Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Mon Feb 25 12:44:04 CST 2013
Hi Gustav: " You are just getting old and sentimental. " ...guilty as charged. ;-) Surface mounted components ended all electronics repair for sure. But component assembly and software repair is still fun. Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock Sent: Monday, February 25, 2013 2:44 AM To: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues' Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Repairing the Surface Pro Hi Jim You are just getting old and sentimental. But I feel exactly the same way. One reason is that in my young days I and my two partners constructed and produced a lot of audio gear and later audio-visual control equipment from the ground up, so I have a very good feeling of "what's inside" electronic items. But that was before ICs and surface mounted components on multi-layer PCBs, at the most we had dual-layered PCBs. ICs arrived and at some stage such were capable of handling audio at the studio level. This slowly turned you from an electronic engineer to a "component assembler". I remember the first hybrid power-amps and one of the main objections: these were not serviceable; "burnt out" was an unrecoverable state you only could handle by replacement. Side note: If you have had any connection to the AV pr multi-media business of the 80s, you will know what AVL was. We managed to fully automate an installation of slide and movie projectors controlled by AVL's QD3, Dove, and Raven units, and we sold a lot of these to the larger corporations. Today everything is digitized, DSPs are all over - even the power amps may be running in class D. Nothing to tune in a DAB radio. If it breaks, that's it. Think about your smartphone as a component. Except for some interface components and connectors, there is nothing to repair at reasonable efforts. /gustav -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] På vegne af Jim Lawrence Sendt: 24. februar 2013 17:47 Til: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues' Emne: Re: [dba-Tech] Repairing the Surface Pro Hi Hans: This is all in theory of course as I have never had to repair a cell phone. Being that they have always been under contract, the provider owns the phone until the end of the contract, parts are not easily available to the general public, there are no moving parts so your phone is unlikely to break and the only things that can be exchanged (or repaired) are as you say the SIM card and battery. Laptops are different though but the bottom end ones are so cheap that the parts are as expensive as a new unit. It is that I have a fundamental dislike for just throwing things out that are still working fine or need simple repairs and are capable of doing just what you need. I am in the process of upgrading an old server (also an old PC), probably in two to three weeks, that in less than twelve months, will be 15 years old. Considering that it has basically ran 24x7 for the entire duration, its not bad (It wasn't even running Linux only an early edition of Win2000 (1998) first and is now currently running Server2003 enterprise edition). Then there is a very old PC, running with junk parts from the 90s and can still run as a server if necessary... Debian Linux I believe. ;-) I have also kept many client computers running for as long as ten years and then there is the record, last year, when a client brought in a running Dell (from the time when they still made real computers), with all the original parts and the label on the back that read 1990. I have asked the fellow to give the box to me instead of chucking it out as I would love to try and stuff an over-clocked server into that box...a friend has access to a two year old ASUS G74SX laptop mother board with a i7-Intel CPU (6 core), 8GB of RAM... ;-) Jim _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com