people willing to take the time to learn how something works and how to fix things is the only way to get away from being a throw away society.

 

Need to encourage manufacturers to build replacement parts instead of whole units. But there is no money in that. Especially when you sell a new alt for $250, the core is $25 and it only takes $25 to replace the faulty parts inside. Thats a pile of profit there.

I know thats an automotive reference, but just about anything we buy nowadays, that fits.

 

I worked at a computer store for several years when I was in college. We used to fix monitors, power supplied, printers, whatever. We had several stashes of parts for common problems. The guy I worked with in the back left, they hired a new one (ship it off kinda guy LOL). Customer brought in a 19in. monitor. They were going to ship it off. It was my last day there, I looked at it and saw what kind it was. Had them unpack it from the box. I came in on the weekend and fixed it. The only time a monitor would need to be trashed is when the flyback goes bad (that's the high voltage unit that plugs into the tube). Those things could be expensive.

 

I take another route quite often, if it is a $.10 part that needs replaced I'm almost sure to damage a $100 part on the way to getting the first out. That's what my wife says anyway.

Doesn't stop me from taking everything apart anyway. Gotta know how stuff works.

 

When I was in college for electronics, I worked in the lab, we kept a revolving stash of monitors and TVs there. Every once in a while, you would get the right tv in with a blown flyback transformer and swap it out. not very often would the stars align right. Usually, its a couple hour of figuring out the problem only to find a part that is unavailable or you need the manufacturers schematics to know where to apply voltage and a signal to see if it even works to begin with.

Yes, that was an auto reference. I have seen a few people at work trade in their truck because the transmission's gone out or something like that.

 

Yup, had the same thing happen to me once. A trip to Radio Shack and viola, up and running in less time it would have taken to get the RMA from the vendor.



Kris

 

Ya but thats only because you don't speak indian (dot not feather), or pakistani!!!