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Where Have All the Schematics Gone?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- userbinator 7y agoOf course, troubleshooting without a schematic is also an important skill. It is often done for laptops (which often don't have schematics, and the only ones available are leaks) as well as other consumer electronics. The idea that it somehow stops competitors from copying the product is very weak; it's easy enough to reverse-engineer a design, and there are entire companies whose existence is solely to provide such services.
- nraynaud 7y agoOscilloscopes are very different from laptops, they all have a unique front end. Laptops are mostly a collection of reference implementations.
- bathtub365 7y agoThis is equivalent to what Apple has done. For a while they had their own in-house repair service through the Genius Bar, and it coexisted with independent repair shops. Now they try to prevent this with software lockouts on repaired equipment and designs that are increasingly difficult or impossible to repair. It’s interesting to see similar patterns in other industries.
- jimhefferon 7y agoThis is one reason that I don't buy Apple, so it comes with at least some consumer cost.
- bathtub365 7y agoI find it a little frustrating but since I’m still not willing to switch to Windows, Linux, or Android I keep using their products. I buy fewer electronics than I used to since they seem to be usable for much longer so it ends up not being much of an issue, but it feels anti-consumer to me.
- samatman 7y agoOnly if there are more people like you than there are people who purchase Apple products because of the "Genius Bar". Which seems unlikely to me, although I wouldn't be surprised either way.
- Dylan16807 7y ago> because of the "Genius Bar" The genius bar is not the problem. It's some things they have done more recently.
- Scoundreller 7y ago> designs that are increasingly difficult or impossible to repair. I wonder how much of this is due to focus on size/weight gone too far. Or if Apple is going to tell you how to build a board with function XYZ to their specs, they may as well integrate it into the mainboard.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoThis situation (lack of schematics) is powering the open source test instrument surge. Test instruments are an interesting space in the technology center mostly because they are never "obsolete." If they are operating to their original specifications and tolerances, they do the job just as well in 2020 as they did in 1960. As a result, test equipment can really hold its value well. I recently paid about $700 to have my HP Spectrum Analyzer from the early 90's[1] calibrated. I bought the instrument for $1,100 at auction, it's working range is 9kHz to 12GHz. So for $1,800 I have an instrument that, if I were to buy the current generation model, would cost me nearly $18,000 or 10x that price. Even a "cheap" Rigol that only goes to 6.5GHz would cost $10,000. So what to do when your sales are "one and done" ? It is a hard problem from a business model perspective. [1] EDIT: Turns out it is only 30+ years old, not 50+. Its an HP8596E "portable" (weighs quite a bit :-).
- wbl 7y agoMake instruments and sell them like furniture makers, carpenters, most kinds of law (how many wills do you need?) etc
- ChuckMcM 7y agoSort of a 'make on demand' model. It might work. These days it is hard to find parts that don't get end-of-lifed after 5 years, so you're re-doing schematics and thus your instrument's PCB. You could perhaps make a modular structure such that the instrument was constructed from modules but I'm not sure how well that would work. The open source trend is to put the instrument in its box and connect via USB to a computer that provides the UX. That works but has the issue of computer operating system compatibility. I've got a USB scope in my junk drawer that has a UI that only works on Windows 98. Not too useful these days, and the company is out of business. The instrument control protocol standards help here.
- blattimwind 7y agoTo some extent standardized assemblies have been used for a very long time. HP System 2 (the cute 1/3 rack units) is from the 60s, System 3 from the late 70s (I think), though the actually walked back on that one and later replaced the standardized cast aluminium parts with unit-specific sheet metal bending (3478A and others). Later they re-used the display/input modules, both HP and Keithley did this for a lot of their later DMMs and SMUs.
- CamperBob2 7y agoNot the submitter, but just for context, this is a post by the admin for the groups.io community for users of Tektronix oscilloscopes and related test equipment, answering a query from a user looking for service documentation on an instrument from the 1990s era, somewhat newer than most of those discussed on the group. Service manuals from Tektronix, like those from Hewlett-Packard, used to include what amounted to a BSEE lab syllabus in their service manuals. They would include full schematics and operational theory that often went well beyond what was needed by a technician who was tasked with maintaining the gear. Often the documentation was written by the design engineers themselves, who were the Michael Jordans and Kobe Bryants of their field. The educational value of this material was (and is) immense. Not only could you get your scope up and running after spending some time with these manuals, you understood a lot about how it worked and what motivated the underlying design decisions. Dennis is right in that this wonderful literature went away well before its time, but I think he undersells the other side of the argument, which is that these manuals would inevitably become less useful over time as well. It was true that management became less engineering-driven in the 1980s-1990s period, which was both unfortunate and avoidable, but it's also true that over the same timeframe he's referring to, companies like Tektronix and HP had to migrate to custom ASICs and software-heavy architectures that were inherently less user-serviceable. These aren't like products from manufacturers like Apple, Tesla, or John Deere whose overt market abuses have spawned the right-to-repair movement -- they're the tools used by the people who design those products. The instrumentation companies had to stay well ahead of the technology curve, just as they do now, and increasing integration often has the unfortunate side effect of making the inner workings of the product less accessible to the user. Personally, I'm not sure things could have evolved much differently than they did, regardless of the ratio of MBAs to EEs in management. Bummer, too, because those manuals were AWESOME. One thing that is indisputable is that both Tektronix and HP stopped publishing component-level service manuals about 5-10 years before the technology justified it. Because their technology had to stay ahead of the market, a lot of gear that is still very useful in many applications today is now almost impossible to keep running.
- userbinator 7y agoThey would include full schematics and operational theory that often went well beyond what was needed by a technician who was tasked with maintaining the gear. I see this trend with automotive manuals too; in particular, from the 40s to 60s when automatic transmissions were still a relatively new and complex part, the service manuals contained a huge amount of information on their theory of operation. Now, although they're even more complex (and computer-controlled), the most you get is how to take it apart and put it back together.
- zh3 7y agoCompany A treats its customers with respect, lets them maximise the return on their investment by giving them all the details and helping them keep the instrument going as long as possible. Company B releases a product that works pretty much as well as Company A's but is cheaper (because it isn't investing in the aftersales support). Since support is an expensive business, by cutting it Company B makes more profit. In the long run, Company B wins. Quite a few companies are smart enough to see how this works, and so morph from being an A type company to being a B. Evolution in action, the fitter (most profitable) company survives (shame about the prey..ah, "clients").
- drongoking 7y agoThis isn't "evolution in action" in any inevitable sense. This only happens if the consumer values up-front price over TCO. Admittedly, with emphasis on quarterly earnings, this is the path many companies have chosen, but it's not universal.
- toohotatopic 7y agoBut consumers value up-front price over TCO. Why else would most people finance their phones with their plans instead of buying them directly?
- Swenrekcah 7y agoMy guess is because that’s what they’re sold on and offered. Also perverse incentives come into play. With companies it’s quarterly results, with consumers it’s consumerism culture and the insane financing dependency people are hooked on. Valuing up-front over TCO only makes sense for very large purchases and for business investments.
- Karunamon 7y agoTime utility of money. A lot of those financing plans are interest-free and surprisingly straightforward, and add up to the actual retail value of the device over the time of the plan, not one penny more. These proliferated as years-long contracts became unpopular. In the case of Verizon, signing up with such a plan also allows you to return and upgrade your phone after it's halfway paid off. With phones getting more and more ridiculously expensive, there's little reason not to do this unless you'd rather be out $1000+ immediately when you have the option to be out $40/month for a couple years with no downsides instead.
- muser8 7y agoMy how times have changed. I remember schematics for my first computer https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_64_Programmer%27s_Reference_Guide https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_64_Programmer%27s_Re...
- killjoywashere 7y agoI remain amazed at how long some of these old products last. My last 2 phones (Pixels) have died right around the 2 year mark. Meanwhile, I have a Tektronix DMM 252 from the early 1990s (which I now realize is a rebranded APPA 105), and a Fluke 8060A meter (labeled IBM) from the early 80s (1). For the Fluke, you can, today, get the schematics online in the user manual (2). For the Tek, not so much (3). Regardless, they have outlasted my phones by 15-20x. Oh, and while I'm on my old electronics worship soapbox, let's mention the HP 48G, one of the greatest calculators ever made, which runs Reverse Polish Lisp (4) and still has an active community (5), 17 years after production ended and 27 years after release, and emulator apps for iPhone (6) and Android ( (1) https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/fluke_digital_multimeter_8060a.html https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/fluke_digital_multimeter_8060a... (2) http://assets.fluke.com/manuals/8060a_3vimeng0200.pdf http://assets.fluke.com/manuals/8060a_3vimeng0200.pdf (3) https://www.arc.ro/userfiles/docs/APPA/multim%20digitale/APPA%20103N-105N-106%20-%20manual.pdf https://www.arc.ro/userfiles/docs/APPA/multim%20digitale/APP... (4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPL_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPL_(programming_language) (5) https://www.hpcalc.org/ https://www.hpcalc.org/ (6) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/i48/id329454950 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/i48/id329454950 (7) https://www.androidmeta.com/keyword/hp48 https://www.androidmeta.com/keyword/hp48
- robomartin 7y ago> My last 2 phones (Pixels) have died right around the 2 year mark. See my post on this thread about the "mutually assured destruction" (as I sometimes call it) brought to us by those who pushed for a transition to lead-free solder. This is a real and massive problem that might come home to roost in a major way within the next ten to twenty years. Here's the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22220799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22220799
- jayd16 7y agoIf its any consolation, all of my Android gear (every nexus/pixel) has stayed in working order with the Nexus 7 tablet. I think the issue with that one was something like no TRIM support ruined the SSD. That said, I doubt anything with a battery will last anywhere close to old tech.
- fortran77 7y agoYou used to open any consumer TV or Radio and there would be schematics inside. When I bought an Apple ][ computer in 1978, the manual had full schematics in it. And I used it to fix things. Intel had schematics for all their motherboards. Unfortunately they've left the motherboard business.
- CamperBob2 7y agoIntel had schematics for all their motherboards. Interesting, I didn't know that. Was that true all the way up until they left the business? What was the most recent generation of motherboards for which they published the schematics?
- wtallis 7y agoI don't recall ever seeing schematics for my Ivy Bridge era Intel desktop motherboard, but its manual was by far the most detailed I've ever seen for a consumer motherboard. It included details like the location of each temperature sensor, the current ratings for each fan header, the model number of the Super IO chip, and a full memory map.
- basicplus2 7y agoI cannot count the number of circuit boards i have photocopied the backof photographed the front from all angles and created my own schematics.. Gets pretty hard with multilayer boards and smd components
- gmueckl 7y agoI don't remember where exactly I saw this, but some boards even stack components, so that e.g. a tiny SMD part sits under a bigger component that has some empty volume under it (e.g. an SMD resistor under a socket or capacitor). Good luck finding that without taking the board apart completely. To be honest, I think layouts like this are done for practical reasons like space constraints rather than to annoy reverse engineers. If you are serious and can disassemble a board, you will find these components immediately.
- madengr 7y agoI stuck 01005 caps between BGA balls on a Spartan 3, but that was in attempt to solve an EMI issue, rather than a specific design goal.
- userbinator 7y agoAn x-ray machine will also easily reveal such hidden features. It's not something everyone has, but then again, as I noted in another comment here, there are entire companies specialising in this sort of RE work.
- joshspankit 7y agoI feel like this is a perfect encapsulation of one of the core arguments around Right To Repair legislation.
- intricatedetail 7y agoSchematics can't be copyrighted, so anyone could take it and make themselves an instrument. I think schematics disappeared around the rise of China. Companies didn't want their products copied. I think that is backwards. Only thing you may lose is R&D time which there are ways to recoup. Let's make schematics available again.
- purplezooey 7y agoI've wondered this in the past. If you buy something from the 1970s it seems like everything had a schematic in the box. As if to imply many customers could try to fix problems themselves. Now, people will bring their car to the dealer to get windshield wipers changed.
- johnr2 7y agoFor many years my purchasing policy for test equipment was "no schematics, no sale". I still try to stick with that as far as possible, but it means I don't buy much new equipment.
- fsflover 7y agoBy the way, Purism shared the schematics of their Librem 5 phone. The only current phone with schematics I am aware of: https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Hardware_Reference/Chestnut.html#schematics https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Hardware_Reference/Chestnu...
- anonsivalley652 7y agoLouis Rossmann (independent MacBook repair owner and Youtuber) has recently been flying all over the US fighting for right-to-repair (r2r), from Maine to New York to Washington state to possibly Hawaii now. He's even learning about the plights of farmers unable to get their equipment fixed after they repair it themselves at harvest time because a factory-authorized tech has to use a factory magic box to flip a magic bit somewhere in the tractor to clear an error, while 20 farmers also want their self-disabled tractors reenabled too.
- JohnFen 7y agoIt's not just TI. The lack of schematics for electronic equipment across the board has been a serious problem for decades, and just gets worse over time.