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Consumers Starting To Realize Gadgets Can Be Fixed
An anonymous reader writes "Consumers seem to be paying more attention to the possibility of fixing gadgets instead of sending them to the landfill. It may be because 10gb in your iPod is more than enough for any normal person, it may be a deep, abiding love for the environment or it may just be the price. A New York Times article explores how new sites like FixYa and old standbys like Macintouch can aid the average user in restoring their 'slightly used' gear. Practically every gadget has their own website devoted to helping owners help each other deal with problems that arise. I personally like AVS Forum for my living room needs. From the article: 'Most other gadgets come with batteries that are easy to replace without custom tools. Replacement batteries for cellphones are often marked up by the devices' manufacturers, while third-party replacements are often available for 60 percent to 80 percent less. Companies offering replacement batteries for iPods often offer better batteries with higher capacities and longer lifetimes. Ipodjuice.com, for instance, sells a 1,200-milliamp-hour battery that will replace the 600-milliamp-hour battery that shipped with a fourth-generation iPod -- an improvement that lets the Web site claim that the repaired iPod will "last 100 percent longer."'"
http://www.ifixit.com/ is a great resource for everthing Mac mobile. (iPods and lappys)
In theory, theory always works in practice. In practice, theory rarely works. <><
Fixing a bad cap is worth a merit badge on your nerd uniform.
Those damn budging capacitors screwed over millions of products, from modems like yours to a number of different motherboards shipped in PCs by large vendors like Gateway and Dell.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
badcaps.net I've repaired about 20 motherboards with blown capacitors since reading that site. I cannot tell you how much money and time that has saved me. It's a hell of a lot easier (for me at least) to spend 20 minutes replacing 5 to 15 bad caps, then to put a new board in and trying to get windows working and praying that you don't have to reactivate the product over the phone.
http://www.badcaps.net/forum/ has a lot of information.
I have seen so many otherwise workable items about to be thrown out because of a minor, easily fixed issue (sometimes even just needing some superglue!)
I have a collection of about 6 DVD players, a few audio tape players, VCR's, etc that people have handed me when I said "it's probably an easy fix"; their response was "if you can get it working it's yours." Invariably the repair was simple, in the case of the DVD players just needed a lens cleaning (not one of those crappy sale unit lens cleaners, a real opening up and swabbing with some rubbing alcohol).
Basic principles of home electronics:
NOTHING is all that complicated. If it were that complicated, it would cost $20,000 or more. Even a DVD recorder sold 5 years ago for $1000 is still frighteningly similar to the one you got for $30 last week, and probably even easier to trace loose connections and items since it's not been subjected to 5 years of component consolidation and micro-sizing.
VCR repair, DVD repair, most anything else is just a matter of having a few basic tools. Well, that and using the grey matter between your ears. You can tell if there's a broken belt, you can visually tell if a capacitor has blown, you can smell if something has shorted out and you can usually see the scorch. Sometimes it's repairable, sometimes you just learn more about the standard innards (and if you think Company #1's VCR or DVD player is that much different from Company #2's or Company #3's, you're delusional).
You wouldn't believe how many times a "dead" PS2 can be revived just by cleaning the firking lens.
And if you kill it... parent point #2 is dead-on correct. You have nothing to lose opening up something that's long out of warranty and broken; the worst that can happen is that it's still broken when you're done with it.
Of course, when I've mentioned this to some of the people out there, they're terrified of the "warning, voltage" and "warranty void if removed" stickers plastered all over their stuff. We really need to teach people that they can do this stuff safely and without a lot of worry; I'm starting to be convinced most of these "warnings" are just there to scare people into not getting perfectly serviceable products repaired.
That would be a nice story, if Radio Shack was anything but outright hostile to any kind of do-it-yourselfer these days. 20 years ago you could build anything with Radio Shack parts. If I even go in there today and utter the word "motherboard", I get all but kicked out.
I just revived two 4th gen iPods with "dead" hard drives. It seems that the firmware in the iPods can't perform sector reallocation if a sector goes bad. The iTunes software won't re-init the drives in that case, and getting the drives into disk mode to diagnostics may not be possible.
/dev/zero to the drive until full. After that, iTunes was able to re-init the drives. They've been working fine ever since (fully loaded). The first time I thought it was just a lucky coincidence. When the process worked a second time, it seemed downright odd.
What I found is that if I connect the Firewire cable to an un-powered connector (6-pin unpowered, like a daisy chain, or via a 4 to 6 pin adapter), I can get the drive into disk mode. It must take a different path through the firmware in that case.
Once in disk mode, I used dd_rescue (retry forever) on Linux to copy
Why would Apple not have proper sectore reallocation software, especially in a mobile device? It's not like their customers would just buy another, or pay an (expensive) out of warranty repair. Oh, wait...
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
The owner's manual for most pieces of stereo equipment used to have a schematic diagram at the very least, and perhaps a detailed "theory of operation" description and parts list. Nowadays, you don't even get that level of detail in the factory SERVICE manual that you have to pay $40 to get!
:)
At least into the '80s, GE television sets used to have a condensed service manual (schematic and alignment instructions) stashed in a small compartment on the back of the set. Unfortunately, GE sets were some of the least reliable on the market at the time, so that service data was the least the factory could do to apologize for them.
About the only products that still seem to include wiring diagrams nowadays are major appliances. Washers and dryers usually have a large diagram pasted inside the back cover.
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Yours must be one of the rare ones like the one near where I am.
Most of them don't seem to carry caps, breadboard, and the like anymore. I was amazed when I walked into this one. They have an entire aisle of it. In fact, it was the only place around here that I could find one of the Cold Heat soldering irons around here (which, for light work, are actually kind of nice).
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
The military doesn't obtain tickets for family members to attend funerals.
I know that the US Air Force will assist with making arrangements for getting priority airline tickets, and will reimburse immediate next of kin (spouse, dependent children, or parents if not married, and not siblings either) travel expenses after the funeral, but the next-of-kin much purchase the tickets themselves up front. The original A/C never said the military (whatever branch, he didn't say) was buying his friend's ticket, only that they "offered", which sounds like they were just making bereavement flight arrangements only, which is consistent with what I learned when one of my friends who was in the USAF got killed in a plane crash several years ago, and the USAF issued a reimbursement voucher for his ex-wife and son's airline tickets to fly to Washington for the funeral.