G'day Chris,



09 Feb 97 10:01, Chris Burgess wrote to Rod Gasson:



 RG>> I haven't, but I'm a service tech, not a design engineer. I just

 RG>> fix whats there, rather than redesigning things and changing the

 RG>> layout.



 CB> "Redesigning" or whatever you want to call it is something I avoid

 CB> whenever possible - but occasionally it can't be helped.



How often would "occasionally" be?   my guess - less than 0.01% of

all your repairs?



 BL>>> all you guys have to do is fix something that an engineer

 BL>>> designed right,



 RG>> That's the theory, but surely you are not implying that

 RG>> everything designed by an engineer is flawless or couldn't be

 RG>> improved upon?



 CB> It's not usually the engineer's oversight or fault - the real

 CB> culprits in "bad design" cases are the accountants and other

 CB> financial people, looking to cut the costs.  Save $1 in parts on a

 CB> radio that sells a million, and that bumps the company's profit from

 CB> that radio up by $1,000,000...



Frankly, I feel this is wank...   sure, the accountants, etc could ask

(even demand) that an engineer trim $1.00 off the production costs,

but I don't believe for a minute that any of them could have the force

to make the engineer do so, well, not unless the engineer in question

is so incompetent that he'd fear losing his/her job over it.



 CB> Within one piece of equipment, true - the problems come up when

 CB> interconnecting two different things.. in this example, a DC

 CB> converter and a two way radio.  If "Brand X" converter
consistently

 CB> gives the same problem with "Brand Y" radio then it's not a fault

 CB> (i.e. it wasn't working for a period of time, and then failed), but

 CB> rather a bad design and either a "mod" or replacement of
one of the

 CB> offending devices are the only cures.



 CB> If you've done zillions of repairs and never had to do this, then



As per my msg to Bob, I was over generalising.



 CB> the world of VCR's and camcorders is a lot more standardised than

 CB> the radio game... haven't you ever struck a problem where both

 CB> "brand X" TV and "brand Y" VCR both work fine
on their own, (and

 CB> fine with "brand A" or brand Z") but not with each other?



Only two such cases come to mind....   a very common one being VCR's

designed for NTSC playback won't work on all TV's, and the other case

was a classic fuckup...  one design of an NEC VCR refused to show a

stable picture on NEC TV's. (they were fine with other manufacturers

sets though) .

The thing about VCR's is that they are so crappy and unstable that its

a bloody miracle they work at all.



 RG>> The only service techs that I've known that have

 RG>> tried to fix a fault be redesigning the circuit have been failed

 RG>> engineers...



 CB> OK, what would you do in either of these (real life) senarios?



I'd try to redesign them so they work...   I'm a failed engineer

though. ;-)



Cheers,

Rod



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