Hello Rod,

 RG>>> How often would "occasionally" be?   my guess -
less than 0.01%
 RG>>> of all your repairs?

 CB>> It varies, but it's a bit higher than that.. at a guess,
 CB>> somewhere between 2% and 4%.  Sometimes I don't see one for a
 CB>> month, sometimes I get three in one day...

 RG> Err, are you talking about redesigning the same thing up to 3
 RG> times in one day, or do you have up to 3 pieces of individual
 RG> equipment that is poorly designed?

3 different jobs.  Usually when it involves the subject line
subject, but occasionally things like getting signalling tones
on different brands of radio to talk to each other...

 CB>> Save 20 cents on a million selling article and the company has
 CB>> broke even on the head engineer's wages - and I'd expect that
 CB>> he'd be able to save them a bit more than that.

 RG> Yeah, that's why many VCR's don't have front panel controls these
 RG> days..  half a dozen switches, multiplied by millions of machines can
 RG> be quite a saving...

And in a few years, although the VCR is fine, the remote gets
lost or broken - and you find you can't buy another one.. giving
the VCR makers another sale.  The "universal remote" solution
is no good either, if the type with the VCR was one with an
LCD in it used for timer settings.

 RG> This is somewhat different than cutting corners in design
 RG> when the engineer knows that it would compromise reliability
 RG> though..  (ok, I guess not all engineers are conscientious
 RG>  in this regard).

Of the very few VCR's I've seen the innards of, some of
them were built to an obvious minimum price to do the
job for a while.  The last one, about 6 months back, had
a small nylon gearset on the cassette loading mechanics..
which stripped, making it a tad hard to insert tapes.

If it had brass instead of nylon gears the fault would
have never happened - but brass gears would cost more
and wouldn't be a selling point.

 CB>> that should have never happened in the first place (one last week
 CB>> was a radio being flogged as "heavy duty" to the 4WD crowd
 CB>> failing due to a cracked board - 6" x 8" approx - that is only
 CB>> held in by four screws.. a couple or three more screw points and
 CB>> it wouldn't have happened, and would have cost the manafacturer
 CB>> 10 cents at most) I can only assume things are done that way.

 RG> 4 screws? Wow... thats extravagant.  

A good radio like a Motorola Syntrx has about 15 or 20 screws,
and that's just to hold the PCB :)

 RG> I remember the days when VCR's used to have up to 6 screws holding the
 RG> top panels, and a dozen holding the bottom.  These days, 2 screws for
 RG> the entire machine.

Hmmmm.. I wonder how reliable those VCR's used on interstate
coaches are?  2 screws would be fine when it spends it's life
in a TV/HiFi cabinet in the loungeroom - but in a vehicle
travelling 100,000's of KM a year it's a different story.

 RG> Screwing must be an expensive business 

Yair - that politician on the front page of "The Advertiser"
last week knows that only too well :-)

 CB>> Bob L would be the one to ask :)

 RG> Bob couldn't get a screw in a brothel.  ;-)

ROFL!

 RG>>> a very common one being VCR's designed for NTSC playback won't
 RG>>> work on all TV's,

 CB>> I presume this only happens when playing NTSC material - or does
 CB>> it happen when playing regular PAL tapes too?

 RG> Just the NTSC..   mind you some are pretty poor with PAL too.

Akai and Samsung by any chance?

 RG>>> The thing about VCR's is that they are so crappy and unstable
 RG>>> that its a bloody miracle they work at all.

 CB>> Yair - a lot of delicate looking mechanicals in there.. things

 RG> So why do so many people try to use brute force to get tapes in/out ?

To keep techs off the dole - the same reason that some truck
drivers attempt to fix radios ;)

 CB>> like that I rarely see.  The only "moving parts" on some of the

 RG> 90% of video repairs are mechanical.

Most of mine - probably 75% - are due to electronic abuse or
attempted self-repairs.  Mechanical faults are maybe 10%,
and then it's almost always a switch or pot..

 CB>> later stuff I see here are the press switches behind the membrane
 CB>> layer on the front panel - and the trimmer presets inside.
 CB>> Even things like pots for volume etc are getting rarer...
 CB>> replaced by CPU controlled attenuator IC's.

 RG> Camcorders have been that way for years.  Fortunately, these EEPROM
 RG> based presets rarely cause problems or need adjusting (when they do I
 RG> generally reject the repair, 'cos I have no means of reading/writing
 RG> to them, and the manufacturers jigs are either too expensive, or not
 RG> available to non-authorised service centres).

The same ones for radio cost anywhere from $100 up - and are usually
pretty simple affairs.  A DB25 plug, a common TTL IC, and a common
type of connector the other end... easily made up if I'm feeling
lousy :)     Unlike a VCR, which like you say would rarely need
altering, they are needed here to change signaling codes and such
if for example another radio is added to the fleet.

The adaptors can be loaned from the radio suppliers for a few
days if you ask the reps nicely - giving me enough time to
dupe the lead and copy the software :-)

 RG> In many ways I've found this a good thing - back in the old days when
 RG> a camcorder had 100's of presets (well, it seems that many) they

The thing I saw with the most presets was a tube-type projection
TV that Fraud Electronics at Lonsdale were flogging about 3 years
ago.  There would have been over a hundred in it, most of
them for convergence!

Regards,
Chris.


--- GoldED