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WSJ: We Need the Right To Repair Our Gadgets
An anonymous reader writes: An editorial in the Wall Street Journal rings a bell we've been ringing for years: "Who owns the knowledge required to take apart and repair TVs, phones and other electronics? Manufacturers stop us by controlling repair plans and limiting access to parts. Some even employ digital software locks to keep us from making changes or repairs. This may not always be planned obsolescence, but it's certainly intentional obfuscation." The article shows that awareness of this consumer-hostile behavior (and frustration with it) is going mainstream. The author links to several DIY repair sites like iFixit, and concludes, "Repairing stuff isn't as complicated as they want you to think. Skilled gadget owners and independent repair pros deserve access to the information they need to do the best job they can."
A good example is removable batteries in mobile phones. I was shopping around a few days ago and the only major Smartphones that still have removable batteries are the LG G3/G4, Samsung S5 (not the S6), and I think the Moto X. Everyone else has jumped on the Apple ship and denied you access to the smartphone battery, preventing a hard reset.
Stop copying Apple, you lemmings!!
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
This is why I buy cars made before 1993.
Sola Scriptura Sola Fide Sola Gratia Sola Christus
Since we love car analogies here, do you think the trend towards non-removable batteries is comparable to the changes in car body design?
It seems older cars used body-on-frame and other designs that basically allowed the person performing the repair to unbolt parts, work on them or replace them, and then bolt them back on.
The disadvantage to this was a weaker body, or a heavier one.
That seems to be the trend with phones: A lightweight and small phone means a sealed case.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
This is a newspaper -- bought and wholly owned by Rupert Murdoch and beholden to so much baggage of the gloomy old party-- advocating for at best copyright reform and at worst, a long winded cry for help to their sons and daughters to figure out how to get the DVR to record matlock tonight. DRM is preventing them from figuring out how to get steely dans greatest hits from iTunes to their Zune and its high time something be done.
Good people go to bed earlier.
If the product injures someone, the manufacturer gets sued. Doesn't matter if the owner or a repair person opened it up and modified it, even if the manufacturer is only 1% at fault, they have the deep pockets so they pay.
Everytime someone drops a phone into water, the first thing I say "Take the battery out and dry the phone for a couple days." Unless they have an "iPhone", in which case I laugh and say, "You're screwed."
Just the opposite. Of course you won't fix a dead pixel. But very often, the failing part is a really dumb component.
In those frequent cases, it is very frustrating to throw away a wonderful piece of technology (the OLED screen) because a stupid capacitor or resistor that is broken somewhere (but you don't know which one, of course).
Anyone might think something as low-tech as a washing machine would be easily self-repairable. When my mid-2000's front loader started sounding like a cement mixer, I went to the Intertubes and found relevant and well-documented repair videos. When I got to the end of the first video covering the complete teardown of said washer, ending with a requirement to find "a strong friend for the next steps" I called my local retailer and purchased a new washing machine. The point here is that while it would be nice to be able to fix some of the devices we own, sometimes the investment in time, money, health and frustration are not worth it versus replacing the broken device outright.
I think, therefore I am - Rene Descartes; I yam what I yam, an' that's what I yam - Popeye
The FCC is currently trying to end 3rd-party wifi router firmware (think Tomato, DD-WRT, OpenWRT, etc.), by requiring manufacturers to build devices that only accept firmware updates signed with the manufacturer's keys.
This means you'll only be able to install software the manufacturer has certified comes with their own bugs, embedded backdoors and security #fails, rather than be able to put something better on your hardware.
It also may mean that router manufacturers will be required to place NSA backdoors in the firmware and be unable to tell consumers about them due to National Security Letters.
The WSJ is right: We Need The Right To Repair Our Gadgets.
Pffft! Come on.. PSU, main board, sound board, breakouts for controls, driver board.. Come on. Not a big deal.. Sure, you aren't doing any component level repair any more beyond some shitty cheapo dried caps , but that ship sailed a while ago unless you are a hobbiest with good tools and a steady hand. It pisses me off to no end that you cannot even buy a repair manual unless you are a "factory authorized service center" no matter how out of warranty.
"A mind reader? That sounds like sci fi." "Honey, we live on a space ship"
I only buy Android phones for me and my family that cost less than $100. If they break (and it has yet to happen), oh well - I'll just buy another one. Ditto tablets (though I've tossed and replaced two of those). Our laptops are also cheapy Toshiba/HP's that cost maybe $300 each.
All of these have replaceable batteries, and I can generally replace the disk, screen, keyboard and other major parts of the laptops for $60.
The common thread here? None of these are Apple products.
Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches.
Now for my mid-morning soma break.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
My friend has a rather common model of refrigerator. It went out four years ago. The repair man was going to charge about $200 to tear it apart, and knowing the model, guessed that the control board was out, which he priced at $200. He didn't have that cash on hand, and I was across the street, so he asked me to look at it before he committed to a $400 purchase.
The control board was in the back, under a couple of plates (obviously meant for removal). It had a bunch of standard wire connectors to it, but you didn't even need to take it out to see the issue. There was a fuse in it, and the fuse was burnt.
Now here's the deal, normally a fuse is in a fuse holder, but this was a fuse soldered to the board. I estimated that the repair man just swapped boards, as it seemed very unlikely he desoldered and soldered in a new fuse.
We took it down to the local electronic parts outlet, and bought a fuse and a fuse holder. We desoldered the fuse and soldered in a fuse holder, then put a new fuse in it. It took a bit more "work" than a simple board replacement, but we justified that it would pay off if (or when) the fuse went out again. The fuse went out again last year.
It isn't just planned obsolescence. It's a plain F U to the customer. The manufacturer saved an entire ten to twenty cents making that board by avoiding the installation of a fuse holder, at the expense of driving up repair costs; but, in that manufacturer's mind they are probably patting themselves on the back that they are keeping refrigerator prices low.
The only way I can see this being fixed is legislation. Consumers are just too stupid to buy self-serviceable items these days, and if you want to buy something self-serviceable, nothing is branded as such.
The bigger question here is why is the fuse blowing? If the fuse is blowing under normal operation, then it's either improperly sized or the design requirements were misinterpreted (drawing more than originally spec'd out, etc.)
Granted, you're being safe by putting the exact type fuse back in (rating and what not) but if it were me, I'd either try to figure out what was blowing said fuse - or I'd put one in with a slightly higher rating. Slightly being 10% or so, just enough to give headroom but not enough to burn the house down (i.e. putting a penny in or some such....)
Karnal
I was studying electronics at the community college in the early 1990's when I came to the conclusion that future electronic devices won't be repairable and being an electronic technician was a dead end job. General electronics, repairing TVs and lasers were still big back then, taking up a whole building and five pages in the schedule catalog. I switched my major and didn't look back. When I came back ten years later to learn computer programming, The electronics program was a former shadow of itself, taking up several classrooms and one page in the schedule catalog. They taught general electronics for laser techs..
Bring Radio Shack back so we can buy the parts we need.
I think in general there is hostility towards consumers, and not just with things like consumer electronics.
Digital media such as music, books, video or films?
While there is an immense catalog of choice with what we can consume, we are are getting less and less able to have control over their choices, due to how "rights holders" and others corral us into their vision of how to consume and deliver this media.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Ok, explain how the source code for a driver is going to fix a broken printer?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
For various values of the word 'skilled'. I've been working in electronics for over 30 years. To 'repair' something used to mean 'replace components', but after a certain point it became 'replace an entire circuit board', which will always be a weak substitute so far as I'm concerned. But the real problem is that with the advent of surface-mount components, the door to repairing a circuit board largely became shut and locked to the vast majority of people. When you need (high) magnification and some specialized soldering equipment and supplies just to replace common passive components (YOU try to remove and replace 0402 SMCs with the naked eye!) it puts the job just out of reach of many. Of course most times passive components aren't the problem, and when the integrated circuits are in BGA (ball grid array) packages, and you need a $3000 setup just to remove one, and help from a diety to install a replacement, for 99% of anyone thinking of trying it, it just went entirely out of reach. This is not even touching on the subject of schematics for the device you're trying to repair, which for many/most things you're not getting your hands on for any amount of money, and in some cases you might get threatened with legal action just for trying to get it. Then there's the subject of proprietary software tools that might be necessary, and you're not getting those for any reason from a manufacturer. Even the manufacturers themselves often don't bother repairing anything, they'll just 'recycle' it and send you a new one because the cost in labor alone to repair exceeds what the thing costs.
Of course I'm going to be reminded that nobody is trying to repair the circuit board in their phone, they just want to replace the battery or cracked screen or whatnot. Manufacturers have never wanted consumers repairing their own devices, so yes they make it as difficult as possible sometimes. It's always been like that. Don't expect that to change, either. You're always going to have to go to 3rd party sources for parts and supplies and information. When we really need to cry 'Foul!' is if they try to make it illegal, though.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
it's a well-known issue
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers...
amazon said they'd give me $15 off the purchase of a new one because it doesn't charge any more. instead i purchased the $5 repair USB port:
http://www.amazon.com/Charging...
looked through some videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
and tried it out
in the first 15 minutes, i succesfully broke a tiny plasticzif connector:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
great, nothing to see here, move along, cross your fingers it will stay with some rubber cement
then i made a hilariously inept attempt to solder tiny connections of the new USB port with a fat soldering iron and some eye glass repair magnifying glass
but lo and behold it worked. it charged! ...for half an hour. now it's dead as a door knob
here's the real issue:
i don't have the time to do this shit, and the cost of modern electronics makes the cost of new electronics compared to the time investment to attempt a repair means repair is not an option
go to repair places and the cost of a repair is also prohibitively expensive as compared to the cost of a new item
therefore: welcome to our throwaway culture
i tried. i really did
i just don't have the time or patience anymore, not to join now myself
sorry
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Could we start with requiring documentation? We just got a new FTTH Hub from our ISP. No manual. No instructions. Vendor has nothing online and refers to ISP insists who there is no known documentation for the Hub. Sagemcom f@st 5250 for those wondering. So not only is it non repairable it's non-troubleshootable and no way to tell anything about the device.
There is both a valid point to the article and a flaw.
"Easily fixable" is in the eye of the beholder, but given the nature that this is a tech blog, I'm not surprised most people assume this is common; lots of people think they can handle something until they get elbows deep in it, and then find themselves out of their depth. Then they're likely to try to button things back up as best they can, and return the item as defective: if it was defective in the first place, they probably just made it several times worse; but if they were trying to hack or mod it, there's no excuse for returning it after they broke it. Companies are not going to settle for eating these costs, and their legal teams are there to prevent this sort of thing. I used to be a bench tech, repairing consumer electronics (chiefly VCRs, but stereos, preamps, cassette decks, etc.. as well) and, outside of head cleanings (which are also tricky on helical scanning head), idler/belt replacements, or minor alignments, the repairs I made were typically outside the capability of the average buyer (and how many people have an oscilloscope and function generator in their house?) I think it would be opening a can of worms to court their tinkering by say, posting schematics publicly on a website. But it also depends on the device and it's complexity.
On the other hand, some simple things, i.e. lack of access to batteries, is ridiculous. Also, if schematics were made available upon request (an email for example), that would probably nip a lot of the impulsive weekend hackers in the bud while still allowing serious techs access to them.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Consumers helped to make this decision a long time ago when they decided that it was better to replace than to repair. Yes, there were external factors. This includes things like the cost of getting someone to make repairs and the faster turn around of buying a replacement. On the other hand, their inability to conduct the most basic repairs on their own (e.g. fixing a frayed cable or swapping a replaceable component) went a long way in convincing manufacturers that planned obsolescence can be a viable business model. The prioritization of compact and more integrated devices over serviceability is also a huge factor. Computers are an excellent example of that. Contrast an early 80's computer, where nearly everything was in a socket or soldered through-hole, to a modern phone where there is barely enough space for a plug and socket for the battery.
We also can't claim that consumers didn't see this coming. Again to the computer example: there was a shift from the early 80's computers to modular desktops of the late 80's and early 90's (where the modules were more or less standardized), to the laptops of the late 90's and early 2000's (where the modules were less standard), to the present day. Ah, the present day: a time when a replaceable battery or an SD card for memory expansion (not so much to repair as to extend the service life of a product) is considered an anti-feature by some.
Manufacturers may have implemented these decisions, but it was the consumer who made the decision.
I don't know the WSJ, but if it is for "true" capitalism rather than what we have now pose as such, the position makes sense: True competition can only exist if you cannot force your customer to buy from you instead of hiring anyone else (i.e. competition) to fix his problem.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Blame people using frequencies and EIRP they're not supposed to and interference generated as a result. That's the downside to the software defined radio approach; the software needs to be locked to maintain compliance with FCC regulations.
Has nothing to do with networking or repair.
You can always get a router that takes a FCC-approved wireless card and route to your heart's content.
..don't panic
interesting timing. i've been working on designing modular computer products for the past five years, and just wrote up a white paper yesterday on exactly this topic
http://rhombus-tech.net/whitep...
the fairphone 2 is designed as "modular" - it's not exactly "modular", it's (very unusually, for a smartphone) designed to be repairable. you have to have a screwdriver, but that's a lot better than a hermetically-sealed unit that needs a saw or scalpel followed by epoxy resin to undo the damage caused by getting into the device.
also... what happened to the "bloom laptop"? i know it was 5 years ago now, but the whole reason why they started the project was because the entire class of students and two professors were absolutely astounded that it took *three hours* to disassemble a standard laptop... into over 140 constituent parts.
The one thing saving the TV/monitor aftermarket is all the klutzes who manage to do something visibly terminal to the display panel while leaving the assorted support boards intact.
If you have to depend on the aftermarket, it pays to have a different failure than the majority of owners.
be ready to pay dearer prices for oil changes, tiers, etc.
If I only need to get my electric car (no oil!) serviced once every 100,000 miles then I am happy to pay more than I am paying now for 25,000 mile services.
I don't know how in good conscious the Federal Trade Commission can accept our money.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
That was a GNU/Richard Stallman reference. Allegedly, being dicked around by the vendor of the fancy new laser printer with the magic binary driver that he wasn't allowed to fix helped inspire him to recognize the importance of software freedom.
Unfortunately, these days it'd be a fancy new laser printer with a binary driver, a EULA forbidding everything including running 'strings' against it, and a vendor hellbent on asserting that copyright, patent, or both, rights allow them eternal control over what consumables the device will deign to interact with(*cough* Lexmark *cough*). I don't know if that origin story is true or not; but it is practically edenic by comparison to the current situation.
The FCC is currently trying to end 3rd-party wifi router firmware (think Tomato, DD-WRT, OpenWRT, etc.), by requiring manufacturers to build devices that only accept firmware updates signed with the manufacturer's keys.
This is incorrect.
What the FCC is wanting to require is that the SDR chips in these devices only accept radio firmware loads that are signed.
This is because they license the radios, and the radios are licensed as a combination of hardware and software, Loading different firmware into the radio part makes it an unlicensed radio, and permits it to receive signals in prohibited ranges, as well as transmit signals to interfere with the allowed signals in those prohibited ranges, or in bands which require a license for you to transmit.
The FCC does not give a flying crap about the *router* firmware... "(think Tomato, DD-WRT, OpenWRT, etc.)", what they care about is the radio, in the same way they care about the baseband firmware in mobile phones.
So the only thing the FCC wants is to control the air waves (which is what they, as an organization, were created to do).
Several router vendors would prefer you not replace their firmware, and cable companies which are now deploying WiFi hot spots in their service areas using your house and the router they sold you in order to do it, are objecting to you loading your own firmware, since it means they can't offer paid hot spot service out of your house because you happen to have a router that does WiFi from them.
But that's not the FCC, that's the people who want to use *your* equipment in *your* house in order to further *their* business model at the expense of *your* total available bandwidth (particularly, upstream bandwidth).
It's not "you" that you need to be considering though - it's "your buddy that's good at fixing things". Slip her a twenty or two and she'll tear it apart and probably get it working again for you. My mom used to do that all the time in the 80s, and she didn't know the first thing about appliances: Just tear it apart, look for obviously broken parts, slipped belts, etc, and put it back together again. Probably 4 times out of 5 it would work fine after that, even if she wasn't sure what she had done. Granted electronics have gotten more complicated since then, but a failed capacitor or resistor is still usually the culprit, and anyone with a steady hand and the ability to read specs off the component can fix those.
Heck, even today my local Maker Space has a monthly "Fix-It day" when people bring in broken stuff just to see if anyone else can fix it before they go out and replace it. Everything from impact wrenches to computers to torn sweaters. Everyone is welcome to try their hand at fixing something if they feel up to it, and it makes for a fun social event.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
When the original Surface Pro came out, iFixit did a teardown and declared it "extremely difficult" to repair. Basically, most surfaces in the case were attached by a huge layer of epoxy, making it nearly impossible to replace screens, batteries, etc.
I think this is mainly driven by consumer demand. Consumers want cheap, small, light portable devices that have impossibly long battery lives. They also will happily pay Apple every single time a new model comes out and just throw away the old one. A manufacturer isn't going to use a screw to secure a component if glue will work, and the consumer has no expectation of replacing the component.
That said, for things that can be fixed, manufacturers do need to make service manuals available at a reasonable cost. I don't expect free, but I also don't want to hunt everywhere for it and be forced to pay an arm and a leg. Perfect example from my life -- our washer's drain pump died. I was able to find a replacement online pretty easily. However, without a YouTube video explaining how to get everything apart, it would have been extremely difficult to just figure it out. It wasn't exactly intuitive that the entire front of the washer had to come off in order to access a pump that looked like it was inside its own little cabinet. I'm sure the procedure is well documented in the service manual. In today's throwaway society, I'll bet there are a lot of people that would toss the washer and spend another $1000 for a new one simply because they're used to non-repairable gadgets. Why do that when the thing is going on 7 years' trouble free operation in a household that has to do laundry basically every day?
nobody cares about fixing cheap electronic gear
you can argue about whether or not this is right, but statistically speaking, nobody cares
Honestly, why do you need your phone to be thinner than that (and probably more likely to bend)? Are you planning to use it as a credit card?
You mean like the millions of people who accepted bendgate on new iPhones in order to be able to use Apple Pay?
Noisy power, old motor getting too hot, etc. Lots of transients can blow a fuse, especially as components get older and start drifting out of spec. And there's probably no cost-effective way you're going to isolate that capacitor or resistor that's now at +20% from labeled value rather than the just-within-spec +9% it shipped at. At least not unless it dies completely and lets the magic smoke out.
And personally I'd stick with the same rating of fuse unless it was *really* hard to get to. The fact that the fuse is blowing means there's at least a minor problem somewhere in the device, possibly just waiting for a large enough surge of current to become a major problem. Now if you're talking about replacing , say, a 50A fuse with a 52A fuse I'd agree with you - just stretch the headroom a bit. But fuses tend to come in larger increments than that, and going to a 60A or 70A fuse offers enough headroom to allow some serious component failures, including lots components that still have nothing to do with the real problem. And then your problem starts becoming a lot more expensive to fix than replacing a fuse every year or two.
Now, what I *would* consider doing is cleaning and oiling the motors, or at least checking if they can spin freely. They're probably the culprits after all - they suck a lot of power, and as the factory lubrication gums up over time they start having to work a lot harder. Just remember that 3-in-1 oil is NOT your friend for machine maintenance - it's not designed for long-term operation and gums up rapidly. You want machine oil - sewing machine oil is great for smaller appliances, and a light automotive oil should do okay for most larger ones.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This is a newspaper -- bought and wholly owned by Rupert Murdoch and beholden to so much baggage of the gloomy old party-- advocating for at best copyright reform
Fox spun off Dow Jones and the rest of News Corp back in 2013. Or are Fox and News Corp still as joined at the hip as CBS and Viacom?
Surface mount components make repair work a matter of just replacing a circuit card these days. NOBODY in their right mind digs out the soldering iron and replaces that capacitor these days, unless the cost to replace the card exceeds the logistical costs of maintaining the staff and equipment. It rarely does.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
AC is referring to the printer driver kerfuffle that kicked off the GNU project. Not being privy to its details, I can only guess.
My first guess is that a modified driver might operate the printer in a reduced functionality mode until the printer can be repaired. It's like inkjet printers whose official driver can't print black if the color cartridge is missing or empty. The official driver needs to spray yellow dots over the paper to make counterfeit currency trackable, but a modified driver would just ignore the color cartridge.
My second guess is that a modified driver could be made to work on a different operating system, allowing this printer to temporarily replace a broken printer connected to another system that is out for repairs.
You don't "repair" anything, you replace circuit cards these days. Failed capacitors and you replace the circuit card..
You see, the consumer wanted CHEAP acquisition costs, not something that was easily repaired. The manufacturer doesn't care about much about repair after the warranty runs out. These things are NOT built for easy repair, they are throw away devices now.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Perhaps we could start a new trend to counteract the decline, something like a "Certified Repair Friendly" logo that could be put on appliances
Would it be analogous to the FSF's Respects Your Freedom certification?
As I understand it, this article is about reducing Imaginary Property barriers that interfere with a free market in repair services.
I only buy Android phones for me and my family that cost less than $100. If they break (and it has yet to happen), oh well - I'll just buy another one.
Does this $100 include the cost of e-waste disposal?
What often breaks are components on the power circuitry. Those components are large and easy to change. I recently had an ATX power supply fail ; all were normal components. Same for a microwave oven : a lot of good old big transistors/capacitors/resistors ... and a microcontroller.
the most energy efficient strategy for an old appliance is to scrap it and replace it with a new model that is much more efficient
especially if you take your own time into account, is it worth blowing off a weekend with the family so you can save a few bucks on an old crappy washing machine?
Unfortunately, these days it'd be a fancy new laser printer with a binary driver, a EULA forbidding everything including running 'strings' against it, and a vendor hellbent on asserting that copyright, patent, or both, rights allow them eternal control over what consumables the device will deign to interact with(*cough* Lexmark *cough*). I don't know if that origin story is true or not; but it is practically edenic by comparison to the current situation.
unfortunately for you and your stupid argument, stallman and others managed to convince printer manufacturers to use public industry standard protocols for talking to printers, so today he would have been able to just print out his document without difficulty
How can be you be tracked if the phone is powered off? There's hardly any power consumption so what electronics and code is running in power-off state.
Putting a higher rated fuse into a device is usually not a good idea. Not to mention that finding a 5.5 amp fuse for that 5 amp one is not going to happen.
For devices that regularly blow their fuse, I've occasionally bypassed the fuse under test conditions to find out what's failing by looking for the smoke, but I'd caution you that one needs to first evaluate the circuits and do some diagnostic work to eliminate as many catastrophic failure modes as you can before you take the chance of burning something up (and your house down). Never, NEVER just put in a fuse that is above what is called for, unless you KNOW what you are doing and don't intend to leave it that way.
But I also work on old tube type Ham Radio gear.... Where an improper fuse can be a one way ticket to a blown power transformer and the destruction of circuit cards and parts which are not readily available for purchase or easily replaced. I can tell you that rewinding a power transformer, while possible, is tedious and time consuming and sometimes finding a suitable coupling capacitor with a high enough voltage rating is every expensive.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Oh sure, if you want to replace that electrolytic that exploded, be my guest. It's easy enough... In fact, any leaded component is generally easy to replace.
But what I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense for a manufacturer to provide the information or stock the replacement parts for component level repairs on consumer electronics. There are intellectual property issues, logistical issues and parts stocking that just make this too expensive for a manufacturer. While they have the item in production and for the warranty period after production stops, they can easily stock replacement circuit cards necessary for warranty work. After that, forget it. They won't risk their intellectual property and expose their designs by providing service information. The cost and risk is not worth it. It's cheaper just to build extra circuit cards and limit "repairs" to authorized repair centers who have NDA's in place.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yes, but you're making a *lot* of assumptions there.
Efficiency isn't always terribly relevant - you probably don't care much about the efficiency of a sewing machine for example, probably not even a vacuum cleaner. Not unless they're *really* inefficient. Moreover even for refrigerators you pretty much need to go back 10-15 years to pre-energy-star models find one that's not worth repairing, unless it was junk to begin with. Once people started actually caring about efficiency they cut away the waste pretty quickly. Even if you're a hard-core energy-efficiency fan, you still need to consider the lifetime amortzed energy cost of building the new refrigerator in the first place.
Old != crappy. An old, quality appliance will very likely outperform most newer models. This can become even more dramatic as the age of the appliance increases, as the only appliances to survive this long are the ones that are unusually dependable.
Time is most definitely valuable - but money costs you time. (or as my brother likes to say: Money is liquid time) For a very large portion of the US population $400 represents a week or two of their paycheck. If you're spending money equivalent to a week or two of your life to avoid spending a weekend, you might want to take a look at your financial decision-making process.
Finally, and most importantly, there's absolutely no reason that most repairs should take anything like a weekend. IF appliances were designed for easy maintenance, then all but the most complicated repairs would take less than an hour or two.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So last week, probably due to a software update on my phone, my smartwatch (suck it, haters!) didn't automatically reconnect with my phone after coming back into range. I had to manually re-connect every time.
Note that I've had the damn thing for close to a year and this has not been a problem at all.
I looked all over the internet to see if this was a common problem, nada. I'm experienced enough to think that this is the sort of thing that can be fixed with a reboot or an update that I didn't quite get yet. So I write the manufacturer to ask for advice.
They tell me to send it in for service.
I'll repeat myself.
They were telling me so send my gadgets in for service for a bad Bluetooth connection.
I basically wrote them back telling them that the could go fuck themselves. I didn't use those words, I was polite, though not nearly as Tolkien was when he told the Nazis to fuck off.
And what do you know? One update later and boom, fixed.
So, fuck you, tech companies. I'm making it my life's mission to make sure everyone I know doesn't get fucked over the way you tried to do me. Point being: companies are out to make things harder to repair, or obfuscating the need for repair to make you dependent on them to make your stuff work right.
And by the way, you take away my right to replacing parts of my own gear of my own volition, and you'll see me gritting my teeth over cheap phones until the day I die, which at the rate at which my blood pressure rises every time I have to deal with your tech support probably won't be long anyhow.
(FWIW, this is not the first time I've ever told a company that I shouldn't have to send something in for service when an update should do the trick.)
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Failed capacitors ARE easily repaired. If you can't do it, then your soldering skills suck and that's your own fault. Isn't this supposed to be a site for nerds? What is with all these morons today who can't fix the simplest things? Can't replace capacitors (basic soldering), can't fix disc brakes (see the car discussion above with all the morons saying cars made in the last 20 years aren't repairable), you people are all pathetic.
No, they didn't.
Yes, any *good* printer uses industry-standard protocols like PS and PDF (or some manufacturer-specific ones like PCL or whatever Brother's script is called), however your typical $30 consumer inkjet printer is not like this, and does all the processing in a binary driver (which is Windows-only of course). And then people complain that "Linux doesn't have any printer drivers". It's really pathetic too since you can get a $100 laser printer from Samsung these days which works just fine with Linux.
You're slow, aren't you?
The fuse isn't the FU, it's the lack of a fuse holder, and the fuse being soldered in.
My $300 "Family Actifry" was not working anymore, I had to disassemble it, about easy for a tinkerer, but damn to change the 15A fuse you have to disassemble everything because it is on the LCD control panel! :) Problem looked like a cold solder that heated too much...
I routed a fuse holder on the side so if it happens again it will take a few seconds to change
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Repairing stuff isn't as complicated as they want you to think.
I wonder how far off we are, though.
Oh I know I cannot solder... I went to class on the subject and learned that it takes a lot of practice and the right equipment to do it right and even armed with the proper knowledge and equipment it is beyond my skill level to do it right. I'm betting YOU cannot do it right either even for the very few "through the hole" mounted components you might actually find.
With today's lead free solder, surface mounted devices and the expense of getting the proper equipment in place, it is nearly beyond the reasonable limits for your electronic experimenter to solder on consumer electronic equipment. Yea, I have dabbled in all of this, but I know my limits and what I can reasonably expect to repair and what to just throw away. The vast majority of people they don't even open the case but throw it away and buy a new one. For those who don't mind cracking open the case, we are usually limited to replacing whole circuit cards and occasionally repairing something, but unless the failure is readily apparent upon visual inspection, you are SOL and throw it away in pieces.
On the rare occasion the problem is visually apparent, there are few instances where a soldering iron will be helpful, and a leaking electrolytic capacitor covers about half of the cases I can imagine. But unless you do this kind of thing for a living, I can almost guarantee that your soldering job will be less than ideal though the device may function when you are done. You won't have the right equipment, supplies or use the proper techniques to "do it right".
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Common causes of fuses blowing regularly but infrequently are:
- Under rated. Sometimes a 1.2A fuse will protect a circuit just fine, while the original 1.0A fuse has a measurably short life. This is caused by various issues, such as current running too close to the rating or surges. Voltage rating is unlikely to be the fault here, most mini or glass fuses are 250V.
- Heat. Fuses will sag and fail under high heat. In a refrigerator, everything but the interior will want to be hot. Bad air circulation will cause this.
- Poor quality OEM fuses. Highly unlikely, but possible.
Putting in any sort of a holder is a good move, simplifies replacement, and if the problem is elsewhere, troubleshooting is greatly simplified.
When I worked on various office machines, I had a huge selection of fuses on hand, with some oddball values such as 0.8A, 1.13A, weird stuff. Some were very specific to prevent cascading failures and total destruction, but some I think were just engineers splitting hairs. Especially Sony.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
This is all nice in theory, but note that the original manufacturer gains nothing by enabling you to repair their wares. They WANT their crap to fail about 30 seconds after the warrantee expires, and they want you helpless to fix it at that point. The want you to buy their newest shiny as a replacement.
I am probably plagarizing but to anybody thinks that they have rights to repair their shiny:
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU COWS!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I'm betting YOU cannot do it right either even for the very few "through the hole" mounted components you might actually find.
You'd lose that bet. I've been soldering for 25 years, since I was a teenager. I can solder thru-hole, SMT (down to 0603), and I have a hot-air rework station too.
With today's lead free solder, surface mounted devices and the expense of getting the proper equipment in place, it is nearly beyond the reasonable limits for your electronic experimenter to solder on consumer electronic equipment.
Complete and total BS; this is just like all the fools who complain that "you can't work on cars any more because there's too many electronics!". Electronics are easier than ever to work on as long as you stick with stuff that isn't too small. These days, Makerspaces are all holding soldering classes, people are buying Arduinos left and right, and you can buy a very nice Hakko temperature-controlled soldering station for about $90. Hot-air rework stations are more, but a cheap but workable Chinese model is only about $100-125. When I was young, those temperature-controlled stations cost a fortune so everyone used those shitty 25W irons. Components were a lot more delicate back then too, so it was easy to burn them without a temp-controlled iron; these days with lead-free, they've had to increase temperature tolerance a lot.
You won't have the right equipment, supplies or use the proper techniques to "do it right".
Go tell that to the people at your local Makerspace.
Then you make my point... I too have been doing this sort of thing off and on for 20+ years, but I'm an electrical engineer who knows that the certified lab tech does a better job at some things and I'm wasting time when I pick up a soldering iron. Yea, I can sometimes manage, but generally I'm slow, messy and I'm likely to cause damage when I do. You are equipped and claim to be skilled (which I seriously doubt unless you've been formally trained or do it professionally). If you actually are that is rare. Most people I know who claim to be skilled in soldering, really are horrible like me, they just don't understand what good soldering looks like and don't understand how difficult it really is to do it right. They just glob on the solder and it usually works,
I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of people who are reading slashdot that are equipped, skilled and capable of doing what you say you can do is vanishingly small and well under a fraction of a percent. My guess is that you, me and a handful of others are about it, even on Slashdot, and of those who claim to be able to, most really are not all that skilled.
Further, who's going to buy a $90 soldering iron to repair a $200 TV? Nobody in their right mind... Some, like you, might have the equipment for other reasons, professional tools or hobby use, but I'm telling you that the number of folks who have this stuff laying around is going to be pretty limited, even for slahsdot readers.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I'm not expecting the average man on the street to get a $90 soldering iron to repair a $200 (or even $600) TV, but I do have higher expectations of the Slashdot crowd. I guess I'm expecting too much.
Many of my EE colleagues seem to be similar to me (I'm a EE too).
Holy shit, you're a fucking moron. Soldering a fuse in is NOT a safety feature, it's a cost-savings tactic. If you want safety, you put a fucking fuse holder in, and an easily-replaceable standard fuse in the holder.
Holy shit, this site is full of fucking morons these days.
And I used to do the same.
It's just a device.
In the old days, you used to be able to get the manuals for free at the public library, or browse through them at most dealers.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well, another thing to consider is that around here, if you turn in a older, working fridge, the power company will give you $50 and haul it away for you. They define "working" as good enough to make ice, by the way. Might be enough to consider trying to rig it up to run again even if you decide to replace it.
My fridge would qualify (it's 20 years old) for the rebate, so I put a Kill-a-watt on my fridge to see how much power it draws compared to a new fridge, to see if it might be worth it. I found comparing its actual power usage to the claimed power usage on a new fridge, I would save about $40 a year. Now, $40 a year is still $40, but even with the $50 rebate I would be talking about something like a 10 year payback should I replace it with something equivalent. Considering that the prevailing opinion is that appliances all went to crap sometime in the late 90's/early 2000's, and the fridge I have is a GE model that's considered pretty robust, I figure I'm better off just keeping the fridge I have.
Reminds me of what a friend of mine said about why it's so much easier to fix the older car he owns than something newer; "It's just a bunch of car parts put together".
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.