31-07-2016, 10:54 AM
(31-07-2016, 09:54 AM)Old Sparky Wrote: There's a part of me that says 'don't let it beat you', even though I know a hopeless case when i see one! In the past half-year I've had several such jobs, including an ONKYO CD Player which now loads the discs, but the spindle motor won't run, and a Yamaha HDD/CD Recorder that defies all attempts to fix it, and a couple of other 'dogs' of jobs!
Life is short, time is valuable.
Whereas the likes of Yamaha and Onkyo make cheap commodity fodder with a short design life. Bin it and move on!
Incidentally, suppose you did get that Yamaha working. How long will it remain compatible with the Freeview signals? Assuming it currently is...
Today, things move on so much faster than before. The days of buying something to keep for 20 or 30 years are long gone, sadly. Right now we can easily make AM or FM signals for our radios, or 405 line signals for our old TV sets, but you won't be buying DAB modulator kits on eBay any day soon! And let's face it - how many of today's DAB radios will still be working in 20 years time? Bearing in mind that the firmware for modern products is held in Flash memory - usually the cheapest type available - I wouldn't make any assumptions about long-term survival.
Back in 1991, I built a NICAM tuner. Obviously, it's no use any more, but it's nice to have built something that was 100% reliable and managed to outlive a broadcast standard!
But when you think that NICAM 728 only had a broadcast life of roughly 20 years, that's quite sobering. PAL obviously did rather better. But it was only 5 minutes ago when HD was the next big thing, and now everyone is excited about UHD. In that time frame, 3D has been and gone (again!). It's obviously in the interests of electronics companies to push out new standards because that equates to sales and profits for shareholders. And that's just TV; don't mention phones, computers, cars, clothes, furniture, etc. We live in a consumerist society where no-one apart from the likes of us cares about fixing things. Sad but true. Where will it end?
The vintage radio community is a bit of a haven from modern life, which is great, but we still need to be realistic. 50 year old Hacker Mayflower? Yes, that's very fixable, and it will continue to be useful for many decades - even if you're making the FM signal yourself. 15 year old Yamaha PVR? What's the point? Even though it might only be a simple PSU fault (IIRC?), it won't be compatible with modern broadcasts for much longer, and how long before the HDD fails? And until you've accepted that, it'll sit around playing on your mind, bringing you down, zapping your energy...
(However it might read, the above is written mostly for my own benefit. Because much as it's easy to say, it's not easy to do. I'm trying my best to sort out the junk I have here at home, and also a lot of junk that we have at work. I'm trying to reverse decades of being a hoarder - something that started when I grew up; there was no money for components so everything - literally every last resistor - was recycled from old gear. Today, about half of my electronics and radio collection is a millstone!)
