7 ms·

I spent a day at the Huaqiangbei market and honestly there's very little like it in the world. I didn't go in looking for anything in particular, but left with

by nippoo 7y ago

I spent a day at the Huaqiangbei market and honestly there's very little like it in the world. I didn't go in looking for anything in particular, but left with all sorts of tools and parts that I didn't even know I needed. A full USB power debugger with colour screen ($8), various LED module samples, a few Android tablets with a 9" screen, dual SIM and microSD ($30): my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour)... as well as a whole number of little parts and cabling and components I didn't even know existed. Others have written more about it (https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqiangbei-the-worlds-most-fascinating-electronic-market https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqia... is the classic article) but if you're even faintly interested in electronics I'd wholeheartedly recommend it.

lazyguy2 7y ago
It's amazing that you had to go to China to get a idea of how Capitalism should actually work. Freed markets for the win.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
forinti 7y ago
Meanwhile, in my town (pop 1.4 million in South America) nobody can fix anything anymore and the electronics shops are turning into lighting or computer stores. I couldn't get a ribbon cable last month from what used to be the best electronics shop in town!
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  The same thing happened to Radioshack[0] in North America. Then it became The Source[1] in Canada. You can still get some parts at The Source these days, but not all of them, and not nearly as expansive a selection. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack [1] https://www.thesource.ca/ https://www.thesource.ca/
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    To be clear, Radioshack and Circuit City were two distinct companies in the US. From a cursory look at Wikipedia, Circuit City was liquidated in 2009 (and later revived), and Radioshack is still operating stores.
    - kup0 7y ago
      Radioshack is still around, but has scaled back extremely. From thousands of operating stores to 500. Had a few in our area all close, so instead of 2-3 miles, now requires 20 miles to get to one. Effectively to some towns/cities it feels like Radioshack is no more because of such a drastic hit to their footprint.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      Yeah—that Wikipedia link goes into the more complex history. I just remember the RadioShack near my hometown that was full of walls of components. Now you're lucky to find a blank F-connector at The Source in the largest city in the country. Sentimentality got to me. That said—for other Torontonians, or visitors, there's an awesome (edit: AWESOME) shop on College St between Spadina and Bathurst called Creatron: https://www.creatroninc.com/ https://www.creatroninc.com/ (and surprisingly don't discount Long and McQuade [repair shop, Bloor St] for good quality pots and switches, albeit at a markup).
  - spectramax 7y ago
    If you can wait for 2 days, then you can use Digikey. It is the best thing we have in America for parts. That and Mouser.
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      Yes! Well acquainted! They were the go-to wholesalers when I was in film/tv. It’s just not the same as wandering into the shop and getting to know people there. Especially for personal interest/development or hobby projects.
- barbecue_sauce 7y ago
  Is this brain drain or the result of some sort of legislation?
  - AWildC182 7y ago
    More likely liability and labor with those skills moving to better paying jobs. Doing BGA rework with the right tools is pretty trivial. You can teach the average high school kid to do this stuff but it's not worth it when they could just go to college and learn circuit design or programming to create a design for a less educated technician to build. If they'd rather learn the rework, there are plenty of places that will hire them for more than what someone would pay to have their phone potentially destroyed.
  - forinti 7y ago
    I think it's a combination of factors. Vocational education has never been valued (people want college degrees), and also electronics have become cheap (and harder to fix). The country has also been slowly deindustrializing in the last decades.
  - pkaye 7y ago
    I think what is happening it that it much cheaper to make something in China than to repair it locally. If you spend half the cost of a new thing to repair it, you may just buy a new thing.
    - StillBored 7y ago
      Yes, but its also because just about every business in the US adhears to the "what the market will bear" rather than "quality product at a fair price" idea. That and regulatory capture (think plumbers/ac repair/etc) mean that while the part may cost $25 retail, and it only takes 5 minutes to replace they can get away with charging $400 for it (happened to me recently) because they know its going to cost you more to replace it. Appliance repair is going the same way, as is automobile repair at a lot of dealers/name brand chains. The smaller guys will replace an alternator for $40+parts, but your going to be looking at 250+marked up parts at a lot of places. I had the dealer quote me $800 for a door lock, that I ended up fixing mysel for $2 in ebay parts and an hour in labor last year.
LiquidSky 7y ago
This sounds like descriptions I've read of what Akihabara in Tokyo used to be like before it transformed into its current state as the anime otaku Mecca. There's still a small electronics market area there but it's hard to imagine what it once was with everything else so changed around it.
- stoicShell 7y ago
  That was my thought as well. I went to Akihabara in 1997 and it was still glorious. Evidently that spirit has now moved to Shenzhen.
markus_zhang 7y ago
Damn sounds like the dream place from a cyberpunk era
userbinator 7y ago
my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour) One huge difference I've noticed between HQB (and other smaller electronics markets I've been to elsewhere in China) and whatever repair shops still exist in the West is how much more interactive the whole experience is. I once went to HQB with a friend who wanted to get his laptop fixed, and the serviceperson (who also happened to be female --- another thing first-time visitors may be surprised by is the nearly 50/50 gender ratio) would take it apart and diagnose while talking to us, showing exactly what the problem was. They had run out of the part that needed replacement, but instead of telling us to come back later, she left her stall and lead us to another store in the same building to buy a reel of it, then went back and replaced it, showed us that it now worked, and asked a very reasonable price. The shop had several stalls of others doing the same thing, and a pretty long line of people waiting too. It's a huge contrast to more "Western" repair experiences, where you're lucky to have it done on the same day, much less get to see the process or be told what the problem was.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  And the Western approach is to replace the board that’s faulty rather than the part or two that causes 99% of the failures of that board. We could only pray that the western repair shop sends the board somewhere for refurbishment.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
    It's a labor cost. As hardware becomes more all-in-one, your cost of labor for knowledge of desoldering a single piece becomes more and more. Noone wants 'repaired goods' in the US.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      Sort of. I feel like it’s a technical education thing. The fellow in Shenzhen is probably getting paid hundreds of dollars per month. (Just a guess, I know SZ is expensive, but has lots of labour coming from outer lying areas). Even if it cost 10x labour for the procedure of turning a 16gb iPhone into a 128gb, it would be worth it. But I don’t think you could train the average Western worker to become a BGA solder worker and reflasher and have them work for you for more than 6 months before racing to a higher paying job.
DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
> my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage How does this work? I’d have thought those flash chips would be something customised specifically for Apple and contain some kind of authentication system or preprogrammed ROM with immutable firmware - or at least have the IMEI number burned into it somewhere - surely there’s some mechanism for an iPhone to detect unofficial (or unofficially installed) storage chips and prevent booting? Are they sourcing actual Apple chips that get leaked or diverted out of Apple’s presumably locked-down supply-chain?
- userbinator 7y ago
  At least for the older models, they used standard flash chips (eMMC?) --- there wouldn't have been official Apple models with that large of a capacity at the time anyway.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  I don't think there is much to customise in a flash chip. There comes a point where a part is so basic and integral to the device that putting these kind of protections is outright impossible - without them the phone might not exist as a computing device.

by nippoo 7y ago

lazyguy2 7y ago

It's amazing that you had to go to China to get a idea of how Capitalism should actually work. Freed markets for the win.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

forinti 7y ago

Meanwhile, in my town (pop 1.4 million in South America) nobody can fix anything anymore and the electronics shops are turning into lighting or computer stores. I couldn't get a ribbon cable last month from what used to be the best electronics shop in town!

52-6F-62 7y ago
The same thing happened to Radioshack[0] in North America. Then it became The Source[1] in Canada. You can still get some parts at The Source these days, but not all of them, and not nearly as expansive a selection. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack [1] https://www.thesource.ca/ https://www.thesource.ca/
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  To be clear, Radioshack and Circuit City were two distinct companies in the US. From a cursory look at Wikipedia, Circuit City was liquidated in 2009 (and later revived), and Radioshack is still operating stores.
  - kup0 7y ago
    Radioshack is still around, but has scaled back extremely. From thousands of operating stores to 500. Had a few in our area all close, so instead of 2-3 miles, now requires 20 miles to get to one. Effectively to some towns/cities it feels like Radioshack is no more because of such a drastic hit to their footprint.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    Yeah—that Wikipedia link goes into the more complex history. I just remember the RadioShack near my hometown that was full of walls of components. Now you're lucky to find a blank F-connector at The Source in the largest city in the country. Sentimentality got to me. That said—for other Torontonians, or visitors, there's an awesome (edit: AWESOME) shop on College St between Spadina and Bathurst called Creatron: https://www.creatroninc.com/ https://www.creatroninc.com/ (and surprisingly don't discount Long and McQuade [repair shop, Bloor St] for good quality pots and switches, albeit at a markup).
- spectramax 7y ago
  If you can wait for 2 days, then you can use Digikey. It is the best thing we have in America for parts. That and Mouser.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    Yes! Well acquainted! They were the go-to wholesalers when I was in film/tv. It’s just not the same as wandering into the shop and getting to know people there. Especially for personal interest/development or hobby projects.
barbecue_sauce 7y ago
Is this brain drain or the result of some sort of legislation?
- AWildC182 7y ago
  More likely liability and labor with those skills moving to better paying jobs. Doing BGA rework with the right tools is pretty trivial. You can teach the average high school kid to do this stuff but it's not worth it when they could just go to college and learn circuit design or programming to create a design for a less educated technician to build. If they'd rather learn the rework, there are plenty of places that will hire them for more than what someone would pay to have their phone potentially destroyed.
- forinti 7y ago
  I think it's a combination of factors. Vocational education has never been valued (people want college degrees), and also electronics have become cheap (and harder to fix). The country has also been slowly deindustrializing in the last decades.
- pkaye 7y ago
  I think what is happening it that it much cheaper to make something in China than to repair it locally. If you spend half the cost of a new thing to repair it, you may just buy a new thing.
  - StillBored 7y ago
    Yes, but its also because just about every business in the US adhears to the "what the market will bear" rather than "quality product at a fair price" idea. That and regulatory capture (think plumbers/ac repair/etc) mean that while the part may cost $25 retail, and it only takes 5 minutes to replace they can get away with charging $400 for it (happened to me recently) because they know its going to cost you more to replace it. Appliance repair is going the same way, as is automobile repair at a lot of dealers/name brand chains. The smaller guys will replace an alternator for $40+parts, but your going to be looking at 250+marked up parts at a lot of places. I had the dealer quote me $800 for a door lock, that I ended up fixing mysel for $2 in ebay parts and an hour in labor last year.

LiquidSky 7y ago

This sounds like descriptions I've read of what Akihabara in Tokyo used to be like before it transformed into its current state as the anime otaku Mecca. There's still a small electronics market area there but it's hard to imagine what it once was with everything else so changed around it.

stoicShell 7y ago
That was my thought as well. I went to Akihabara in 1997 and it was still glorious. Evidently that spirit has now moved to Shenzhen.

markus_zhang 7y ago

Damn sounds like the dream place from a cyberpunk era

userbinator 7y ago

my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour) One huge difference I've noticed between HQB (and other smaller electronics markets I've been to elsewhere in China) and whatever repair shops still exist in the West is how much more interactive the whole experience is. I once went to HQB with a friend who wanted to get his laptop fixed, and the serviceperson (who also happened to be female --- another thing first-time visitors may be surprised by is the nearly 50/50 gender ratio) would take it apart and diagnose while talking to us, showing exactly what the problem was. They had run out of the part that needed replacement, but instead of telling us to come back later, she left her stall and lead us to another store in the same building to buy a reel of it, then went back and replaced it, showed us that it now worked, and asked a very reasonable price. The shop had several stalls of others doing the same thing, and a pretty long line of people waiting too. It's a huge contrast to more "Western" repair experiences, where you're lucky to have it done on the same day, much less get to see the process or be told what the problem was.

Scoundreller 7y ago
And the Western approach is to replace the board that’s faulty rather than the part or two that causes 99% of the failures of that board. We could only pray that the western repair shop sends the board somewhere for refurbishment.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  It's a labor cost. As hardware becomes more all-in-one, your cost of labor for knowledge of desoldering a single piece becomes more and more. Noone wants 'repaired goods' in the US.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Sort of. I feel like it’s a technical education thing. The fellow in Shenzhen is probably getting paid hundreds of dollars per month. (Just a guess, I know SZ is expensive, but has lots of labour coming from outer lying areas). Even if it cost 10x labour for the procedure of turning a 16gb iPhone into a 128gb, it would be worth it. But I don’t think you could train the average Western worker to become a BGA solder worker and reflasher and have them work for you for more than 6 months before racing to a higher paying job.

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago

> my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage How does this work? I’d have thought those flash chips would be something customised specifically for Apple and contain some kind of authentication system or preprogrammed ROM with immutable firmware - or at least have the IMEI number burned into it somewhere - surely there’s some mechanism for an iPhone to detect unofficial (or unofficially installed) storage chips and prevent booting? Are they sourcing actual Apple chips that get leaked or diverted out of Apple’s presumably locked-down supply-chain?

userbinator 7y ago
At least for the older models, they used standard flash chips (eMMC?) --- there wouldn't have been official Apple models with that large of a capacity at the time anyway.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ClumsyPilot 7y ago
I don't think there is much to customise in a flash chip. There comes a point where a part is so basic and integral to the device that putting these kind of protections is outright impossible - without them the phone might not exist as a computing device.