6 ms·

I've been recently trying to resurrect my mom's old 2015 MacBook Air and there's a special excitement in being able to follow the clues on the logic board as to

I've been recently trying to resurrect my mom's old 2015 MacBook Air and there's a special excitement in being able to follow the clues on the logic board as to where there's a problem, and then being able to fix it. When I was going through my father's stuff after he died, I came across a Television manual that had come with the product. It included a full schematic of the TV. Every resistor, capacitor, transistor, and diode. I marveled at the idea that the company who made this TV was more interested in your having confidence in the product than protecting their next sale...

staringback 4y ago
This is what they took from us
kube-system 4y ago
> I marveled at the idea that the company who made this TV was more interested in your having confidence in the product than protecting their next sale... Because back then a TV cost an arm and a leg and they broke more often. Being maintainable was a requirement for the initial sale.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Did a quick look and a 21" color TV in the mid-70s was around $3,000 in today's dollars.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    This is always an important point that seldom gets brought up these days when people are complaining about "they don't make things like they used to." Of course they don't, and we're generally better off as a result.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      And it's not like everything was made to last longer in the "good old days." If you lived somewhere with snow, you were lucky to get a car through 5 years and 50,000 miles--and it probably needed fairly regular tune-ups etc. to keep running.
      - rebuilder 4y ago
        Where / when was this? Living in Scandinavia, this was not my experience at all - as a kid we went through a number of used cars - Lada, Mazda, even a VW Beetle - and while the Beetle was definitely more of a summer car (heating would have been nice!), I never heard of a car being terribly worse off because of snow.
        ghaff 4y ago
        70s in the US--typically European cars. Even in the last 20 years I had a Ford Explorer that I ultimately got rid of because everything underneath in the vehicle was rusting out at about 100,000 miles.
        kube-system 4y ago
        US states with snow typically salt their roads in the winter, in an attempt to melt it down to the bare road, and it is very corrosive. Not sure about where you lived, but some other places use other strategies, often: requiring vehicles to have snow tires.
        rebuilder 4y ago
        Salt is used here as well. Maybe they use less, because while it definitely causes corrosion, 50 k miles seems incredibly short-lived.
        kube-system 4y ago
        Well, before galvanization (and more modern coatings), cars were pretty junky. https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/galvanization-sensation-how-automakers-fought-off-the-scourge-of-rust/ https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/galvanizati... My first car, built in 1987, was partially galvanized (I know because the sales brochure was proud of this fact), but had rust streaks down the doors at 50k miles and the frame rusted completely through at 80k miles. The improvements in automotive coatings in the 90s and 00s have been immense.
    - hjgjhyuhy 4y ago
      Environment would be better off if it was much cheaper to repair things instead of just buying new.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        This implies that the prices of goods would be higher relative to wages. From an environmental perspective it is a reasonable position. But a democracy is never going to support any such transformation. “Make appliances more expensive so that I cannot afford new ones easily” said nobody.
        HWR_14 4y ago
        If appliances break less frequently or are repairable more easily they will last longer. That means you can spread the higher cost over a longer period of time.
        kube-system 4y ago
        Appliances generally are quite reliable today, and most failures aren't particularly difficult or expensive to fix compared to appliances in the past. But there are also some limiting factors to spreading appliance cost over a long period of time. People may have limited funds (whether cash or credit) to purchase appliances, and if they can, they prefer to have them all up front. While in the past, it may have been reasonable to save up for years to buy a refrigerator, and use a root cellar in the meantime, that isn't socially acceptable today (nor is it a remotely viable expectation for a business to make of their customers). Also, people in the US move relatively often, and so it makes little sense to buy an appliance for the sole purpose of someone else's benefit.
    - MBCook 4y ago
      One of the last times something like this came up I went and looked up the cheapest desk fan in an old Sears catalog. Maybe the ‘60s or so. It was priced at like $15, about the same as today. But if you did the math for inflation, it would cost like $120. So of course they lasted forever. And they were made of metal and designed to be workhorses. They cost $120! When you make a plastic desk fan for $15, even with razor thin profits for everyone involved there just isn’t much money left to put into lasting quality parts.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        And the plastic desk fan probably lasts for years anyway. A lot of us have way too much disposable odds and ends--I don't even want to tell you how much tech logo clothing I've ended up with over the years. But not everything needs to be pass down to your grandchildren quality.
        heather45879 4y ago
        And just think when you got the tech logo clothing you become a walking billboard. Are you getting paid to wear it? But yeah most grandchildren auction off their parents belongings anyway. That’s why birds make nests and then they go somewhere else and maybe return, make a new nest. People are fixated on permanence—perhaps that’s another way to build housing: design it so it is sustainable, then tear it down and recycle the materials every 10 years.
      - bluedino 4y ago
        Part of that $15 also paid a wage to the guy who built the fans, who worked in the fan plant in some town that closed up 40 years ago.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        About a decade ago we got a Lasko box fan that was all-metal. About $100 versus maybe $25 for the plastic ones (back then—I'm sure both would be worse now, thanks inflation). It's amazing, and unlike the plastic ones didn't die in 2-3 years. Way more powerful (the "low" setting is somewhere between "medium" and "high" on the plastic fans we've owned), cord's thicker and heavier, whole case and the screens are heavy metal so they're difficult to break and I could probably repair them somehow, if they did. Unfortunately, last I checked nobody makes anything like it now. Guess we'll have to look for some kind of shop-fan if this one ever dies and can't be fixed, assuming those haven't been shittified by then.
    - mitchdoogle 4y ago
      One of the first people I've seen suggest that planned obsolescence is a good thing for consumers. Let me guess, you are somehow financially motivated to see people buying more stuff more frequently?
      - kelnos 4y ago
        I think the point being made is that if all you have available is $120 fans, there is going to be a good number of people who can't afford them at all. Cheap goods make things more accessible to more people. Planned (or even unplanned) obsolescence is an unfortunate side effect. Re: planned vs. unplanned: I don't think the cheap fan manufacturer really builds it that way so you keep having to come back when yours breaks. At least, I don't think that's the primary motivator. More likely, their goal is just to sell more units in the first place, and lower prices are usually a good way to do that. (Meanwhile, companies like Apple have found the holy grail: an expensive, high-margin, premium product that's difficult to repair.)
      - kube-system 4y ago
        Yes, most consumers prefer a $15 fan that lasts 10 years to a $150 fan that lasts 40 years. Especially the people that have $50 in their pocket.
        ghaff 4y ago
        And there's no real guarantee the $150 fan will last 40 years anyway. A few years ago I bought an unreasonably expensive toaster and it broke after less than 2 years.
        pinusc 4y ago
        I think this is the real issue. A lot of premium priced stuff today is not built to match the quality the price suggests. If you did spend $150 on a fan today, it would probably last just as long as a $15 one. Emphasis on probably, there are good quality items... just not a lot. TVs are a great example: a $900 Sony smart TV I got 5ish years ago lasted barely longer than its 3 year warranty (before a hardware-related bootloop). A crappier cheaper TV would have lasted the same. Seems to be the trend when introducing smarter software features. Near every appliance I had to replace in the last decade died because of "the motherboard" (according to several technicians), which was coincidentally about 50% the price of the appliance. I guess manufacturers like to cheap out on embedded hardware components?
    - heather45879 4y ago
      Sure some things are better—but you won’t find half-decent workmanship in the majority of products—just walk through Home Depot and take a look at anything “Husky”. And regardless, modern features are pretty much frivolous crap anyway. I mean, a smart refrigerator? A smart oven? Please. Older ovens are designed to bake—not sell ads. When my TV just magically started showing ads I decided it’s time I go to the library and read more books. Books were designed to better humanity.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        I'll take a set of Husky wrenches over any early 20th century hand tools, any day. Sure, many of those wrenches are still around, but they're awful to actually use.
      - Aunche 4y ago
        >just walk through Home Depot and take a look at anything “Husky" For the average person who has one or two projects every year, Husky or Harbor Freight is more than enough.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        > When my TV just magically started showing ads I decided it’s time I go to the library and read more books. Books were designed to better humanity. Not a fan of mid-century sci-fi mass-market paperbacks, I take it? :-) (they often have some glossy ad pages stuck in the middle, typically at least one of them for cigarettes)
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      Instead people buy lots of cheaper junk every year and pile the garbage higher.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  In conjunction with repairing a TV costing an arm and a leg nowadays. Who can possibly fix individual components in a modern integrated chip for less than the cost to manufacture a new one?
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Repairing many TV faults like bad caps or bad LEDs is not that expensive compared to TV repairs in the past. It just makes sense to pay a couple hours of labor on a TV in 1960, but it doesn’t in 2022. The TVs today aren’t worth paying the labor to fix them. The labor is more than the price of a new TV.
    - jaclaz 4y ago
      But, set aside the cost, there is as I see it a not-so-hidden environmental cost, the discarded TV set that could be repaired replacing one or two components needs to be somehow taken care of. There was a manufacturer in Italy that - at the time - created the "perfect" setup for cheap repairs that produced no or very little waste (old post): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29166395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29166395
  - sn0wf1re 4y ago
    No one. But no one could fix a capacitor or resistor for less than it would cost to manufacture a new one. "fix a capacitor" even seems silly to say, because it is beyond the scope of the average person to fix. A similar analogy is a car engine, you can repair the engine, however mostly what a mechanic does is swap out pieces. Some things can be fixed with a welder, most (spark plugs, gaskets, belts, even parts like a carburetor) are just replaced. This is similar for "technology" items. The parts may not be fixable but sub-components should be replaceable; the overall product should be repairable.
  - sircastor 4y ago
    While you can't fix the component in the IC, you can replace the IC - and often we're not even dealing with BGA components - Just surface mount or even through-hole. Poking around YouTube reveals a number of folks who have done it. Though I doubt you could run a TV repair business these days and be very profitable.
- denysonique 4y ago
  >Because back then a TV cost an arm and a leg and they broke more often. Being maintainable was a requirement for the initial sale. Cars being a significant expense do not come today with a schematic or repair manual.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    People took their TVs to TV repair shops in the past, as well. Buyers want their durable goods to be durable. They don’t want to spend a significant chunk of their income on a product and be stuck with a broken product next year. Whether that’s a 10 year 100,000 mile warranty, or a schematic you can take to your local TV repair man, they don’t care.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    Cars are a lot cheaper nowadays per feature then 50 years ago. For example just adding air conditioning to a normal family sedan back then would cost the equivalent of $10000 USD nowadays. If your fine with paying $10000 for an air conditioner, $20000 for an electric driver's seat, another $20000 for an electric passenger seat, $10000 for heated seats, $30000 for ventilated seats, etc... then I'm sure manufacturers would be more than willing to supply a transistor level diagram.
  - culopatin 4y ago
    Don’t they? Not in the glovebox, but there are repair manuals for cars that are easily available. I get access to every model’s repair manual with my .edu account. The thing is that having the manual or not is not the problem, is the equipment you’ll need that is hard to get, and not only that, for cars you may only use them once, for that particular car, that particular repair, and it may cost hundreds. Maybe if you keep the car for 15 years and 300k miles you get to use it again. Same with the equipment you need to do circuit repair nowdays. Back in the day the boards were simple, big and you could use a $10 soldering iron to fix things. Now a regular soldering iron tip covers 3 components at a time.
    - sircastor 4y ago
      > there are repair manuals for cars that are easily available. Less than they used to be. It feels like the Chilton manuals have dried up for late model vehicles.
mfer 4y ago
Business values have definitely changed over the years. This has lead to a drastic change in options available to consumers and what they have come to expect. And even in what schools in the US teach. When something is a cultural change... and you notice something better in the past... how do you push to make it better, again, in the future?
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > better in the past First you have to define what better means, before you can try to make it better again. What you just said boils down to "make it more expensive, again, in the future" My mom's first VHS player got repaired when it broke. On a new equivalent it would probably get chucked. Sounds terrible? Her first VHS player cost $700. In the early 80s! That would be absurd in todays money much less back then, of course that bad boy got repaired when it broke. Same goes for things like washers and dryers. Nostalgic memories of how back in the 60s they were built like tanks. Of course they were, they cost the same price then as they do now, not adjusted for inflation. Spend that kind of money on a washer today and it will be built like a tank.
  - mfer 4y ago
    The context we were talking about was repairability. Modern washers and dryers are still fairly repairable. Even at their lower price point when figuring for inflation Cars are getting less repairable. I think most people who’ve worked on cars for a long time will argue that car repairability is getting worse. Cars are also a case where the average cost, when figuring for inflation, has gone up
CharlesW 4y ago
> It included a full schematic of the TV. For you and other young 'uns, Apple and other early computer makers did this as well: https://downloads.reactivemicro.com/Apple%20II%20Items/Hardware/II_&_II+/Schematic/Apple%20II%20Schematics.pdf https://downloads.reactivemicro.com/Apple%20II%20Items/Hardw...
- shagie 4y ago
  You could go even further with the Apple II reference manual (the Red Book) http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/Apple/ http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/Apple/ (page 122 is where it really gets interesting). It has enough information to wirewrap your own (and hand key the instructions to blow a prom).
  - Someone 4y ago
    One reason they stopped doing that was because it made it too easy to make clones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_clones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_clones) It was Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Franklin_Computer_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Frankl....) that led to the judgment that software stored in ROM was copyrightable in the US, requiring Phoenix Technologies to make a clean-room implementation of the BIOS of the IBM PC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_the_IBM_PC_BIOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_t...)
bonestamp2 4y ago
I bought a microwave recently and it came with an electronics schematic for repair too. Now, it uses large capacitors, resistors, etc so it would be fairly easy for a novice or field repairman to work on. I can kind of understand why microelectronics don't come with circuit repair schematics though.
- Eleison23 4y ago

staringback 4y ago

This is what they took from us

kube-system 4y ago

> I marveled at the idea that the company who made this TV was more interested in your having confidence in the product than protecting their next sale... Because back then a TV cost an arm and a leg and they broke more often. Being maintainable was a requirement for the initial sale.

ghaff 4y ago
Did a quick look and a 21" color TV in the mid-70s was around $3,000 in today's dollars.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  This is always an important point that seldom gets brought up these days when people are complaining about "they don't make things like they used to." Of course they don't, and we're generally better off as a result.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    And it's not like everything was made to last longer in the "good old days." If you lived somewhere with snow, you were lucky to get a car through 5 years and 50,000 miles--and it probably needed fairly regular tune-ups etc. to keep running.
    - rebuilder 4y ago
      Where / when was this? Living in Scandinavia, this was not my experience at all - as a kid we went through a number of used cars - Lada, Mazda, even a VW Beetle - and while the Beetle was definitely more of a summer car (heating would have been nice!), I never heard of a car being terribly worse off because of snow.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        70s in the US--typically European cars. Even in the last 20 years I had a Ford Explorer that I ultimately got rid of because everything underneath in the vehicle was rusting out at about 100,000 miles.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        US states with snow typically salt their roads in the winter, in an attempt to melt it down to the bare road, and it is very corrosive. Not sure about where you lived, but some other places use other strategies, often: requiring vehicles to have snow tires.
        rebuilder 4y ago
        Salt is used here as well. Maybe they use less, because while it definitely causes corrosion, 50 k miles seems incredibly short-lived.
        kube-system 4y ago
        Well, before galvanization (and more modern coatings), cars were pretty junky. https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/galvanization-sensation-how-automakers-fought-off-the-scourge-of-rust/ https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/galvanizati... My first car, built in 1987, was partially galvanized (I know because the sales brochure was proud of this fact), but had rust streaks down the doors at 50k miles and the frame rusted completely through at 80k miles. The improvements in automotive coatings in the 90s and 00s have been immense.
  - hjgjhyuhy 4y ago
    Environment would be better off if it was much cheaper to repair things instead of just buying new.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      This implies that the prices of goods would be higher relative to wages. From an environmental perspective it is a reasonable position. But a democracy is never going to support any such transformation. “Make appliances more expensive so that I cannot afford new ones easily” said nobody.
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        If appliances break less frequently or are repairable more easily they will last longer. That means you can spread the higher cost over a longer period of time.
        kube-system 4y ago
        Appliances generally are quite reliable today, and most failures aren't particularly difficult or expensive to fix compared to appliances in the past. But there are also some limiting factors to spreading appliance cost over a long period of time. People may have limited funds (whether cash or credit) to purchase appliances, and if they can, they prefer to have them all up front. While in the past, it may have been reasonable to save up for years to buy a refrigerator, and use a root cellar in the meantime, that isn't socially acceptable today (nor is it a remotely viable expectation for a business to make of their customers). Also, people in the US move relatively often, and so it makes little sense to buy an appliance for the sole purpose of someone else's benefit.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    One of the last times something like this came up I went and looked up the cheapest desk fan in an old Sears catalog. Maybe the ‘60s or so. It was priced at like $15, about the same as today. But if you did the math for inflation, it would cost like $120. So of course they lasted forever. And they were made of metal and designed to be workhorses. They cost $120! When you make a plastic desk fan for $15, even with razor thin profits for everyone involved there just isn’t much money left to put into lasting quality parts.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      And the plastic desk fan probably lasts for years anyway. A lot of us have way too much disposable odds and ends--I don't even want to tell you how much tech logo clothing I've ended up with over the years. But not everything needs to be pass down to your grandchildren quality.
      - heather45879 4y ago
        And just think when you got the tech logo clothing you become a walking billboard. Are you getting paid to wear it? But yeah most grandchildren auction off their parents belongings anyway. That’s why birds make nests and then they go somewhere else and maybe return, make a new nest. People are fixated on permanence—perhaps that’s another way to build housing: design it so it is sustainable, then tear it down and recycle the materials every 10 years.
    - bluedino 4y ago
      Part of that $15 also paid a wage to the guy who built the fans, who worked in the fan plant in some town that closed up 40 years ago.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      About a decade ago we got a Lasko box fan that was all-metal. About $100 versus maybe $25 for the plastic ones (back then—I'm sure both would be worse now, thanks inflation). It's amazing, and unlike the plastic ones didn't die in 2-3 years. Way more powerful (the "low" setting is somewhere between "medium" and "high" on the plastic fans we've owned), cord's thicker and heavier, whole case and the screens are heavy metal so they're difficult to break and I could probably repair them somehow, if they did. Unfortunately, last I checked nobody makes anything like it now. Guess we'll have to look for some kind of shop-fan if this one ever dies and can't be fixed, assuming those haven't been shittified by then.
  - mitchdoogle 4y ago
    One of the first people I've seen suggest that planned obsolescence is a good thing for consumers. Let me guess, you are somehow financially motivated to see people buying more stuff more frequently?
    - kelnos 4y ago
      I think the point being made is that if all you have available is $120 fans, there is going to be a good number of people who can't afford them at all. Cheap goods make things more accessible to more people. Planned (or even unplanned) obsolescence is an unfortunate side effect. Re: planned vs. unplanned: I don't think the cheap fan manufacturer really builds it that way so you keep having to come back when yours breaks. At least, I don't think that's the primary motivator. More likely, their goal is just to sell more units in the first place, and lower prices are usually a good way to do that. (Meanwhile, companies like Apple have found the holy grail: an expensive, high-margin, premium product that's difficult to repair.)
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Yes, most consumers prefer a $15 fan that lasts 10 years to a $150 fan that lasts 40 years. Especially the people that have $50 in their pocket.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        And there's no real guarantee the $150 fan will last 40 years anyway. A few years ago I bought an unreasonably expensive toaster and it broke after less than 2 years.
        pinusc 4y ago
        I think this is the real issue. A lot of premium priced stuff today is not built to match the quality the price suggests. If you did spend $150 on a fan today, it would probably last just as long as a $15 one. Emphasis on probably, there are good quality items... just not a lot. TVs are a great example: a $900 Sony smart TV I got 5ish years ago lasted barely longer than its 3 year warranty (before a hardware-related bootloop). A crappier cheaper TV would have lasted the same. Seems to be the trend when introducing smarter software features. Near every appliance I had to replace in the last decade died because of "the motherboard" (according to several technicians), which was coincidentally about 50% the price of the appliance. I guess manufacturers like to cheap out on embedded hardware components?
  - heather45879 4y ago
    Sure some things are better—but you won’t find half-decent workmanship in the majority of products—just walk through Home Depot and take a look at anything “Husky”. And regardless, modern features are pretty much frivolous crap anyway. I mean, a smart refrigerator? A smart oven? Please. Older ovens are designed to bake—not sell ads. When my TV just magically started showing ads I decided it’s time I go to the library and read more books. Books were designed to better humanity.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      I'll take a set of Husky wrenches over any early 20th century hand tools, any day. Sure, many of those wrenches are still around, but they're awful to actually use.
    - Aunche 4y ago
      >just walk through Home Depot and take a look at anything “Husky" For the average person who has one or two projects every year, Husky or Harbor Freight is more than enough.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      > When my TV just magically started showing ads I decided it’s time I go to the library and read more books. Books were designed to better humanity. Not a fan of mid-century sci-fi mass-market paperbacks, I take it? :-) (they often have some glossy ad pages stuck in the middle, typically at least one of them for cigarettes)
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Instead people buy lots of cheaper junk every year and pile the garbage higher.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
lotsofpulp 4y ago
In conjunction with repairing a TV costing an arm and a leg nowadays. Who can possibly fix individual components in a modern integrated chip for less than the cost to manufacture a new one?
- kube-system 4y ago
  Repairing many TV faults like bad caps or bad LEDs is not that expensive compared to TV repairs in the past. It just makes sense to pay a couple hours of labor on a TV in 1960, but it doesn’t in 2022. The TVs today aren’t worth paying the labor to fix them. The labor is more than the price of a new TV.
  - jaclaz 4y ago
    But, set aside the cost, there is as I see it a not-so-hidden environmental cost, the discarded TV set that could be repaired replacing one or two components needs to be somehow taken care of. There was a manufacturer in Italy that - at the time - created the "perfect" setup for cheap repairs that produced no or very little waste (old post): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29166395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29166395
- sn0wf1re 4y ago
  No one. But no one could fix a capacitor or resistor for less than it would cost to manufacture a new one. "fix a capacitor" even seems silly to say, because it is beyond the scope of the average person to fix. A similar analogy is a car engine, you can repair the engine, however mostly what a mechanic does is swap out pieces. Some things can be fixed with a welder, most (spark plugs, gaskets, belts, even parts like a carburetor) are just replaced. This is similar for "technology" items. The parts may not be fixable but sub-components should be replaceable; the overall product should be repairable.
- sircastor 4y ago
  While you can't fix the component in the IC, you can replace the IC - and often we're not even dealing with BGA components - Just surface mount or even through-hole. Poking around YouTube reveals a number of folks who have done it. Though I doubt you could run a TV repair business these days and be very profitable.
denysonique 4y ago
>Because back then a TV cost an arm and a leg and they broke more often. Being maintainable was a requirement for the initial sale. Cars being a significant expense do not come today with a schematic or repair manual.
- kube-system 4y ago
  People took their TVs to TV repair shops in the past, as well. Buyers want their durable goods to be durable. They don’t want to spend a significant chunk of their income on a product and be stuck with a broken product next year. Whether that’s a 10 year 100,000 mile warranty, or a schematic you can take to your local TV repair man, they don’t care.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  Cars are a lot cheaper nowadays per feature then 50 years ago. For example just adding air conditioning to a normal family sedan back then would cost the equivalent of $10000 USD nowadays. If your fine with paying $10000 for an air conditioner, $20000 for an electric driver's seat, another $20000 for an electric passenger seat, $10000 for heated seats, $30000 for ventilated seats, etc... then I'm sure manufacturers would be more than willing to supply a transistor level diagram.
- culopatin 4y ago
  Don’t they? Not in the glovebox, but there are repair manuals for cars that are easily available. I get access to every model’s repair manual with my .edu account. The thing is that having the manual or not is not the problem, is the equipment you’ll need that is hard to get, and not only that, for cars you may only use them once, for that particular car, that particular repair, and it may cost hundreds. Maybe if you keep the car for 15 years and 300k miles you get to use it again. Same with the equipment you need to do circuit repair nowdays. Back in the day the boards were simple, big and you could use a $10 soldering iron to fix things. Now a regular soldering iron tip covers 3 components at a time.
  - sircastor 4y ago
    > there are repair manuals for cars that are easily available. Less than they used to be. It feels like the Chilton manuals have dried up for late model vehicles.

mfer 4y ago

Business values have definitely changed over the years. This has lead to a drastic change in options available to consumers and what they have come to expect. And even in what schools in the US teach. When something is a cultural change... and you notice something better in the past... how do you push to make it better, again, in the future?

rootusrootus 4y ago
> better in the past First you have to define what better means, before you can try to make it better again. What you just said boils down to "make it more expensive, again, in the future" My mom's first VHS player got repaired when it broke. On a new equivalent it would probably get chucked. Sounds terrible? Her first VHS player cost $700. In the early 80s! That would be absurd in todays money much less back then, of course that bad boy got repaired when it broke. Same goes for things like washers and dryers. Nostalgic memories of how back in the 60s they were built like tanks. Of course they were, they cost the same price then as they do now, not adjusted for inflation. Spend that kind of money on a washer today and it will be built like a tank.
- mfer 4y ago
  The context we were talking about was repairability. Modern washers and dryers are still fairly repairable. Even at their lower price point when figuring for inflation Cars are getting less repairable. I think most people who’ve worked on cars for a long time will argue that car repairability is getting worse. Cars are also a case where the average cost, when figuring for inflation, has gone up

CharlesW 4y ago

> It included a full schematic of the TV. For you and other young 'uns, Apple and other early computer makers did this as well: https://downloads.reactivemicro.com/Apple%20II%20Items/Hardware/II_&_II+/Schematic/Apple%20II%20Schematics.pdf https://downloads.reactivemicro.com/Apple%20II%20Items/Hardw...

shagie 4y ago
You could go even further with the Apple II reference manual (the Red Book) http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/Apple/ http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/Apple/ (page 122 is where it really gets interesting). It has enough information to wirewrap your own (and hand key the instructions to blow a prom).
- Someone 4y ago
  One reason they stopped doing that was because it made it too easy to make clones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_clones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_clones) It was Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Franklin_Computer_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Frankl....) that led to the judgment that software stored in ROM was copyrightable in the US, requiring Phoenix Technologies to make a clean-room implementation of the BIOS of the IBM PC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_the_IBM_PC_BIOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_t...)

bonestamp2 4y ago

I bought a microwave recently and it came with an electronics schematic for repair too. Now, it uses large capacitors, resistors, etc so it would be fairly easy for a novice or field repairman to work on. I can kind of understand why microelectronics don't come with circuit repair schematics though.

Eleison23 4y ago