Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mansaxel]

I think the relation between repair, supply of spares, device durability and corporate think can be summarised in this single observation:

Now, that people more and more are renting their cars rather than buying them, the onus of repair falls on the manufacturer, who all of a sudden is requiring their suppliers to provide better and more durable wear items. (the Swedish association of automotive suppliers are very happy, because they think they're better off than the overseas manufacturers in meeting that demand. )

Source: https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/krav-pa-att-bildelar-ska-halla-langre (yes, I can read your language, both German and English (but I stagger in French) -- you can read mine  )

There is but one path here, and it is the money trail. Anything that deviates from maximum gain must be forced on the industry.

For hightech items, BD is right, I think. But I do not like it, I just conclude it possibly makes sense.

For not-so-high-tech items, like electric parking brakes on cars, that only can be put in service mode by the authorized dealer, they shall burn. In hell.  And be forced to supply an alternate method that is supported, publicly knowable, and safe.

For peripheral items close to high tech, like power supply connections in portable computers, repair makes sense.

[bd139]

Yes agree. To note I don’t like it either. I don’t think our technological progression has been a positive thing over the last decade in particular. But when all you’ve got to drink is boiled piss you need to force a reasonable compromise.

[tautech]

So it’s 4 years down the line and my SDS1202X-E drops dead then what do I do?

Not happening....go wash your mouth out ! 

[med6753]

I consider everything repairable here except for two items: Microwave oven and the Samsung 32 LCD. The Microwave for obvious reasons...HV and possible RF leakage. Bad ju-ju that I won't mess with. The Samsung. If it craps out and the fault is obviously in the PSU I will attempt repair. Anything beyond that forget it. The additional boards have no service data, can't be repaired, and are expensive to replace even if available. Into the trash it goes.   

Oh...and the Acer Laptop.....I would give it a shot. But might have to add it to the list too.

[bd139]

So it’s 4 years down the line and my SDS1202X-E drops dead then what do I do?

Not happening....go wash your mouth out ! 

Hahaha.

You never know which is the problem. Really though I don’t care for my perspective. Works out at £10.50 a month over its warrantied life which isn’t much.

[tautech]

So it’s 4 years down the line and my SDS1202X-E drops dead then what do I do?

Not happening....go wash your mouth out ! 

Hahaha.

You never know which is the problem. Really though I don’t care for my perspective. Works out at £10.50 a month over its warrantied life which isn’t much.

Still, you got me thinking and even that these are so reliable but how much does a replacement mainboard cost ?
I'll find out on Monday and let you know.....factory was open yesterday Good Friday and should be open Easter Monday.

[bd139]

So it’s 4 years down the line and my SDS1202X-E drops dead then what do I do?

Not happening....go wash your mouth out ! 

Hahaha.

You never know which is the problem. Really though I don’t care for my perspective. Works out at £10.50 a month over its warrantied life which isn’t much.

Still, you got me thinking and even that these are so reliable but how much does a replacement mainboard cost ?
I'll find out on Monday and let you know.....factory was open yesterday Good Friday and should be open Easter Monday.

It’s a good question. From Dave’s teardown I see that it’s conservatively engineered which is a good thing. Key risks are BGA packaged Zynq and the RAM. And obviously things like FLASH failure. The power supply is especially nice. The fan is standard. Can’t complain!

[tggzzz]

Much more important, IMO, will be to make the manufacturer pay up front the real world disposal cost of all this disposable tech.

It is an appealing idea, except for two things:

• the manufacturer won't pay: the customer will. That level of indirection is problematic one way or another
• what should the disposal cost be, and when should it be paid?

[tggzzz]

... & it wasn't until ordinary stiffs started having actual disposable income that industrial progress really took off.

Such cause and effect are intimately entwined, and you need to account for the "pump priming" that had to happen.

The aristocrats in feudal times lived in cold, damp piles which stunk, the roads their carriages travelled on were pretty much dirt tracks.

Lower orders lived in even worse conditions.

[tggzzz]

That’s the problem I want sorted. And no manufacturer specified warranties should exist. Should be statutory  law.

Yep they are crazy rugged. Had one damaged device here in about 6 years and that was a face down drop of an ancientiPhone 7 into concrete. And I still got £100 for it  . iPads have survived kids for years. In fact the one I just sold end of last year was 7 years old and still going strong.

I dropped my non-new phone from the roof onto concrete. It survived and continued to work for years.

[Brumby]

Much more important, IMO, will be to make the manufacturer pay up front the real world disposal cost of all this disposable tech.

It is an appealing idea, except for two things:

• the manufacturer won't pay: the customer will. That level of indirection is problematic one way or another
• what should the disposal cost be, and when should it be paid?

Meaningless statements.

The customer ALWAYS pays for EVERYTHING.

[Brumby]

So you think it's really reasonable to expect them to pay the R&D for custom silicon, then just let the contract manufacturer sell that part on the open market?

   I am surprised to find such an argument here - especially in this thread.  The higher probability faults are much less esoteric, such as this:

...... it probably won't be some "high tech" bit of the guts, but is more likely to be a stupid power connector, or the lid hinges.

One of the parts that Louis Rossmann repeatedly references is a charging chip.  Like that is advanced, hi-tech, ultra sophisticated silicon...

I consider everything repairable here except for two items: Microwave oven and the Samsung 32 LCD. The Microwave for obvious reasons...HV and possible RF leakage. Bad ju-ju that I won't mess with.

But what if you have someone you can get to do the job who is up to speed with these?

[tggzzz]

Much more important, IMO, will be to make the manufacturer pay up front the real world disposal cost of all this disposable tech.

It is an appealing idea, except for two things:

• the manufacturer won't pay: the customer will. That level of indirection is problematic one way or another
• what should the disposal cost be, and when should it be paid?

Meaningless statements.

The customer ALWAYS pays for EVERYTHING.

Er, you've just agreed - so I don't see how you think it can be meaningless!

Now it may be an obvious statement, but it needed to be pointed out!

[tautech]

So it’s 4 years down the line and my SDS1202X-E drops dead then what do I do?

Not happening....go wash your mouth out ! 

Hahaha.

You never know which is the problem. Really though I don’t care for my perspective. Works out at £10.50 a month over its warrantied life which isn’t much.

Still, you got me thinking and even that these are so reliable but how much does a replacement mainboard cost ?
I'll find out on Monday and let you know.....factory was open yesterday Good Friday and should be open Easter Monday.

It’s a good question. From Dave’s teardown I see that it’s conservatively engineered which is a good thing. Key risks are BGA packaged Zynq and the RAM. And obviously things like FLASH failure. The power supply is especially nice. The fan is standard. Can’t complain!

Vee have the tools to fix such things ! 
Some might charge for it but I don't. 

[bd139]

Hmm.

I implore the pro repair people to repair this one 



The pink dots appear on screen recordings too...

Edit: the correct repair for this is to throw the fucking thing back over the fence at the manufacturer and get a full refund.

[tggzzz]

People rightly complain about the descriptions in some fleabay listings. Here's a rather honest one...

Hewlett Packard HP3456A Digital Voltmeter, 6.5 Digit, Repair

This is one of a pair that have been used in the lab for years. The two tracked within a handful of microvolts on the lowest range and had negligable aging over many years. Used here mainly for voltage reference development work. Not used for some time and this one has unfortunately developed a fault. Power on self test initially reported a -11 error. Left for a few minutes, self tests run ok, but all measurements are invalid. From the manual, section 8-343, error 11 suggests an ohms converter, input amplifier, or input switching fault. A 1 volt Fluke reference input shows ~0.9 volts, which suggests one of the input fet switches is leaky. Also, auto ranging is not consistent. Not looked further, as no time to fix it here, but ss far as I know, this has never been repaired in the past, with all boards looking untouched. Pdf manual on cdrom included with the sale, a very stable meter and well worth fixing.

Update: I left this running for 24+ hours and it now appears accurate on DC and AC ranges. Suspect the fault is either connector related, or a dry joint. See the first two pics showing this...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hewlett-Packard-HP3456A-Digital-Voltmeter-6-5-Digit-Repair/133711544559

[bd139]

Yeah that's why I'm not bidding on it 

[med6753]

Yeah that's why I'm not bidding on it 

Why not? Could be a simple fix. And you practically wet your pants when I bought mine. 

[bd139]

I’ve got too many projects on the go already. I came to the conclusion that if I obtain more I will be demotivated.

[Brumby]

Much more important, IMO, will be to make the manufacturer pay up front the real world disposal cost of all this disposable tech.

It is an appealing idea, except for two things:

• the manufacturer won't pay: the customer will. That level of indirection is problematic one way or another
• what should the disposal cost be, and when should it be paid?

Meaningless statements.

The customer ALWAYS pays for EVERYTHING.

Er, you've just agreed - so I don't see how you think it can be meaningless!

Now it may be an obvious statement, but it needed to be pointed out!

Sorry - I was thinking of something else when that post came up and I misread.   

[factory]

Almost missed the correct TEA for this page, hp 3490A. 



They will probably still be broken by the time those on 50 posts per page get to this number. 

David

[med6753]

I’ve got too many projects on the go already. I came to the conclusion that if I obtain more I will be demotivated.

I hear you. My current demotivation is having a big project staring you in the face and not being able to work it because you're a cripple, or at least feel like one. 

[Saskia]

I am pro right to repair but also applaud some of BD's points.

Example: had an Asus graphics board.
Died after a couple of weeks, swapped out and replaced by Asus.
Couple of months later the replacement board died. Turned out that the GDDR6 RAM was dead (they did have a lot of defective chips out there ...)
Those were board level repaired by Asus.
Both time fixed under warranty, which is fine.

Have a Zotac card which gave me a couple of strange sensor readings. Need to check this, currently the driver crashes when doing opencl calls. May be the card, may be it just overheated, don't know. Still under warranty, but most likely a sensor or the RAM which is defective. Those can be swapped out, even with a hot air station. So for the person who has the equipment, why should a sumhunnerd bucks card suddenly become a door stop ?

I do not toss 500 bucks for an hour of repair.

I would not toss my car for a blown bulb just because the manufacturer said so.

Making stuff repairable and providing spares and decent repair services prevents e-waste (and waste in general). There will always be some crooks around who claim to be able to repair stuff when they are not, and the market will punish them in the long run.

As for the rest - should I take a Mercedes Benz GL type SUV and push it to the wreckers just because the passenger seat illumination and gesture sensor (a xilinx fpga) barfed and committed Seppuku, the engine control goes bling signaling this error and the inspector fails the car ?
BTW I did wreck a Land Rover Discovery for a similar shit show. Trying to fix the ECU would have bricked the car. Fixing everything the Land Rover way would have cost ~ 40k to replace all 23 or so ECUs. Which is a nice way of telling the customer FU.

(I would not touch Mercedes ever again, because it's overpriced crap as is any other German car, sorry Zucca) but that is besides the point.
Having to wreck an appliance just because some minor module broke is absolutely inacceptable.

I do agree though that the standard person (at least over here) no longer learns how to write, do math, get into science, but perfectly knows how to dance its name (they are trying to abolish sex over here ...)

Also, if the excrement hits the air encabulator, those who are able to fix things and improvise will probably be in high demand.

[Specmaster]

That’s the problem I want sorted. And no manufacturer specified warranties should exist. Should be statutory  law.

Yep they are crazy rugged. Had one damaged device here in about 6 years and that was a face down drop of an ancientiPhone 7 into concrete. And I still got £100 for it  . iPads have survived kids for years. In fact the one I just sold end of last year was 7 years old and still going strong.

I dropped my non-new phone from the roof onto concrete. It survived and continued to work for years.

Then on the other hand, my Brother-in-Law dropped his iPhone10 onto the floor in the toilets at Gatwick Airport and smashed the screen on it. It is just pure luck of the draw, there are thousands of ways that things can hit the floor etc and just a fraction of a degree this or that way could make all the differance on the outcome.

I dropped my iPad onto a carpeted floor (deep pile and deep underlay as well), but it still managed to break my screen protector that I fitted to it when it was new. If I hadn't fitted that protector, my screen then it is highly likely that my actual screen might well have been smashed.

[bd139]

Crappy screen protector 

The three kids have iPads and have bashed them around pretty heavily. Absolutely no breakage yet. I was surprised.