Slashdot Mirror
iFixit Moves Into Console Repair
sk8pmp writes with news that iFixit, a website known for Apple gadget teardowns and repair guides, is expanding into the game console market, launching a series of troubleshooting and repair guides to help gamers fix their own machines. They're also starting to sell replacement parts and the tools necessary to work on them.
"Right now there are repair guides for 24 gaming consoles, including 206 repairs and upgrades. Some of these fixes deal with major issues, such as the infamous Red Ring of Death from the Xbox 360, but others are simpler. For instance, right now there is no easy way to clean out the fans inside your console. 'I think this is probably the number one cause of overheating these days now that manufacturers have mostly gotten their act together,' Wiens said. 'This is routine maintenance, and it's mind-boggling that the manufacturers don't provide people with an easy way to open the case up and blow it out.' You'll also learn how to replace broken LCD screens on your portables, replace the motherboard on your PlayStation 3, and do just about anything else you might want to do to these systems, from the simple to the harrowing."
'This is routine maintenance, and it's mind-boggling that the manufacturers don't provide people with an easy way to open the case up and blow it out.'
Maybe its mind boggling to those of us who expect a quality long lasting product for a reasonable price... An idea that seems fairly obsolete these days. :(
But from the mfg's point of view... If it dies after heavy use clogs the fan with dirt and kills the console..
You're most likely going to buy a new one. Or the new model.
Especially since most consumers are not capable of working a screwdriver.
It's the sound of continuity/anti-tamper sensors being added to the external housings of the next generation of consoles...
That's a stroke of luck, as my brother gave me a broken Playstation 3 yesterday. It's an original "fat" model suffering from the flashing red light of death, which means I'll need to replace the power supply, and the iFixit site has a guide for doing just that.
I predict a theme of consolidation, buyouts, mergers, and a general public decline in enthusiasm for tech this year. In fact, if Apple isn't doing something, nobody will care. As a columnist, this bothers me. Ever since Sarbanes-Oxley was passed in 2002, the tech scene has deteriorated. Small companies have been restricted from getting public funding. This has prevented them from the kind of normal growth path that was once allowable. The normal path companies got to take is now gone. There will be no more Intels. And there will be no more Ciscos or AMDs for that matter.
Startups have unique product and sales hurdles to overcome to make IPOs (initial public offerings) worthwhile. Over the last decade, very few companies have managed this. Google and Netsuite come to mind. Before Sarbanes-Oxley, there would have been hundreds. Instead of having small, competitive companies all over the place, we have a few behemoths making all of the money. And all of the little companies get bought up by the aforementioned behemoths. That brings us to Skype.
Skype intends to do an IPO, but there's now a rumor that Cisco wants to buy it. Once that rumor surfaced, more appeared suggesting that Cisco itself was up for grabs. It's one big fish eating another.
The Temptation Eyes to not do an IPO has to be compelling for any company. Whatever the case, because of mergers and consolidation, Skype's competition has already shrunk. For example, Google bought the Gizmo VOIP service even though it had already developed Google Talk. Somehow Google merged another purchase--Grand Central--into Google Voice and into Google Talk, Gizmo, and some Gmail lash up I can't understand. The end result is a Google phone service that is very compelling.
Combining five or six companies into one scheme stifles competition, however. This is a problem across the industry. I have seen plenty of good little companies get dissolved into larger firms before their original vision was ever achieved. This is happening more and more.
I can't tell you who the big dogs will be when all is said and done. It could be IBM or HP or even Dell. You never know what is happening with companies like Intel, who just bought McAfee and are buying wireless chipmaker, Infineon. Intel has had its eye on wireless for years, even trying to make routers. The company has a lot of avenues to explore--and I suppose that both Intel and AMD are buyout candidates themselves.
All of this reminds me of another boring business: hotels. Once upon a time, a company would build a hotel and put its name on it. It would keep that name, unless the whole company was sold. No longer. Now hotels seem more like playing cards. One company will own a hotel for a few years before selling it to another. I stay at a hotel in London that has been there forever. I think it's been owned by at least five different management companies. The facility keeps getting passed around.
It's like the ThinkPad brand once owned by IBM, now owned by Lenovo. Food companies do the same thing. Nestle owns this and that, and so does Kraft. Your favorite brand of cheese or soap--or just about anything else--goes from here to there and back again. The quality may change drastically. It seldom improves things from my experience.
The tech industry wants to adopt the Kraft/Nestle model, but it hasn't quite found a way to do it yet. The Skype situation, whereby the company is independent, then owned by eBay, then spun off, then trying to operate as an IPO or maybe get bought by Cisco, may all be part of the newest iteration of the consolidation process.
This would mean that, for all practical purposes, the products would be cut loose, and all the tech companies would actually be holding companies and management companies. Cisco, Sun, and Xerox have all tried to do something like this over the years. But if the little companies they bought began to fail, they didn't launch them out for bid, sale, or separate IPOs, they let them fail and at swallowed the losses. Xerox was notorious for buy
Not as packaged as iFixit sounds, but I've found the Badcaps Forums a great place to learn about LCD monitor repair and electronics operation.
it's mind-boggling that the manufacturers don't provide people with an easy way to open the case up and blow it out.'
I do not think that word means what you think it means. Or your mind is defective.
You can blow most game consoles out by spraying them with compressed air. There's two strategies for this that I know of. One is to do it in the reverse direction of flow, with the system turned off. The other is to do it in the direction of flow, with the system turned on. I could see doing the reverse and then the forward. Use a can of air, or turn the regulator way down on your compressor. You do have a regulator, right?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I suspect that most of their business will be on stuff that's out of warranty anyway. I've used iFixit for years and years when I've had or inherited an Apple product that needed repair. It has always been old stuff because if the product is under warranty, it's quicker and easier for the user to send it to the manufacturer (well Apple anyway, not sure about how well console manufacturers honor their warranty). iFixit comes in when the product is old and out-dated, or you've voided your warranty by e.g., spilling liquid on it, or some other user behavior that's not covered. So I doubt the console manufacturers will care very much.
All in all, this is good news. I think that we're starting to reach that point now that electronics aren't improving so rapidly that old products are completely obsolete before their hardware fails. So it's good to see people like iFixit encouraging a culture of repair and reuse, especially for electronics which are 1) made from some heavy metals that are in limited supply, and are toxic to mine, 2) completely awful for water quality and human health to throw out and/or recycle because of all the heavy metals (children that live in recycling town in China grow up with elevated levels of Cadmium in their blood).
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Well, the first article I read, about how to replace the hard drive in the original XBOX is just plain WRONG. It's not as simple as opening it up, taking out the defective drive, and installing a new one. The hard drives in the XBOX are locked first of all. Second, the hard drive contains the dashboard OS, which if you don't have a backup of that, you are screwed.
I have done it, and it's not easy. First I had to take out the EEPROM and dump it to get the hard drive key. There is a program that will read the key for you. I had to buy a used XBOX at GameStop (who no longer sells them) and take the drive out of it, unlock the drive, and backup the dashboard files onto a CD. There is a Linux LiveCD to do this with. I then restored the backed up files to the new drive and locked it with my original key. It works.
How do they get around ban's from swapping parts?
yes M$ likes to ban you for swapping the HDD (some times) and the DVD?
I like this. Video game console repair and mod tutorials are scattered all over the internet. It will be nice to have them all in one place. The PDF download option is a bonus.
My question is, who owns the contributions? If I write up a guide to fix a console, what's to stop iFixit from taking that and locking the best features (like PDF download) behind a paywall like Instructables did?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Wow, I'm glad I found out about this place. This reminded me that Nintendo was completely useless in repairing my DS (one shoulder button wasn't working, sent it in, got it back and the broken shoulder button somehow switched sides). I just hope they have a how-to for keeping dust from getting under the screen - my house is FAR too dusty...
...one reason it's cheap is it's disposable.
Me lubs MilSpec equipment, but would hate to pay that much for rugged repairability when not required.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
'This is routine maintenance, and it's mind-boggling that the manufacturers don't provide people with an easy way to open the case up and blow it out.'
Really? It seems pretty simple to me:
1. Build product.
2. Make product so that it's life is artifically gimped by not being able to do the easiest of things like 'blow it out'.
3. When product dies early, customer spends more money to replace originaly gimped product.
4. Rinse, repeat.
Seriously, they seem to build most 'consumer electronics' to die on a predetermined schedule. If they built them to last, then the companys would not get any extra money from multiple purchases...and well...they can't have that now can they.
I like the idea of putting all this info in one place. I see this more as being a place to put info about repairing older hardware, though. Since not everyone has the know-how and tools to work on today's super-small electronics. If I find the time, I shall endeavor to consolidate all my NEO-GEO arcade hardware repair knowledge and add it to the wiki. It'd be cool to see them including usability mods too, if they haven't already. Like RGB video mods for older consoles, to compliment the regular repair info.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
We are not big and public, and never will be. And if you don't trust us, fork the content and go build your own manual. We need one place for repair information, and it doesn't have to be iFixit. We've chosen to sell parts rather than ask for donations like Wikipedia, but our approach is otherwise quite similar.