Older Electronics and quality

[iomegaman]

More and more it seems consumer electronics has become "throw-away" quality right out of the box...

I recently purchased a Bang and Olufsen Beocord 8004 cassette player on Craigslist for $80.00...

Belts had turned to goo...but in the process of taking it apart I managed to find a service manual online (B&O provided) and I am  ALWAYS impressed with the documentation and schematic/manual detail of stuff from the 70-80's...

To be fair this cassette player was originally $600-700 dollars I think...but still...the quality and built in features make it worth restoring...(from my limited research it seems B&O helped design the original Dolby Noise reduction technology???)

This cassette player comes with an LCD and microcontroller/clock that measures the tape and allows you to set "memory store locations"...what a feature.

Anyway I am reminded of a Sony Mixer I picked the MXP21 and the amount of detail that was in the manual/schematic...no one does that anymore because its probably just cheaper to replace everything.

I'm not sure thats a good thing.

Beoworld

 

[john12ax7]

The throwaway mentality seems to permeate all levels of electronics.  I've dealt with very expensive test equipment (>$100k), even there when something goes bad the manufacturer identifies which sub-section went bad,  then that entire board is tossed and replaced with another.

Component level troubleshooting  seems to be a thing of the pastt. And I agree,  this is not necessarily a good thing.

 

[boji]

Grr don't get me started!  What with the one-two punch of making things intentionally unserviceable.

E.g. that 'special' chip Apple has started using:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/12/18077166/apple-macbook-air-mac-mini-t2-chip-security-repair-replacement-tool

 

[gyraf]

B&O were inventors of the HX-Pro (basically a auto-bias system that counts HF in recording signal as bias-equivalent) that Dolby protected the patents on, otherwise no connection.

But yes, in those days you were expected to build stuff to be repaired.

Jakob E.

 

[JohnRoberts]

The throwaway mentality seems to permeate all levels of electronics.  I've dealt with very expensive test equipment (>$100k), even there when something goes bad the manufacturer identifies which sub-section went bad,  then that entire board is tossed and replaced with another.

Component level troubleshooting  seems to be a thing of the pastt. And I agree,  this is not necessarily a good thing.

These days the circuit board is considered a component.

Several years ago my brand new dishwasher had one or more LEDs not working... Under warranty they swapped out the controller PCB.

Since I am me... : I removed the PCB and tried to find the problem. I mainly looked for a backwards LED or bad solder connection... After wasting a couple hours I gave up... When the service guy showed up, he swapped out the PCB and gave me the old one... I threw it away too...

About the only thing that might make sense would be for them to swap out boards and return the faulty one for factory rework, but I can imagine that being dicey. That board was fabbed in mexico so even that is not very easy. If the board is not reliably repaired, one sevice call could turn into two service calls, costing the company even more money, and lost customer good will.

JR

 

[iomegaman]

Reminds me of those batch of Apple Macbooks that had been made elsewhere with substandard solder...an entire cottage industry developed around "reflowing" the GPU chips based on guys figuring out you could toss them in the oven, heat them up and slowly cool and get them to work again...my first MacBook Pro was just such an experiment...picked it up for $50...foil/shielded components and used a heat gun...15 minutes later screen was no longer black...substandard solder and no real venting caused GPU's to disconnect in a few beads...

 

[fazer]

Avid and no schematics.  I was looking at a posted thread by Greg the tech maintenance log from 2004.  Lots of analog studio tape, consoles and digital .    He was repairing a 192 I/O.    Traced to a blown sot transistor and cussing because no schematics.  But he fixed it.  You have to have that mindset to repair SMD boards with no schematics.   

As the gear gets smaller and more complex,  it reaches a point of abandonment and buy new dig to replace.  I notice no one trying to keep digital tape machines running.  Analog tape is another story for a small select group. 

It’s such a different world from the studio full time tech of the old days and service manuals. 

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Depends which manufacturer. I've recently seen technical manuals for Yamaha mixers and they're fully detailed with schemos, lots of explanations, waveforms and tips. But you don't get to see them. They don't want you to put your big fat fingers and your dirt nose in those ultra populated SMT boards. Tascam do the same.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I recall when (not exactly when) TV manufacturers started touting replaceable PCB/modules. Probably in the 1960s(?). I recall one advertisement bragging about having "the works in a drawer" as what passed for high technology back before some of you were born.

JR

 

[Whoops]

The throwaway mentality seems to permeate all levels of electronics.

It's completely unsustainable, we live in a world were corporations take decisions purely based on profit  without any level of responsibility.
Human intervention limiting corporations goals is urgently needed.

The electronic waste after leaving our homes is not magic disappearing from the Planet