pressure
is 9843 over 2"), etc. :-/

Maybe the Luddites were onto something, afterall! :

Yes, exactly. Coders are very bright (theoretically speaking) folks, but
they cannot see the future. Unanticipated, although normal, events and
other random glitches/failures can conspire to send controllers/chips into
endless loops or into a routine that is entirely inappropriate. We have
engineered ourselves into an untenable position. Anyway, for now, just shut
everything down and turn the devices back on using a recommended sequence
(good luck with that).

Hi Charles,

Charles wrote:
Consumers are becoming more clueless as software takes over their lives.

The problem is that consumers don't *want* to know how things
work or *should* work. And, they don't "vote with their wallet".
They get a crappy product and they either live with it (possibly
not even knowing how crappy it is!) or toss it out and buy another
(probably EQUALLY as crappy)

This is a problem that is becoming more serious. If the doctors and
nurses and technicians in a modern operating room get confused or misled
by software glitches, it could be really, really serious. Has already
happened.

Google "Therac".

Unfortunately, there are no real safeguards in place to *prevent*
this sort of thing happening. There are "practices" that *should*
minimize the chance of it happening. But, there were "practices"
in place that should have prevented "Three Mile Island", etc.

Unfortunately, the folks designing these things have less and less
time, less and less *motivation* and less and less *capability*
for making "robust" products.

My DTV tuner shows *two* "9-1" channels.

Years ago, we would design devices that were (comparatively speaking)
*smart*. They could diagnose their own faults. They could assist
the technician in troubleshooting (set up scope loops, etc.).
Now, everything is reduced to the equivalent of an idiot light
"Service Required" -- and, often, that light isn't even present!
The device just "acts funny". And, since users often don't know
how it truly *should* work, they can't AUTHORITATIVELY complain/deduce
that it *is* malfunctioning.

(how many VCR's blink 12:00? Do you have to be a rocket scientist
to set the clock on a VCR???)

I have a Zune media player (movies, music, etc.). I am convinced the
hard drive inside it is dying. Instead of a diagnostic message to
that effect appearing on the LARGE, COLOR, FULL GRAPHIC DISPLAY, the
device sits there trying to read from the disk endlessly (locking
up in the process). "Um, if it can't get the data on the first,
second or even three hundredth attempt, what makes you think it will
get it on the 9 millionth attempt two days from now???"

Instead of helping the consumer determine that he has a p[roblem
(or, better yet, RECOVERING from that problem), it sits there
frustrating the user and leaving him with no alternative other
than to:
- call tech support (in some third-world country, no doubt)
- google for similar symptoms
- discard it in frustration

"D Yuniskis" wrote in message ...

Hi Charles,

Charles wrote:
Consumers are becoming more clueless as software takes over their lives.

The problem is that consumers don't *want* to know how things
work or *should* work.

Well, if you meant that they are not willing to expend any effort to learn
about their possessions, then you are correct.

And, they don't "vote with their wallet".
They get a crappy product and they either live with it (possibly
not even knowing how crappy it is!) or toss it out and buy another
(probably EQUALLY as crappy)

I shudder at the amount of functional items that are returned, or re-sold,
or sent to landfills and recycling centers. The waste is a pox on our
future. The planet Earth is a finite resource!

This is a problem that is becoming more serious. If the doctors and
nurses and technicians in a modern operating room get confused or misled
by software glitches, it could be really, really serious. Has already
happened.

Google "Therac".

Unfortunately, the folks designing these things have less and less
time, less and less *motivation* and less and less *capability*
for making "robust" products.

Nor are they concerned about tomorrow, unless it's about their stock
options.

My DTV tuner shows *two* "9-1" channels.

The -1 channels here are not always available (high-def) and there is no
discernible rule of thumb to guide one as to why.

- call tech support (in some third-world country, no doubt)
- google for similar symptoms
- discard it in frustration

Toss it out. That's what too many folks are doing. Horrible!

Hi Charles,

Charles wrote:
Makes you wonder next time you get on an aircraft ("fly by wire"),
have a surgical procedure ("Doctor, the patient's blood pressure
is 9843 over 2"), etc. :-/

Maybe the Luddites were onto something, afterall! :

Yes, exactly. Coders are very bright (theoretically speaking) folks,

frown You are more "generous" than I! :

but they cannot see the future. Unanticipated, although normal, events
and other random glitches/failures can conspire to send
controllers/chips into endless loops or into a routine that is entirely

But, you needn't "see the future" to code against these things!
All you have to do is step back (figuratively) and look at
your design and ask yourself: "What have I taken for granted,
here?" Then, go back and "UN"-take it for granted.

Of course, there are some things that you *have* to "assume".
But, far less than you actually usually *do* assume (at least
if you want a robust design!).

E.g., if you loan someone money, do you *assume* you will be
paid back AND HAVE NO CONTINGENCY PLANS FOR THE POSSIBILITY
OF *not* BEING PAID BACK? (if so, I'd like to speak to you
about a loan... : )

inappropriate. We have engineered ourselves into an untenable
position. Anyway, for now, just shut everything down and turn the
devices back on using a recommended sequence (good luck with that).

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:11:00 -0800 (PST), Bob Villa
wrote:

Third, most flat panel sets are put together out of crappy components,
especially the capacitors.

Dell is hoping there are no more of those crappy-caps around!

Dell was not using "crappy" capacitors. What they were doing is the
same thing that almost every other manufactory is currently also
doing. They are rating their electrolytics as close to the bitter
edge of failure as possible. That saves a few pennies in cost by
using a lower voltage electrolytic but shortens the capacitor life. My
guess(tm) is that Dell's OEM supplier in China selected the capacitors
based upon faulty calculations, where it was designed to blow up in
about 5 years, instead of the 1-2 years specified in the class action
suit.

"Determining end-of-life, ESR, and lifetime calculations for
electrolytic capacitors at higher temperatures"
http://www.dfrsolutions.com/uploads/white-papers/Uprating_of_Electrolytic_Capacitors.pdf
At the bottom of the paper, note the various ways in which the ESR can
climb as a result varying conditions. At 105C (rated max temp), a
typical capacitor will have its ESR increase 5 times (and therefore 5
times the dissipation) after 3500 hrs of normal operation. For
24hr/day operation, that's only about 5 months of continuous
operation.

This has nothing to do with the original question, but I thought it
might be interesting.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

Hi Charles,

Charles wrote:
Consumers are becoming more clueless as software takes over their lives.

The problem is that consumers don't *want* to know how things
work or *should* work.

Well, if you meant that they are not willing to expend any effort to
learn about their possessions, then you are correct.

Yes. And, most of those things aren't designed to *encourage*
comprehension. How many things have *no* power switch -- leaving
you pushing buttons wondering which will "turn it on"?

And, they don't "vote with their wallet".
They get a crappy product and they either live with it (possibly
not even knowing how crappy it is!) or toss it out and buy another
(probably EQUALLY as crappy)

I shudder at the amount of functional items that are returned, or
re-sold, or sent to landfills and recycling centers. The waste is a pox
on our future. The planet Earth is a finite resource!

shrug I do volunteer work at a place that recycles "stuff".
I think we processed 1000 tons last year. Depressing to see
the things people just "abandon" (effectively) that still work.

Somewhere (and I'll be damned if I can recall where!), I saw an
article discussing natural resources. The point of the article was
"whatever is here is *all* there will ever *be* of these things"
(unless the alchemists succeed!). I.e., all of the Copper on
(in) the planet was formed when the planet was formed; we don't
"grow" copper to replace what we use.

For each of these resources (copper sticks in my mind), the article
described where it "was", currently.

IIRC, for copper, 1/4 of it is "in use"; 1/4 of it is "in landfills";
1/4 of it is "waiting to be mined/harvested"; 1/4 is unharvestable.
I.e., one way of looking at this is: we have used 2/3 of the copper
available to us, already (in the past ~100? years) and that half
of that is "in the trash".

There are other interpretations that are more pessimistic or less;
but, the bottom line is "there is only so much"...

shrug

This is a problem that is becoming more serious. If the doctors and
nurses and technicians in a modern operating room get confused or
misled by software glitches, it could be really, really serious. Has
already happened.

Google "Therac".

[really... do it!]

Unfortunately, the folks designing these things have less and less
time, less and less *motivation* and less and less *capability*
for making "robust" products.

Nor are they concerned about tomorrow, unless it's about their stock
options.

Correct. OTOH, there is no motivation *to* be concerned about
those things. "It's someone else's problem"...

My DTV tuner shows *two* "9-1" channels.

The -1 channels here are not always available (high-def) and there is no
discernible rule of thumb to guide one as to why.

But why *two* of them (in addition to 9-2, etc.)...

- call tech support (in some third-world country, no doubt)
- google for similar symptoms
- discard it in frustration

Toss it out. That's what too many folks are doing. Horrible!

shrug Again playing devil's advocate: what is the alternative?
Anything I fix "for myself" is "affordable" (for me). But, if I
have to fix something for someone *else*, it quickly becomes
prohibitively expensive to do so (I don't work for free). The
"system" assigns no cost to discarding items. So:

discarding + replacing = keeping + repairing

How many VCR's blink 12:00? Do you have to be a rocket scientist
to set the clock on a VCR???

In some cases, yes. Some had setting procedures that went beyond
unbelievable.

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 07:11:18 -1000, "John Keiser"
wrote:

I am in Hawaii where power surges are unfortunately common.

I live in the forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains. When the wind blows
or it rains, the branches and the power lines tend to meet, resulting
in power glitches.

If it makes you feel any better (probably not, but worth a try), after
every storm, I get a few calls from customers with hung network and
entertainment equipement. DSL modems, cable modems, routers,
switches, IP phones, wireless, computahs, security systems, DVR's,
printers, TIVO, etc. Just about anything with a microprocessor inside
can be made to hang. D Yuniskis covered races and hazzards so I won't
go there. Add to that the joy of memory (RAM) glitches. When the
power fluctuates, one of the most sensitive components is the common
serial or dynamic RAM commonly found in almost everything. A
momentary magnetic pulse from a nearby power xformer is usually
sufficient to produce a large enough field to flip a few bits. You
may not even notice that a few bits have been flipped until perhaps
days after the power glitch, when the operating system decides to use
those memory cells, and finds them in a bizarre state. This is why
many servers have ECC (error correcting) RAM.

The problem of unpredictable processor operation is well known as are
some of the band-aids. For low end hardware, usually nothing is done.
Just power cycle the box if it hangs. Some clever programmers add in
a watchdog timer, which monitors the state of some manner of commonly
updated register (i.e. the RTC) and reboots the device if it goes
comatose. While clever, it's not very reliable as the dead-mans timer
is part of the same processor that it's trying to protect. An
external watchdog timer works much better. It usually receives a 1
PPS (one pulse per sec) signal from the processor. If that
disappears, it's reboot time.

It isn't just power line glitches that cause hangs. Cosmic rays,
alpha particles from radioactive components, external fields, and bit
rot all contribute to the general lack of uptime.

Anyway, try not to worry too much. Features and functions are added
faster than bugs get fixed, so reliability and uptime rapidly some
minimum acceptable value. This value is usually set by when the
support phone starts ringing. When the customer complaints arrive,
it's probably time to fix the problem. Otherwise, few people complain
about ocassional hangs, crashes, and reboots.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

Hi William,

William Sommerwerck wrote:
How many VCR's blink 12:00? Do you have to be a rocket scientist
to set the clock on a VCR???

In some cases, yes. Some had setting procedures that went beyond
unbelievable.

I don't think that applies to anything manufactured in the last
20 years... :

Rather, I think it is a tradeoff of value for effort. E.g., my
TV has a clock in it. I've never set it. Reasoning: it's not
normally visible (I would have "to turn it on" to see it and
then it would interfere with the picture displayed; setting it
requires navigating through four or five screens of settings
(i.e., a bit of effort); and, it doesn't offer me any value
(that I can't get just by looking over my shoulder to the clock
that displays time REGARDLESS of whether or not the TV is on!).

I suspect most VCRs were used for watching movies instead of
timeshifting. In that case, there is no value to having the
correct time set (it may not even be visible while the movie
is playing!). And, since most VCRs wouldn't *retain* their
time settings in the face of power interruptions (power
outages, unplugging the set, etc.), it doesn't take long for
a clock to fall into the "ignored" category.

Finally, too many timepieces in a home ends up relegating most
of them to "un-maintained" -- how many of us have *a* clock
that we consider The Authority in our homes (i.e., we expect
some amount of error in all the others -- intentional or
otherwise)

How many VCR's blink 12:00? Do you have to be a
rocket scientist to set the clock on a VCR???

In some cases, yes. Some had setting procedures that
went beyond unbelievable.

I don't think that applies to anything manufactured
in the last 20 years... :

Perhaps. But I've seen them.

Some years ago VCRs were redesigned to, at turn-on, scan the broadcast band
for a station with an embedded time code, and set the clock. These were
usually NPR stations.


Finally, too many timepieces in a home ends up relegating most
of them to "un-maintained" -- how many of us have *a* clock
that we consider The Authority in our homes (i.e., we expect
some amount of error in all the others -- intentional or
otherwise).

I do. I have two atomic clocks.

Hi William,

William Sommerwerck wrote:
How many VCR's blink 12:00? Do you have to be a
rocket scientist to set the clock on a VCR???

In some cases, yes. Some had setting procedures that
went beyond unbelievable.

I don't think that applies to anything manufactured
in the last 20 years... :

Perhaps. But I've seen them.

Some years ago VCRs were redesigned to, at turn-on, scan the broadcast band
for a station with an embedded time code, and set the clock. These were
usually NPR stations.

Dunno. I haven't used a VCR in more than 20 years :-/
(The one that still is in use here is only used for playing
prerecorded tapes)

Finally, too many timepieces in a home ends up relegating most
of them to "un-maintained" -- how many of us have *a* clock
that we consider The Authority in our homes (i.e., we expect
some amount of error in all the others -- intentional or
otherwise).

I do. I have two atomic clocks.

I had one here -- but it always kept losing signal. So, you
get a false sense of security *thinking* it is telling the correct
time -- only to discover it wasn't. I guess they are sensitive to
where they are located/oriented. Given how "unattractive" this one
was (think: functional not decorative), the choices for where it
could acceptably be sited were limited. So, it got relocated -- to
the trash. :

(It *was* fun, though, to watch it go into "set" mode... minute hand
sweeping across the face of the clock as if it was a *second* hand...)

I had one here -- but it always kept losing signal. So, you
get a false sense of security *thinking* it is telling the correct
time -- only to discover it wasn't. I guess they are sensitive to
where they are located/oriented. Given how "unattractive" this
one was (think: functional not decorative), the choices for where
it could acceptably be sited were limited. So, it got relocated --
to the trash. :

Such clocks are best kept away from computers and other sources of EMI/RFI.
Once you find a clean spot, you should be okay.

Those with LCDs usually have an indicator that shows whether the clock has
been recently resynched.

Hi William,

William Sommerwerck wrote:
I had one here -- but it always kept losing signal. So, you
get a false sense of security *thinking* it is telling the correct
time -- only to discover it wasn't. I guess they are sensitive to
where they are located/oriented. Given how "unattractive" this
one was (think: functional not decorative), the choices for where
it could acceptably be sited were limited. So, it got relocated --
to the trash. :

Such clocks are best kept away from computers and other sources of EMI/RFI.
Once you find a clean spot, you should be okay.

grin I doubt there are any such spots in this house! :-/

Those with LCDs usually have an indicator that shows whether the clock has
been recently resynched.

This had "hands". I guess driven by a little stepper motor.
As I said, the minute hand would race around as if it was a
second hand when it was "setting" the clock (I suspect it
only gets feedback from the "o'clock" (straight up) position.
So, it runs the minute hand to that position, then counts
"steps" from there to get to desired position.

Hi Brenda,

Brenda Ann wrote:
It's kind of funny, really. Since they took clocks 'off the grid',
they've tried more and more elaborate bandaid measures to keep them
accurate. I have a good old fashioned AC synchronous wall clock that
never gains nor loses time as long as it has power, and half a dozen
"quartz-accurate" clocks that never seem to keep time, including the one
in my DVR, which loses time like crazy.

The frequency of AC power is tightly controlled. Some short
term variations in frequency are allowed. But, long term
it has to be very accurate (precisely for this reason as
a timebase).

I always wondered how wris****ches could be so damned accurate
considering how cheap they are (especially these disposable ones).
But, then realized they operate at a constant temperature, etc.

By contrast, look at how poorly clocks in cars keep time...

Follow up in case anyone else has this problem:
While unplugging the TV seemed to restore operation, the next morning the
screen was all pink but the menu functioned fine. Toggling "Factory Reset"
seems to have done the trick permanently.
"John Keiser" wrote in message
news:Pt2dndwbSd3dwp_QnZ2dnUVZ_u2dnZ2d@powerusenet. com...
I am in Hawaii where power surges are unfortunately common. Having lost
several PC power supplies, I now use line conditioning battery backup units
to protect my PCs.
Several months ago I salvaged a Westington flat screen [LTV-32w6 HD] that
had been abandoned because the tuner failed. As the tuner is part of the
motherboard I didn't fix it was easier to use an external VCR as the
tuner. TV functions fine. I assume the tuner died in a power surge.
Yesterday, the power failed and I awoke to find that the TV had turned
itself on but no sound. Toggling mute and adding external speakers did
not work. I assumed the worst but guessed that maybe this was a
microprocessor locked into mute. I unplugged the set and tried again
after 15 minutes. Sound was restored. Whew!
I wonder how many consumers would be so lucky? Is this type of
sensitivity common? [I have a nice old 32inch CRT that has been immmune
from these problems and provides a great picture.] I'll probably add a
line conditioner, but, really, are consumers expected to be that cautious?

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:11:00 -0800 (PST), Bob Villa
wrote:

Third, most flat panel sets are put together out of crappy components,
especially the capacitors.

Dell is hoping there are no more of those crappy-caps around!

Dell was not using "crappy" capacitors. What they were doing is the
same thing that almost every other manufactory is currently also
doing. They are rating their electrolytics as close to the bitter
edge of failure as possible. That saves a few pennies in cost by
using a lower voltage electrolytic but shortens the capacitor life. My
guess(tm) is that Dell's OEM supplier in China selected the capacitors
based upon faulty calculations, where it was designed to blow up in
about 5 years, instead of the 1-2 years specified in the class action
suit.

I don't know about Dell LCDs, but their computer motherboards of 5-8
years ago that failed at high rates were actually made with very good
brands of capacitors, like Rubycon, Nichicon, and Panasonic, not the
common crap found on many other motherboards . Unfortunately Nichicon
produced bad batches of their HM and HN series caps, marked HM(M) and
HN(M), from around 2001-2004.

On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 18:02:46 -0800 (PST), "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:



Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:11:00 -0800 (PST), Bob Villa
wrote:

Third, most flat panel sets are put together out of crappy components,
especially the capacitors.

Dell is hoping there are no more of those crappy-caps around!

Dell was not using "crappy" capacitors. What they were doing is the
same thing that almost every other manufactory is currently also
doing. They are rating their electrolytics as close to the bitter
edge of failure as possible. That saves a few pennies in cost by
using a lower voltage electrolytic but shortens the capacitor life. My
guess(tm) is that Dell's OEM supplier in China selected the capacitors
based upon faulty calculations, where it was designed to blow up in
about 5 years, instead of the 1-2 years specified in the class action
suit.

I don't know about Dell LCDs, but their computer motherboards of 5-8
years ago that failed at high rates were actually made with very good
brands of capacitors, like Rubycon, Nichicon, and Panasonic, not the
common crap found on many other motherboards . Unfortunately Nichicon
produced bad batches of their HM and HN series caps, marked HM(M) and
HN(M), from around 2001-2004.

Just finished working on a Dell Optiplex that has 8 Rubyicon 1800 uf
6,3v caps in a row; all of which were leaking out the top of the caps.
The failure rate of Rubycon capacitors was high back when I was
repairing televisions, particularly Mitsubishis of the late 90s.
Chuck

On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 18:02:46 -0800 (PST), "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:11:00 -0800 (PST), Bob Villa
wrote:

Third, most flat panel sets are put together out of crappy components,
especially the capacitors.

Dell is hoping there are no more of those crappy-caps around!

Dell was not using "crappy" capacitors. What they were doing is the
same thing that almost every other manufactory is currently also
doing. They are rating their electrolytics as close to the bitter
edge of failure as possible. That saves a few pennies in cost by
using a lower voltage electrolytic but shortens the capacitor life. My
guess(tm) is that Dell's OEM supplier in China selected the capacitors
based upon faulty calculations, where it was designed to blow up in
about 5 years, instead of the 1-2 years specified in the class action
suit.

I don't know about Dell LCDs, but their computer motherboards of 5-8
years ago that failed at high rates were actually made with very good
brands of capacitors, like Rubycon, Nichicon, and Panasonic, not the
common crap found on many other motherboards . Unfortunately Nichicon
produced bad batches of their HM and HN series caps, marked HM(M) and
HN(M), from around 2001-2004.

I think you just demonstrated my point. It's not the brand or even
the quality of the caps. It's the voltage rating. In most cases, the
capacitors voltage rating is just too close to the operating voltage.
Filtering a 5vDC power supply line with 6.3v caps is just asking for
the caps to blow up. I've ranted on the subject before but am a bit
busy to dig out references right now. Short summary is that
electrolytics will derate substantially under high temperatures. The
ESR will also climb, causing increased self heating. Drops in
capacitance will cause increased ripple, which will produce increased
ripple current, which will result in additional heating. Manufacturers
can search forever to find a better quality 6.3v capacitor, but what's
really needed is to spend a few pennies more and use a 10v capacitor.

Electrolytic life calculators:
http://www.illinoiscapacitor.com/tech-center/life-calculators.aspx
http://www.cde.com/calc/
http://www.niccomp.com/Products/General/Alumlyticlifeexpect.pdf
http://powerelectronics.com/images/archive/ElectrolyticCap.pdf


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Chuck wrote:

On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 18:02:46 -0800 (PST), "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:11:00 -0800 (PST), Bob Villa
wrote:

Third, most flat panel sets are put together out of crappy components,
especially the capacitors.

Dell is hoping there are no more of those crappy-caps around!

Dell was not using "crappy" capacitors. What they were doing is the
same thing that almost every other manufactory is currently also
doing. They are rating their electrolytics as close to the bitter
edge of failure as possible. That saves a few pennies in cost by
using a lower voltage electrolytic but shortens the capacitor life. My
guess(tm) is that Dell's OEM supplier in China selected the capacitors
based upon faulty calculations, where it was designed to blow up in
about 5 years, instead of the 1-2 years specified in the class action
suit.

I don't know about Dell LCDs, but their computer motherboards of 5-8
years ago that failed at high rates were actually made with very good
brands of capacitors, like Rubycon, Nichicon, and Panasonic, not the
common crap found on many other motherboards . Unfortunately Nichicon
produced bad batches of their HM and HN series caps, marked HM(M) and
HN(M), from around 2001-2004.

Just finished working on a Dell Optiplex that has 8 Rubyicon 1800 uf
6,3v caps in a row; all of which were leaking out the top of the caps.
The failure rate of Rubycon capacitors was high back when I was
repairing televisions, particularly Mitsubishis of the late 90s.
Chuck

The Pentium4 CPUs in those Dells were such power hogs that even
Rubycons would usually wear out in about 5 years.

Why has my 1976 Sanyo TV needed only 2 caps replaced (audio coupling,
vertical yoke)? The 2-year-old digital converter box that sits on top
of it has needed a lot more caps replaced.

On Dec 14, 8:07*pm, "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:
Chuck wrote:

On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 18:02:46 -0800 (PST), "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:11:00 -0800 (PST), Bob Villa
wrote:

Third, most flat panel sets are put together out of crappy components,
especially the capacitors.

Dell is hoping there are no more of those crappy-caps around!

Dell was not using "crappy" capacitors. *What they were doing is the
same thing that almost every other manufactory is currently also
doing. *They are rating their electrolytics as close to the bitter
edge of failure as possible. *That saves a few pennies in cost by
using a lower voltage electrolytic but shortens the capacitor life. My
guess(tm) is that Dell's OEM supplier in China selected the capacitors
based upon faulty calculations, where it was designed to blow up in
about 5 years, instead of the 1-2 years specified in the class action
suit.

I don't know about Dell LCDs, but their computer motherboards of 5-8
years ago that failed at high rates were actually made with very good
brands of capacitors, like Rubycon, Nichicon, and Panasonic, not the
common crap found on many other motherboards . *Unfortunately Nichicon
produced bad batches of their HM and HN series caps, marked HM(M) and
HN(M), from around 2001-2004.

Just finished working on a Dell Optiplex that has 8 Rubyicon 1800 uf
6,3v caps in a row; all of which were leaking out the top of the caps.
The failure rate of Rubycon capacitors was high back when I was
repairing televisions, particularly Mitsubishis of the late 90s.
Chuck

The Pentium4 CPUs in those Dells were such power hogs that even
Rubycons would usually wear out in about 5 years.

Why has my 1976 Sanyo TV needed only 2 caps replaced (audio coupling,
vertical yoke)? *The 2-year-old digital converter box that sits on top
of it has needed a lot more caps replaced.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Engineering precision I assume, once you know exactly how a complex
circuit will run (using a computer simulation) you have no need to
over design the components (slop factor).

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 18:02:46 -0800 (PST), "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:11:00 -0800 (PST), Bob Villa
wrote:

Third, most flat panel sets are put together out of crappy components,
especially the capacitors.

Dell is hoping there are no more of those crappy-caps around!

Dell was not using "crappy" capacitors. What they were doing is the
same thing that almost every other manufactory is currently also
doing. They are rating their electrolytics as close to the bitter
edge of failure as possible. That saves a few pennies in cost by
using a lower voltage electrolytic but shortens the capacitor life. My
guess(tm) is that Dell's OEM supplier in China selected the capacitors
based upon faulty calculations, where it was designed to blow up in
about 5 years, instead of the 1-2 years specified in the class action
suit.

I don't know about Dell LCDs, but their computer motherboards of 5-8
years ago that failed at high rates were actually made with very good
brands of capacitors, like Rubycon, Nichicon, and Panasonic, not the
common crap found on many other motherboards . Unfortunately Nichicon
produced bad batches of their HM and HN series caps, marked HM(M) and
HN(M), from around 2001-2004.

I think you just demonstrated my point. It's not the brand or even
the quality of the caps. It's the voltage rating. In most cases, the
capacitors voltage rating is just too close to the operating voltage.
Filtering a 5vDC power supply line with 6.3v caps is just asking for
the caps to blow up. I've ranted on the subject before but am a bit
busy to dig out references right now. Short summary is that
electrolytics will derate substantially under high temperatures. The
ESR will also climb, causing increased self heating. Drops in
capacitance will cause increased ripple, which will produce increased
ripple current, which will result in additional heating. Manufacturers
can search forever to find a better quality 6.3v capacitor, but what's
really needed is to spend a few pennies more and use a 10v capacitor.

But most of the capacitor failures in those Dells involved incorrectly
made Nichicon HNs, and after Dell quit using Nichicons in the CPU
voltage regulator and switched over to Rubycons, most of the capacitor
failures were still among the remaining Nichicon HNs, despite those
capacitors running at lower temperatures and ripple currents (they
were in the AGP slot and memory voltage regulators) than the Rubycons
and well below their 6.3V rating. So why did the Rubycons hold up
better? Could it have been their higher quality? Also among the
motherboards I've seen, why have those with the highest proportion of
bad caps been those with the highest proportion of 10V caps -- awful
10V G-Luxon brand caps? This is why I blame the garbage, not the
voltage ratings.

On Tue, 14 Dec 2010 17:07:39 -0800 (PST), "larry moe 'n curly"
wrote:

The Pentium4 CPUs in those Dells were such power hogs that even
Rubycons would usually wear out in about 5 years.

Sorta. Caps only dissipate power when current runs through them. In
the case of filter caps, it's the ripple current that causes internal
heating. If you use under-value caps or high ESR caps, you'll have
heating. Among other things, heating causes electrolyte loss. See
the bottom of:
http://www.dfrsolutions.com/uploads/white-papers/Uprating_of_Electrolytic_Capacitors.pdf
for the bad news.

Why has my 1976 Sanyo TV needed only 2 caps replaced (audio coupling,
vertical yoke)? The 2-year-old digital converter box that sits on top
of it has needed a lot more caps replaced.

Because they didn't have decent computers in the 1970's and therefore
could not calculate capacitor values to the bitter edge of near
failure. Designers weren't quite sure what they could get away with,
so they always left a safety factor.

These days, we have CAD workstations and modeling software that will
accurately predict when something will blow. The typical design
criteria is the absolute cheapest components which will fail
immediately after the warranty expires. Similarly, manufacturers of
capacitors didn't have the production controls necessary to accurately
rate their components. So a 6.3WV (working voltage) capacitor was
often really a 10WV capacitor. These days, if it's 6.3V, you fairly
well be certain that it will die a horrible death at a few millivolts
over 6.3V. Your two year old converter box was designed to operate
only up to its probably 1 year warranty. After that, it's actually
desireable for the manufacturer to have it blow up.

There was also an odd preception that electronic devices were suppose
to last "a lifetime". It was not unusual to have TV's and consumer
electronics last 20-30 years without anything more than mechanical
failures. Maybe a dried out electroltyic or blown dial lamps, but not
much more. However, that was bad for business as nobody wanted to
replace something that was still working. Well, that has obviously
changed to the throw-away and eWaste mentality. It sucks, but I have
no clue how to change it. Few seem willing to pay for quality, and
even fewer know quality when they see it.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

Because they didn't have decent computers in the 1970's
and therefore could not calculate capacitor values to the
bitter edge of near failure.

Of course they decent computers! Ever seen an HP-35? My aunt gave me one as
a pre-graduation present, and I was one of only three people on the U of MD
campus (out of 35,000) who owned one. Several of my dorm-mates were science
or engineering majors, and we'd sit around of an evening, using the HP-35 to
calculate the answers to their homework.

Frankly, even a slide rule is accurate enough.


Designers weren't quite sure what they could get away with,
so they always left a safety factor.

They still aren't sure. No responsible engineer designs a circuit to the
hairy edge of proper operation or reliability. (I know, I know...)


There was also an odd preception that electronic devices were
supposed to last "a lifetime". It was not unusual to have TV's
and consumer electronics last 20-30 years without anything
more than mechanical failures.

I've been lucky. I have tons of electronic equipment, and most has held up
with hardly any breakdowns. This includes recent purchases. * My NAD MR-20
lasted 20 years of heavy use until the focus went out. (If the parts were
still available, I would have fixed it. Ditto for my 36" Sony flat-face
WEGA, which also gets heavy use, and is nearly 10 years old. I expect it to
go at least another 10 years without repair (if I keep it).

The least-reliable products I've ever owned came from one of /the/ leading
American manufacturers of high-end audio. /Every/ component broke down
repeatedly. When one of the power amps damaged one of my speakers, that was
the last straw. The replacement amplification, designed by John Curl and
costing much less than The Other Spread, has given no trouble.

The "throw-away mentality" is most-likely due to the rising cost of
competent service bumping into the falling cost of electronics. Not to
mention that the latter are increasingly difficult to service. The rapid
changes in technology also encourage people to throw out broken stuff.

* Of course, I rarely buy cheap products. Purchases are permanent
investments that "ought" to last forever. This has mostly been the case.

On Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:43:16 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Of course they decent computers! Ever seen an HP-35?

I collect HP calculators. I think I have 3ea HP35's, not counting the
marginal HP35s. I went through college using a slide rule. In my
last semester, I lusted after an HP35 but had to settle for a cheaper
TI SR-10 clunker. I also built an electronic slide rule using
Helipots, analog multiplier modules, and a mirrored expanded scale
meter. It all fit into a brief case. With a slide rule, my errors
were usually powers of 10 errors. With a calculator, I had those plus
sloppy number entry errors. These daze, with computahs, I now can add
algorithm errors. The old errors never seem to go away.

Designers weren't quite sure what they could get away with,
so they always left a safety factor.

They still aren't sure. No responsible engineer designs a circuit to the
hairy edge of proper operation or reliability. (I know, I know...)

I beg to differ. Here's the typical scene. Engineer designs a
product to the best of his abilities. Everything sorta works, but he
had to stop designing in order to meet an arbitrary deadline so the
boss could comfortably fit in his vacation trip. The design review
committee decides that it's good enough, but the VP of bean counting
announces that the customer has declared that unless we cut out X
number of dollars out of the price, they'll go to the evil competition
in China. Actually, the customer has said no such thing, but since
the VP of bean counting's bonus check is dependent on the product
margin, it magically becomes the official target price.

So, our formerly sane and sober engineer is now tasked with butchering
his own product. Originally designed with a 10+ year component
lifetime and MTBF, he starts by removing almost all his safety factor.
Voltage ratings are cut to the bare minimum. Optional manufacturing
features (JTAG port, test points, documentation, removable fasteners,
etc.) are all removed. Sectional testing is replaced by parametric
testing and sample testing.

This is not science fiction. I've been through two consulting
exercises where this was almost exactly what happened. Nobody wants
to cut corners, but the mechanism for forcing engineers to cut corners
is built into the system. Quality is a luxury these days.

I've been lucky. I have tons of electronic equipment, and most has held up
with hardly any breakdowns.

My test equipment pile looks like a 1980's period museum.
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/home/slides/BL-shop6.html
(A clean shop is a sure sign of a sick mind).

The least-reliable products I've ever owned came from one of /the/ leading
American manufacturers of high-end audio.

I don't do much audio, so I have no experience. However, I did see
something rather typical today. I'm in Kmart in Scotts Valley CA
today. 6ea Dell computers (GX620). Only 2 of them work. One of the
two that was still working rebooted unexpectedly causing the user to
walk away in disgust. I got lucky and picked the last remaining
working machine.

The "throw-away mentality" is most-likely due to the rising cost of
competent service bumping into the falling cost of electronics. Not to
mention that the latter are increasingly difficult to service. The rapid
changes in technology also encourage people to throw out broken stuff.

Yep. When the iPhone arrived, I couldn't believe how many iPaq and
Palm PDA's I saw at the recycler. It's not like the old stuff is no
longer functional or usable. It's just not fashionable any more.

* Of course, I rarely buy cheap products. Purchases are permanent
investments that "ought" to last forever. This has mostly been the case.

I'm a compulsive repairman. Therefore, I rarely buy anything new. I
tend to buy used and broken, fix it, and then use it forever. Once
I've been inside, I can usually tell if it's going to last. The stuff
that isn't, is sold or donated. Looking at the photo of the shop, I
don't think there's anything on the shelf that I didn't buy broken and
later fix. Unfortunately, the pile of stuff that I couldn't fix (or
don't have time to fix) is about 3 times as large.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Designers weren't quite sure what they could get away with,
so they always left a safety factor.
They still aren't sure. No responsible engineer designs a circuit to the
hairy edge of proper operation or reliability. (I know, I know...)

I beg to differ. Here's the typical scene. Engineer designs a
product to the best of his abilities. Everything sorta works, but he
had to stop designing in order to meet an arbitrary deadline so the
boss could comfortably fit in his vacation trip. The design review
committee decides that it's good enough, but the VP of bean counting
announces that the customer has declared that unless we cut out X
number of dollars out of the price, they'll go to the evil competition
in China. Actually, the customer has said no such thing, but since
the VP of bean counting's bonus check is dependent on the product
margin, it magically becomes the official target price.

So, our formerly sane and sober engineer is now tasked with butchering
his own product. Originally designed with a 10+ year component
lifetime and MTBF, he starts by removing almost all his safety factor.
Voltage ratings are cut to the bare minimum. Optional manufacturing
features (JTAG port, test points, documentation, removable fasteners,
etc.) are all removed. Sectional testing is replaced by parametric
testing and sample testing.

This is not science fiction. I've been through two consulting
exercises where this was almost exactly what happened. Nobody wants
to cut corners, but the mechanism for forcing engineers to cut corners
is built into the system. Quality is a luxury these days.

My 30+ year *design* experience has been very different.

I see the problem today as one of folks cutting and pasting
"app notes" together -- letting the component manufacturers
do their engineering for them.

The unfortunate ugly truth is that many of these "typical
applications" are *not* designed well. And, the folks
who may have done the designs aren't available to answer
questions about their designs (and shortcomings thereof).

A "finished" design is usually outsourced to someone/somewhere
with the emphasis on low cost. The vendor *always* assures the
customer that they will produce a quality product.

But, product lifecycles being as short as they are, design defects
never get fed back into the pipeline -- a "new" product has already
replaced the old; a new vendor doing the fab, etc.

The end user is the root of the problem, IMO. They neither demand
quality nor are willing to pay for that quality. With many devices,
they often don't even know how their device is *supposed* to
operate so don't feel emboldened to complain when it *doesn't*
work.

Or, they are all too willing to use the product's failure as an
EXCUSE to buy something new -- "reward" themself. I've seen this
"rationale" all too often.

The "throw-away mentality" is most-likely due to the rising cost of
competent service bumping into the falling cost of electronics. Not to

New products often introduce new features. Why settle for last
year's model when *this* year's model has blah?

"Service" is usually not available, locally (for the majority
of clueless consumers). So, now they have to deal with packaging
the device up for shipment ("Gee, I sure wish I had the forethought
to save the original packing materials!"), paying for shipping
(with "tracking"), living without the device (or its replacement)
for the duration of the repair, an unknown repair time *and* cost.

Most "repairs" are board level swaps. And the prices of those
boards are ridiculous.

[E.g. we have avoided purchasing an on-demand hot water heater
out of the *realization* that any failures will be "repaired"
by a PLUMBER. Makes about as much sense as having a carpenter
do your dental work!]

mention that the latter are increasingly difficult to service. The rapid
changes in technology also encourage people to throw out broken stuff.

Yep. When the iPhone arrived, I couldn't believe how many iPaq and
Palm PDA's I saw at the recycler. It's not like the old stuff is no
longer functional or usable. It's just not fashionable any more.

Exactly. The same is true with most consumer kit. Businesses are
even worse -- replacing their IT kit every 2-3 years *just* so
they can buy the latest buggy version of windows... (does that
secretary REALLY need a dual quad core 3GHz machine to type up
business correspondence??)

* Of course, I rarely buy cheap products. Purchases are permanent
investments that "ought" to last forever. This has mostly been the case.

----^^^^^^^^^^ is the operative word, here. Our society has signalled
that an "investment" is "a year or two" (look at wall street and the
tax code). Even wanting to make smart "long term" decisions is
fraught with unexpected risk -- who will stock the replacement
parts for these devices 5 years hence? (sure, you *might* be able
to buy electronic components... but, what about plastic parts, etc.?)

One of my servers has triple redundant power supplies. I pulled
two sets-of-three power supplies from similar servers that were
headed to the scrap pile. If I had to buy one today, I suspect it
would be hundreds of dollars -- *if* I could find one!

I'm a compulsive repairman. Therefore, I rarely buy anything new. I
tend to buy used and broken, fix it, and then use it forever. Once

Ditto. Though only where practical. E.g., I often treat color
printers as disposable -- when my supply of toner/ink runs out,
the printer makes a graceful exit (I refuse to spend $200-300
for a set of cartridges!)

I've been inside, I can usually tell if it's going to last. The stuff
that isn't, is sold or donated. Looking at the photo of the shop, I
don't think there's anything on the shelf that I didn't buy broken and
later fix. Unfortunately, the pile of stuff that I couldn't fix (or
don't have time to fix) is about 3 times as large.

Get rid of it. If I haven't had a pressing enough need to fix something
that is broken, it goes out. Life's too short! :

On Wed, 15 Dec 2010 22:16:34 -0700, D Yuniskis
wrote:

My 30+ year *design* experience has been very different.

To be fair, I haven't designed anything really complicated for many
years. Between about 1973 and 1983, I played RF designer for various
companies. After that, a mixture of repair, speculation, and
consulting. Most of my horror stories and abominations are from "rent
a project engineer" style short term consulting in the last 10 years
or so.

I see the problem today as one of folks cutting and pasting
"app notes" together -- letting the component manufacturers
do their engineering for them.

Yep. I just love "reference design" clones that don't work any better
than what the applications engineer threw together. Some of them look
like test fixtures or evaluation boards, not finished products. With
RF, layout is actually more important than component selection.
However, we're not talking about RF here. It's ordinary mundane
capacitors that are the current problem.

Much to my amazement, I opened a 2 year old Lenovo desktop and found
polymer capacitors around the CPU. Nice. That desktop is going to
last a long time.
http://www.capacitorlab.com/capacitor-types-polymer/
The whole mess would go away if manufactories would begin using
polymer caps instead of electrolytics in temperature critical
locations. Too bad they cost a few pennies more, some values are not
available, and availability tricky.

The unfortunate ugly truth is that many of these "typical
applications" are *not* designed well. And, the folks
who may have done the designs aren't available to answer
questions about their designs (and shortcomings thereof).

Ok... confession time. When I was doing RF, I would steal as much as
possible. Motorola had a nifty line of RF application notes, with
designs by Helge Granberg. Most were close, but it still took a while
to shake out the problems. If I had sufficient experience with the
components and applications, I probably could have done better
starting from scratch. However, everyone was pioneering back then.
Any manner of head start was beneficial. Incidentally, I didn't do
any better copying designs from competitors radios. Most of those
barely worked.

Reverse example. Just before I was hired, the company had a problem.
The standard IF frequency of 10.7MHz was too low to be usable for the
rather wide marine band (156 to 163MHz). 21.4MHz was the next
available frequency, but none of the commodity integrated IF chips
would work reliably at 21.4 at the time. Something in between was
needed. After many meetings, the high command got tired of the
technical discussion and conjured a frequency out of thin air. It as
16.9MHz which was his daughters birthday. Orders for crystal filters
and offset oscillators were duly ordered. They worked, but the choice
of frequency was horrible, resulting in major birdies (spurious junk)
on top of common channels. Some tweaking helped, but it never really
went away.

Meanwhile, the filter sales droid leaked our choice of IF frequency to
all his other customers, also known as the competition. Since
everyone else had the same problem, they presumed we knew what we were
doing and immediately adopted 16.9Mhz as their new IF frequency. I'm
sure they weren't amused with the results.

A "finished" design is usually outsourced to someone/somewhere
with the emphasis on low cost. The vendor *always* assures the
customer that they will produce a quality product.

The vendor always lies. Most of the data sheets are science fiction.
Production parts never resemble the engineering samples. Welcome to
life in hell.

Long ago, Fairchild Semi did just about everything they could to ruin
my project. In retaliation, I systematically designed their parts out
of the product line. I kept records and kept the lying sales droid up
to date on how much in sales I cost his employer. I don't recall the
total, but it was something like $2 million in the first year. One
would expect that someone would notice or care, but nothing ever
happened except for a visit by a well dressed incompetent that
delivered numerous promises and then disappeared.

But, product lifecycles being as short as they are, design defects
never get fed back into the pipeline -- a "new" product has already
replaced the old; a new vendor doing the fab, etc.

Yep. That's also a major problem. Nobody wants to fix an obsolete
product when its replacement is in the pipeline. In some industries
(i.e. hard disk drive), sometime 3 generations of replacement products
are in the pipeline at the same time.

The end user is the root of the problem, IMO. They neither demand
quality nor are willing to pay for that quality.

Blame the victim? Much as I hate it, I agree with your assessment. I
suspect that simple economics is at the root of the problem. If you
can buy 4 junk contrivances for the price of one quality product, that
becomes a real temptation. With the economy in bad shape, going cheap
versus going quality is no longer an option.

With many devices,
they often don't even know how their device is *supposed* to
operate so don't feel emboldened to complain when it *doesn't*
work.

History will some day remember Microsoft Windoze as having trained the
population to accept mediocrity as normal. There are many things in
life where we simply have never seen quality. I never liked wine
because I always seem to end up drinking junk. My favored method of
cooking salmon produced dry rubbery fish, which I assumed was normal,
until I had some that was properly cooked. However, I got my start
with various Unix mutations, so I never got suckered into thinking
Windoze, MacOS, or OS/X were anything more than a bad imitation. If
you could give the GUM (great unwashed masses) a taste of quality, I'm
moderately sure they will demand better products.

Or, they are all too willing to use the product's failure as an
EXCUSE to buy something new -- "reward" themself. I've seen this
"rationale" all too often.

Yeah, I have the problem myself. I have a 1989 vintage SCO Unix
3.2v4.2 server running in my office that refuses to die. I keep
wishing that something would fail, but it just keeps running. I had 9
months of uptime before I had to move things around and start over. I
keep wanting to replace it with a shiny new Linux box, but only after
it fails. My previous vehicle went for about 290,000 miles.

New products often introduce new features. Why settle for last
year's model when *this* year's model has blah?

Yech. Because the new features are often useless or cause side
effects, such as speed and uptime problems.

"Service" is usually not available, locally (for the majority
of clueless consumers). So, now they have to deal with packaging
the device up for shipment ("Gee, I sure wish I had the forethought
to save the original packing materials!"), paying for shipping
(with "tracking"), living without the device (or its replacement)
for the duration of the repair, an unknown repair time *and* cost.

Sure, but some things are getting smaller and companies are becoming
more efficient at dealing with failures. Many companies have a flat
rate exchange program. That's not going to work for high ticket HDTV
monsters, but it does work for smaller devices. For example,
HP/Compaq ships out an empty padded shipping container for warranty
repairs.

Most "repairs" are board level swaps. And the prices of those
boards are ridiculous.

I'm still doing board level repairs, but I lose money on all of them.
The time and effort necessary to just get access to the PCB is often a
major problem. Products are just not designed to be repairable any
more. I just ripped apart a Roland D-5 junk keyboard synthesizer.
Wires and cables on all 4 sides of the sole PCB. No slack or service
loops anywhere, which means I can't run the board while inside the
unit (without building custom extension cables). So how much more
would it have cost to add a few inches of cable length? More than
Roland was willing to spend.

You would think that high end products would be more repairable, but
apparently not. I tore into an Icom IC-7000 radio. Street price
$1300. The mounting screws would either bind or strip the threads in
the soft aluminum casting. Many of the major components were buried
under layers of unrelated parts and pieces that had to tediously
removed. The driver hybrid was screwed to the casting with no access
holes through the PCB. A large number of leads had to be unsoldered
in order to gain access to the mounting screws. Basically, it's a
nice radio with absolutely no consideration for service and repair.

[E.g. we have avoided purchasing an on-demand hot water heater
out of the *realization* that any failures will be "repaired"
by a PLUMBER. Makes about as much sense as having a carpenter
do your dental work!]

Out of curiosity, if not a plumber, whom would expect to hire to
repair your on-demand water heater? Some of my friends are getting
into solar contracting and are doing everything from wind to solar
electric, including some really complicating plumbing for the water
heater. It's not really that difficult if one is willing to learn.
While I don't do well at plumbing, it's not unusual for me to do a
service call to repair a computah, and end up working on the printers,
network hardware, cell phones, PDA's, backup drives, UPS, game
machines, wireless, and all other manner of marginally related
hardware. While the losers specialize, those with a clue are picking
up adjacent technologies.

Exactly. The same is true with most consumer kit. Businesses are
even worse -- replacing their IT kit every 2-3 years *just* so
they can buy the latest buggy version of windows... (does that
secretary REALLY need a dual quad core 3GHz machine to type up
business correspondence??)

No. But they need it to run MS Office 2010, which requires Windoze 7,
which requires major horsepower. To a hardware geek (like me), the
whole thing seems backwards, but to the business owner, his
requirements are applications driven. He needs to run a short list of
major apps, they require a particular OS, and that requires a hardware
upgrade.

However, you are correct about one item. One of the major reasons to
upgrade is to obtain the latest release of the operating system in the
vain hope that it will have less bugs than its predecessor. Miracles
and bug free operating systems are possible, but unlikely. Still,
hope springs eternal.

One of my servers has triple redundant power supplies. I pulled
two sets-of-three power supplies from similar servers that were
headed to the scrap pile. If I had to buy one today, I suspect it
would be hundreds of dollars -- *if* I could find one!

I do quite well searching for obsolete components and parts on eBay
and various web sites. I don't recall buying much directly from
vendors in many years.

Ditto. Though only where practical. E.g., I often treat color
printers as disposable -- when my supply of toner/ink runs out,
the printer makes a graceful exit (I refuse to spend $200-300
for a set of cartridges!)

Sigh. I buy the refill kits and replacement toner refill protection
reset chip on eBay for my various ancient color laser printers (HP
2500 and 2600). I can usually refill a cartridge 3 times before it's
no longer with the effort. Looking on eBay, clone cartridges are
about $30/ea while toner bottles are about $24/ea. That's quite a bit
cheaper than new cartridges.

Get rid of it. If I haven't had a pressing enough need to fix something
that is broken, it goes out. Life's too short! :

Yeah, I know. I just can't get myself to throw away (recycle) the
junk. However, I'm doing it. Most of the antique machines are gone.
I'm keeping bits and pieces that might be useful, just in case. The
rest is sloooooowly going to the recycler. Sniff.

Whew....

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On 12/16/2010 1:01 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Yeah, I know. I just can't get myself to throw away (recycle) the
junk. However, I'm doing it. Most of the antique machines are gone.
I'm keeping bits and pieces that might be useful, just in case. The
rest is sloooooowly going to the recycler. Sniff.

Whew....

Although... Jeff threatened to fill a 40' roll off with stuff
and deliver it to me.

Fortunately, I'm out of reach now having moved.

Jeff
the other other one.

Our formerly sane and sober engineer is now tasked with butchering
his own product. Originally designed with a 10+ year component
lifetime and MTBF, he starts by removing almost all his safety factor.
Voltage ratings are cut to the bare minimum. Optional manufacturing
features (JTAG port, test points, documentation, removable fasteners,
etc.) are all removed. Sectional testing is replaced by parametric
testing and sample testing.

This is not science fiction. I've been through two consulting
exercises where this was almost exactly what happened.
Nobody wants to cut corners, but the mechanism for forcing
engineers to cut corners is built into the system. Quality is a
luxury these days.

Ouch. That's frightening to hear. I guess companies figure one lawsuit is
cheaper than the higher (ie, less-competitive) price of 100,000 units.

When the iPhone arrived, I couldn't believe how many iPaq
and Palm PDA's I saw at the recycler. It's not like the old
stuff is no longer functional or usable. It's just not fashionable
any more.

I still have my Palm Tungsten T3 and iRiver H120. Not cheap, but they're
both "a-workin still" after seven years. (Not even a battery replacement.)

Jeffrey Angus wrote:

On 12/16/2010 1:01 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Yeah, I know. I just can't get myself to throw away (recycle) the
junk. However, I'm doing it. Most of the antique machines are gone.
I'm keeping bits and pieces that might be useful, just in case. The
rest is sloooooowly going to the recycler. Sniff.

Whew....

Although... Jeff threatened to fill a 40' roll off with stuff
and deliver it to me.

Fortunately, I'm out of reach now having moved.


I thought that was what the overhead storage at your shop was for?
;-)


--
For the last time: I am not a mad scientist, I'm just a very ticked off
scientist!!!

On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 04:43:44 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Our formerly sane and sober engineer is now tasked with butchering
his own product. Originally designed with a 10+ year component
lifetime and MTBF, he starts by removing almost all his safety factor.
Voltage ratings are cut to the bare minimum. Optional manufacturing
features (JTAG port, test points, documentation, removable fasteners,
etc.) are all removed. Sectional testing is replaced by parametric
testing and sample testing.

This is not science fiction. I've been through two consulting
exercises where this was almost exactly what happened.
Nobody wants to cut corners, but the mechanism for forcing
engineers to cut corners is built into the system. Quality is a
luxury these days.

Ouch. That's frightening to hear. I guess companies figure one lawsuit is
cheaper than the higher (ie, less-competitive) price of 100,000 units.

I need a rant today (instead of doing my billing).

I don't know about the success rate of litigation for quality issues.
If someone was injured as a result of an inferior product, I could see
some litigatory relief being necessary. However, if the product was
basically junk, it would take a class action lawsuit to make legal
action worthwhile. The only people that benefit from those are the
attorneys, who actively search for potentially defective products.
Even so, the only companies that seem to get stuck with class action
suits are those with product liability insurance, which insures that
the attorneys will get paid. I've been involved in a few class action
suits and have yet to see anything resembling a full reimbursement.
Usually, it's a coupon that entitles me to buy another piece of junk
from the company at a miserable discount if I supply them with all my
personal information.

The problem from the company perspective was formerly that of
diminishing returns. How much additional cost will be necessary to
insure an acceptable rate for return. Some laptop manufacturers are
more than happy to ship laptops with failing BGA solder connections.
My guess is about 5% of these laptops fail within the warranty period
and perhaps 15% during the extended warranty period. To perhaps cut
this failure rate in half, would probably add $5 in cost for slower
cool down after freon reflow soldering and maybe some vibration
testing. Over the huge number of laptops sold, that's a fairly big
price hit when multiplied by the retail markup. So, it's cheaper to
replace the failing laptops, than it is to fix the damn problem. It
also keeps the repair people (like me) in business. The laptops that
survived the warranty period are almost certain to fail later. My
guess is about 30% failure in the 3 years following warranty
expiration. That should normally give a bad name to the company
product, but doesn't because users simply assume that a laptop is only
suppose to last a short while. Or, maybe they thought they abused it
by using it normally. I had one person drag in a known problem laptop
(HP dv9000 series). Even after I explained the cause of the failure,
his first inclination was to drive to immediately Costco and buy
another HP.

So, where are we headed? My guess is better warranties, better
contracts, fabulous extended service plans, and instant overnight
exchanges, while the quality of the product deteriorates to the point
of minimum acceptability. Actually, it will drop to the point where
the company support phone line starts ringing constantly. That's how
companies know that there's a real problem. If the phone doesn't
ring, then there's nothing wrong and it's safe to continue shipping
junk.

I'm always amused when companies and products are highly rated as a
result of providing superior service and support. If the product was
any good, it wouldn't need service and support. I'm very suspicious
of any company that does these well as they're probably trying to
cover up a marginal product.

Merry Christmas and Happy Extended Warranty Service.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

Hi Jeff,

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
I see the problem today as one of folks cutting and pasting
"app notes" together -- letting the component manufacturers
do their engineering for them.

Yep. I just love "reference design" clones that don't work any better
than what the applications engineer threw together. Some of them look
like test fixtures or evaluation boards, not finished products. With
RF, layout is actually more important than component selection.
However, we're not talking about RF here. It's ordinary mundane
capacitors that are the current problem.

But if you don't have *hard* data (specs) for the components
you're designing around, how can you accurately predict what
the "support circuitry" will be tasked with?

Look at a datasheet today. Any numbers that are present are in
the "typ" column. "Um, how does that figure vary with temperature?
Process? Supply voltage? Windspeed? etc."

Many devices have 1,000+ (I put the comma in there so you wouldn't
think I meant "100") page datasheets. How am I -- as a designer
possibly using this device *once* -- supposed to sort out all the
little details to come up with a robust design? Instead, folks
fall back on the "typical application" cited in the datasheet and
cut and paste these together to come up with their "system"/product.

I keep thinking about a "typical application" diagram for a CCD
camera some years ago. If you looked hard, you realized they
weren't using half of the camera's capability (i.e., throwing away
half the picture). What sort of a clown came up with *that*
as a way of SHOWCASING their company's product???

Often, the folks creating these documents are "new hires" -- so,
you're seeing all their mistakes. BUT THEY NEVER GO BACK AND
FIX THE DOCUMENTATION!

A "finished" design is usually outsourced to someone/somewhere
with the emphasis on low cost. The vendor *always* assures the
customer that they will produce a quality product.

The vendor always lies. Most of the data sheets are science fiction.
Production parts never resemble the engineering samples. Welcome to
life in hell.

Long ago, Fairchild Semi did just about everything they could to ruin
my project. In retaliation, I systematically designed their parts out
of the product line. I kept records and kept the lying sales droid up
to date on how much in sales I cost his employer. I don't recall the
total, but it was something like $2 million in the first year. One
would expect that someone would notice or care, but nothing ever
happened except for a visit by a well dressed incompetent that
delivered numerous promises and then disappeared.

Years ago, there was a magical concept called "second source".
Nowadays, you have *one* source for many of the key components in
a design. If they don't work (or, don't work AS ADVERTISED), your
sole remedy is to scrap your design and start over.

And *hope* the next SOLE SOURCE supplier you embrace is better!

All the while, hoping your boss and the marketing droids don't
roast your chestnuts for schedule slippage.

The end user is the root of the problem, IMO. They neither demand
quality nor are willing to pay for that quality.

Blame the victim? Much as I hate it, I agree with your assessment. I
suspect that simple economics is at the root of the problem. If you
can buy 4 junk contrivances for the price of one quality product, that
becomes a real temptation. With the economy in bad shape, going cheap
versus going quality is no longer an option.

The problem is independant of the state of the economy. I've
been bemoaning the fact that you can't *buy* quality, anymore.
It used to be true that, for a price, you could get a better
quality product. Now, it's a choice between crappy and crappier.

For example, we have been thinking about a new TV for a while.
We don't *watch* much broadcast/cable TV (literally, less than
an hour a day). OTOH, we *do* tend to watch movies, etc.

But, the mere idea of sorting through the myriad of LCD, plasma,
etc. offerings *hoping* to beat the odds on "quality"/reliability
is a daunting task. Instead, I'll look into fixing the 46"
plasma or the little ~20" LCD set. Meanwhile, living with the
27" CRT.

The same holds true of kitchen appliances. $1-3K for a new
refrigerator... AND IT IS EXPECTED TO (only) LAST *7* YEARS???
Are you *insane*???

No thanks, we'll keep the 17 year old icebox and wait for
"bisque" to come back into fashion...

With many devices,
they often don't even know how their device is *supposed* to
operate so don't feel emboldened to complain when it *doesn't*
work.

History will some day remember Microsoft Windoze as having trained the
population to accept mediocrity as normal. There are many things in
life where we simply have never seen quality. I never liked wine
because I always seem to end up drinking junk. My favored method of
cooking salmon produced dry rubbery fish, which I assumed was normal,
until I had some that was properly cooked. However, I got my start
with various Unix mutations, so I never got suckered into thinking
Windoze, MacOS, or OS/X were anything more than a bad imitation. If
you could give the GUM (great unwashed masses) a taste of quality, I'm
moderately sure they will demand better products.

I disagree. I think people are single-mindedly focused on price.
I don't think people are capable of making "value evaluations"
so they resort to a simple one: "cheaper is better (preferable)".

Or, they are all too willing to use the product's failure as an
EXCUSE to buy something new -- "reward" themself. I've seen this
"rationale" all too often.

Yeah, I have the problem myself. I have a 1989 vintage SCO Unix
3.2v4.2 server running in my office that refuses to die. I keep
wishing that something would fail, but it just keeps running. I had 9
months of uptime before I had to move things around and start over. I
keep wanting to replace it with a shiny new Linux box, but only after
it fails. My previous vehicle went for about 290,000 miles.

I get nasty looks every time I fix the washer or drier (both
approaching 20 years). "Why shoul dwe replace them? New ones
will break just as often (oftener?) *and* we'll have to pony
up $1K or more for the *privilege* of fixing them, instead!"

I drive a 1985 Monte Carlo and find a note on the windshield
every other week as someone is always looking to buy it from
me (different contact phone numbers so I am reasonably sure
these are different individuals).

I *updated* my Windows workstation to XP this past month.

Etc. I.e., I'm not "missing out" on anything by doing so.

Most "repairs" are board level swaps. And the prices of those
boards are ridiculous.

I'm still doing board level repairs, but I lose money on all of them.
The time and effort necessary to just get access to the PCB is often a
major problem. Products are just not designed to be repairable any

grin Spend some time repairing laptops if you *really* want
to "expand your vocabulary" (unfortunately, none of the words
you will learn will have more than four letters).

more. I just ripped apart a Roland D-5 junk keyboard synthesizer.
Wires and cables on all 4 sides of the sole PCB. No slack or service
loops anywhere, which means I can't run the board while inside the
unit (without building custom extension cables). So how much more
would it have cost to add a few inches of cable length? More than
Roland was willing to spend.

You would think that high end products would be more repairable, but
apparently not. I tore into an Icom IC-7000 radio. Street price
$1300. The mounting screws would either bind or strip the threads in
the soft aluminum casting. Many of the major components were buried
under layers of unrelated parts and pieces that had to tediously
removed. The driver hybrid was screwed to the casting with no access
holes through the PCB. A large number of leads had to be unsoldered
in order to gain access to the mounting screws. Basically, it's a
nice radio with absolutely no consideration for service and repair.

I have a high-end Sony digital amp that will end up in the
scrap heap RSN as disassembling it means unsoldering the
power transistors/FETs for all six audio channels from
the heatsink in order to work on the PCB.

[E.g. we have avoided purchasing an on-demand hot water heater
out of the *realization* that any failures will be "repaired"
by a PLUMBER. Makes about as much sense as having a carpenter
do your dental work!]

Out of curiosity, if not a plumber, whom would expect to hire to
repair your on-demand water heater? Some of my friends are getting

I would expect most failures to be in the microprocessor
control electronics for the water heater -- not the
few feet of copper pipe involved! What sort of skillset
do you imagine the average plumber has when it comes to
troubleshooting electronic systems? Wanna bet that
whatever "fails" is a 5c component?

*But*, I'll bet even more that the manufacturer (whomever)
won't provide *any* service information to me *or* the
plumber (since none of us could *possibly* understand
this INCREDIBLY HIGH TECH DEVICE :-/ ).

*Sell* me a detailed service manual for $200 (!!!) and
I'll consider the purchase. Otherwise, I'll buy a new
$300 water heater every 20 years and spend the money
I have saved from service calls on the "lower efficiency"
(you can buy a lot of natural gas for the price of a
service call!)

into solar contracting and are doing everything from wind to solar
electric, including some really complicating plumbing for the water

We've looked into solar hot water. Installed, they talk
like $3-5K. "Um, where's the savings, there? You want me to
give *you* all the money I am NOT going to have to give to the
gas company??? What's in it for *me*? (besides the higher
risk of a more complicated system -- electronics -- and more
hardware on the roof, etc.)"

heater. It's not really that difficult if one is willing to learn.
While I don't do well at plumbing, it's not unusual for me to do a
service call to repair a computah, and end up working on the printers,
network hardware, cell phones, PDA's, backup drives, UPS, game
machines, wireless, and all other manner of marginally related
hardware. While the losers specialize, those with a clue are picking
up adjacent technologies.

Exactly. The same is true with most consumer kit. Businesses are
even worse -- replacing their IT kit every 2-3 years *just* so
they can buy the latest buggy version of windows... (does that
secretary REALLY need a dual quad core 3GHz machine to type up
business correspondence??)

No. But they need it to run MS Office 2010, which requires Windoze 7,
which requires major horsepower. To a hardware geek (like me), the
whole thing seems backwards, but to the business owner, his
requirements are applications driven. He needs to run a short list of
major apps, they require a particular OS, and that requires a hardware
upgrade.

His problem is he is chasing something that intentionally
will never be attainable (THE final version of the software).

A friend who owns an insurance business was complaining
about being *forced* to upgrade OS to support the newer
version of the (EXPENSIVE) toolkit the business relies on.
This, in turn, required upgrading all of the workstation
hardware. Etc. For a small firm, the cost was still the
equivalent of two employees (salaries, overhead, benefits).

And, the most amusing aspect is that the "new toolkit"
doesn't give them any added capabilities! (i.e., you
have spent all this money -- plus training costs,
lost performance, etc. -- and not *gained* anything
in the process)

However, you are correct about one item. One of the major reasons to
upgrade is to obtain the latest release of the operating system in the
vain hope that it will have less bugs than its predecessor. Miracles
and bug free operating systems are possible, but unlikely. Still,
hope springs eternal.

Ditto. Though only where practical. E.g., I often treat color
printers as disposable -- when my supply of toner/ink runs out,
the printer makes a graceful exit (I refuse to spend $200-300
for a set of cartridges!)

Sigh. I buy the refill kits and replacement toner refill protection
reset chip on eBay for my various ancient color laser printers (HP
2500 and 2600). I can usually refill a cartridge 3 times before it's
no longer with the effort. Looking on eBay, clone cartridges are
about $30/ea while toner bottles are about $24/ea. That's quite a bit
cheaper than new cartridges.

I just rescue a printer with enough spare ink/toner. Print until
it is empty, then move on to another printer. (I don't print much
so I can get a LOT of life out of a printer rescue)

Get rid of it. If I haven't had a pressing enough need to fix something
that is broken, it goes out. Life's too short! :

Yeah, I know. I just can't get myself to throw away (recycle) the
junk. However, I'm doing it. Most of the antique machines are gone.
I'm keeping bits and pieces that might be useful, just in case. The
rest is sloooooowly going to the recycler. Sniff.

shrug Find someone who can use, fix or just plain *tinker*
with the stuff. I work hard at offloading things wherever
possible. Especially the *big* things (pinball machines,
arcade pieces, larger pieces of test equipment, etc.).

"Simplify" :