All electronics is going into proprietary existence.
You can learn and set up the maze of electronics that each one sets up, but, do you have the money and time to be soo specific.
After that expenditure, it pays to become an expert in that field.
I have sought the reading of the disk platters with no clean room required because of the short time each platter would be read [once] but, lots of equipment later and the training means this is my new job.
Dollars VS sense?
Hard drive pcb troubleshooting
I had a Maxtor 40gb dirve that failed (partiallly) at 53 weeks old. Warranty is 1 year. I was getting bad sector errors on about 16 gb of the drive. I got 2 more years out of it, using it as read-only storage for stuff I had full backups of, that was already on it (Video, MP3, stuff like that.). It finally crashed, with more and more files becoming corrupt. I stripped the parts out of it, and got almost $.25 for it at the scrap aluminum place.
As for the comment about almost nothing being repairable, I know about it first hand, as I have made my living for the last 25 years fixing consumer electronics. I've seen VCRs evolve from fifty pound, quality, bulletproof equipment to the flimsy CRAP they are today. Turntables went from having 3 pound platters that would coast for what seemed like days, to plastic discs that barely turn at all. Most of my customers don't even realize how well a VCR can perform, because they have become used to the poor quality that has been produced for the last 5-10 years. They don't remember the good old days. I believe this is by design. The industry has deliberatly reduced the quality of the old formats so customers will abandon them for the newer stuff.
As for being able to repair things, I have customers who have told me that they never knew that there were places that repair television or radio. They have been convinced that repair is never pratical, so they never try. Stores hire salespeople who have no training in anything but sales, (if even that) and I find they will almost always tell a potential TV buyer that their old TV "needs a new picture tube"-even if the problem is with the sound! Gotta keep that guy from leaving without buying a new TV!
Manufacturers look at repair as little more that a bug that keeps annoying them. Just try to get tech support on a piece of equipment that needs repair. Or order parts for something over 2 years old.
I am still making a living at it, but I think the reason is that I've been too stubborn (read:stupid) to quit. As the rest of the repair people in the area have quit, I've picked up their customers. Now there's just about nobody else here. No more people for me to get customers from.
So much of the consumer equipment uses custom parts or parts with code burned into a memory that it's almost impossible to keep an inventroy on hand. When you do get the parts, they're in a 144 pin surface mount package, which is almost impossible to replace. Not cost-effective anyway.
In summary, the stuff today is not built to be repairable. Even if you can repair them, it usually isn't cost effective.
I hadn't planned on writing a book, but I've got so much to say on the subject of "not worth fixing", and outside of a forum like this, nobody wants to hear about it. Actually, I bet most of the guys here didn't want to hear it. Lucky for you, I'm really holding back.
As for the hard drive, it's probably toast. Replace it.
As for the comment about almost nothing being repairable, I know about it first hand, as I have made my living for the last 25 years fixing consumer electronics. I've seen VCRs evolve from fifty pound, quality, bulletproof equipment to the flimsy CRAP they are today. Turntables went from having 3 pound platters that would coast for what seemed like days, to plastic discs that barely turn at all. Most of my customers don't even realize how well a VCR can perform, because they have become used to the poor quality that has been produced for the last 5-10 years. They don't remember the good old days. I believe this is by design. The industry has deliberatly reduced the quality of the old formats so customers will abandon them for the newer stuff.
As for being able to repair things, I have customers who have told me that they never knew that there were places that repair television or radio. They have been convinced that repair is never pratical, so they never try. Stores hire salespeople who have no training in anything but sales, (if even that) and I find they will almost always tell a potential TV buyer that their old TV "needs a new picture tube"-even if the problem is with the sound! Gotta keep that guy from leaving without buying a new TV!
Manufacturers look at repair as little more that a bug that keeps annoying them. Just try to get tech support on a piece of equipment that needs repair. Or order parts for something over 2 years old.
I am still making a living at it, but I think the reason is that I've been too stubborn (read:stupid) to quit. As the rest of the repair people in the area have quit, I've picked up their customers. Now there's just about nobody else here. No more people for me to get customers from.
So much of the consumer equipment uses custom parts or parts with code burned into a memory that it's almost impossible to keep an inventroy on hand. When you do get the parts, they're in a 144 pin surface mount package, which is almost impossible to replace. Not cost-effective anyway.
In summary, the stuff today is not built to be repairable. Even if you can repair them, it usually isn't cost effective.
I hadn't planned on writing a book, but I've got so much to say on the subject of "not worth fixing", and outside of a forum like this, nobody wants to hear about it. Actually, I bet most of the guys here didn't want to hear it. Lucky for you, I'm really holding back.
As for the hard drive, it's probably toast. Replace it.
A friend went around taking pictures of TV repair shops a couple years back. He wanted to have pictures of them before they all disappeared. As little as ten years ago they still existed.Geoff wrote:
{SNIP}
As for being able to repair things, I have customers who have told me that they never knew that there were places that repair television or radio.
{SNIP}
I hadn't planned on writing a book, but I've got so much to say on the subject of "not worth fixing", and outside of a forum like this, nobody wants to hear about it. Actually, I bet most of the guys here didn't want to hear it. Lucky for you, I'm really holding back.
For one particular TV I had tried to get an estimate as I knew it was the uP and I did not have a source for the proprietary device (a Zenith). The repair was more than the cost of the TV; and all they were doing was swapping the entire module. I finally found a shop that would sell me the module but it was costly.
Some things are not repairable as the skills and tools required (i.e. a clean room for a hard drive) do not rate the cost to buy a new one. But this is typical of the Western World. Back about 17 years ago I took a refrigeration class. Normally when a hermetically sealed compressor, like those found on refrigerators, air conditioners, etc. fail the entire compressor is replaced. The old compressor is scrapped. There happened to be an immigrant from India in the class. In India his job was to cut open compressors, repair the motors or valves, then resolder/weld it shut again.
I just went through a repair of a switching power supply. It was quite difficult to even get information to make repairs. Very sad state when that is what we've come to. Even guys that are "old time" repair techs down to component level told me to stop wasting my time as it is likely that I'd never find the malfunctioning component.
No trees were harmed in the creation of this message. But billions of electrons, photons, and electromagnetic waves were terribly inconvenienced!
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