30-07-2016, 03:00 PM
In theory, anything can be fixed.
In practice:
The last of those being the important one.
I - like most of us, I'm sure - have been guilty of pressing on with a repair out of spite, when really, the sensible thing to do was to give up and return it to the customer as BER. I spent about 25 hours on a Roberts R300 with low gain, and in the end I swapped the chassis with one from my own collection to get the thing out of here. What could I realistically charge the customer? I think it might have been £30 or something. So, about £1/hour, just because I was stupid and stubborn.
I have countless more examples. Just one: Up in the attic I have a cheap and nasty Packard Bell PC. Some friends gave it to me as it had become unreliable. It's about 8 years old, and runs Vista. It's an AMD CPU of some sort - not even a basic Intel. So, I told myself - out loud - to remove the RAM and take it to the tip. Several times...
So what did I do? I opened up the PSU and saw a bunch of swelling capacitors. I then spent a couple of hours lookup up the correct replacements and ordered them from Farnell. A couple of days later, I spend an hour replacing them and cleaning out all the dust, etc. I then spent a couple more hours freshly rebuilding Vista from the recovery partition. Net result? It is now 100% reliable, but being Vista, it runs like a dog - much worse than I remembered it running on my old laptop when I got that. So another couple of hours were wasted removing the Packard Bell "crapware", which helped a bit. And what have I done with this machine since? Absolutely nothing! It's sat in the attic and will stay there doing nothing until I finally take it to the tip (minus the RAM).
Does anyone want a Packard Bell mini-tower running Vista? And if you were interested, what could I charge you? A tenner at most, which might just about cover the cost of the caps, but certainly not the time I've spent on it. I'm an idiot!
(Seriously, if anyone wants it, it's FOC if you can collect it from Evesham).
Aside from that, parts availability is a bit problem, especially for older stuff. Sure, substitutions might be possible, but what if it's a custom IC? Occasionally, there are solutions: http://www.markhennessy.co.uk/dm63/ - but that was an exception, I'd say. Back in ~1990, it was worth the effort for what I got in return. And I was "cash-poor, time-rich" in those days (today, I'm cash-poor, time-poor!).
Component level maintenance has obviously become less feasible these days, and stuff is designed to fail just after the customer has decided that they fancy something shinier. Like it or not, companies make their money from sales, not supporting the repair trade, and the majority of the public is sanguine about this, thanks to genius marketing.
Ultimately, don't see it as "beating you". See it as "choosing to walk away because that is the sensible thing to do"
Cheers,
Mark
In practice:
- Can you get service information?
- Can you get replacement parts?
- Can you take it apart non-destructively?
- Is there any point?
The last of those being the important one.
I - like most of us, I'm sure - have been guilty of pressing on with a repair out of spite, when really, the sensible thing to do was to give up and return it to the customer as BER. I spent about 25 hours on a Roberts R300 with low gain, and in the end I swapped the chassis with one from my own collection to get the thing out of here. What could I realistically charge the customer? I think it might have been £30 or something. So, about £1/hour, just because I was stupid and stubborn.
I have countless more examples. Just one: Up in the attic I have a cheap and nasty Packard Bell PC. Some friends gave it to me as it had become unreliable. It's about 8 years old, and runs Vista. It's an AMD CPU of some sort - not even a basic Intel. So, I told myself - out loud - to remove the RAM and take it to the tip. Several times...
So what did I do? I opened up the PSU and saw a bunch of swelling capacitors. I then spent a couple of hours lookup up the correct replacements and ordered them from Farnell. A couple of days later, I spend an hour replacing them and cleaning out all the dust, etc. I then spent a couple more hours freshly rebuilding Vista from the recovery partition. Net result? It is now 100% reliable, but being Vista, it runs like a dog - much worse than I remembered it running on my old laptop when I got that. So another couple of hours were wasted removing the Packard Bell "crapware", which helped a bit. And what have I done with this machine since? Absolutely nothing! It's sat in the attic and will stay there doing nothing until I finally take it to the tip (minus the RAM).
Does anyone want a Packard Bell mini-tower running Vista? And if you were interested, what could I charge you? A tenner at most, which might just about cover the cost of the caps, but certainly not the time I've spent on it. I'm an idiot!
(Seriously, if anyone wants it, it's FOC if you can collect it from Evesham).
Aside from that, parts availability is a bit problem, especially for older stuff. Sure, substitutions might be possible, but what if it's a custom IC? Occasionally, there are solutions: http://www.markhennessy.co.uk/dm63/ - but that was an exception, I'd say. Back in ~1990, it was worth the effort for what I got in return. And I was "cash-poor, time-rich" in those days (today, I'm cash-poor, time-poor!).
Component level maintenance has obviously become less feasible these days, and stuff is designed to fail just after the customer has decided that they fancy something shinier. Like it or not, companies make their money from sales, not supporting the repair trade, and the majority of the public is sanguine about this, thanks to genius marketing.
Ultimately, don't see it as "beating you". See it as "choosing to walk away because that is the sensible thing to do"
Cheers,
Mark
