13 ms·

> In the before-times, [...] You used to get full schematics along with the electronics you bought. And by "get", I do NOT mean that you'd have to ask for the

> In the before-times, [...] You used to get full schematics along with the electronics you bought. And by "get", I do NOT mean that you'd have to ask for them. They'd be shipped WITH the products, on paper. It was a normal part of your purchase, just like the manual.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago
My first computer was a BBC B. The schematics were IN the manual!
- perihelions 3y ago
  Indeed they seem to be: https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Manuals/Acorn_BBCSMOct85_Sec2.pdf https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Manua... ("BBC Microcomputer Model B +") There is a circuit block diagram, a PCB layout diagram with all the components' part numbers that I guess you can replace broken ones (?), and circuit diagrams for the power supply and for the keyboard circuit. (starts on page 97) Skimming the text, the manual seems to assume an owner has access to a multimeter, an oscilloscope, and a soldering iron.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  I have that thing etched into my memory to the point that I probably could still fix a beeb without resorting to looking at the schematic.
ume 3y ago
I still have the circuit diagram (paper copy) that shipped with my Acorn Atom in, ahem, 1981. Didn’t ask for it! (Edit: with the help of the circuit diagram we did make a simple mod to one of the output ports of the device)
- guy4261 3y ago
  Your and others' comments on this thread remind me of a though I had lately. In the "before times", you would buy things that would last. So naturally, the companies that made them could not sell new products. Planned obsolescence was one natural outcome that we ended up with. An electrical engineers I know told me how designing a CPU that would last a lifetime is relatively easy compared to designing an equipment that will fail only 5 years from now, but not earlier. I wonder if there was a way we could take the other path. Keep manufacturing solid, long lasting products but also being financially sound. Right now economy, to me, seems like a thing of perpetual growth, but in a cancer-like way.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    > I wonder if there was a way we could take the other path. Keep manufacturing solid, long lasting products but also being financially sound. Regulation. Fun fact: this is still possible! It's a little harder – it'll have to be steadily introduced, in multiple countries at once (so we don't break international trade), starting in the areas where it's cheapest to produce lasting equipment (so enforcement doesn't take out entire sectors), and I don't yet know what the regulations would look like, but if it's possible to make lasting things, it's possible to require manufacturers to make things last. We need to do this, sooner or later, anyway: we simply don't have the raw resources to continue as we are.
    - echelon 3y ago
      > we simply don't have the raw resources to continue as we are What runs out, and when does it run out? Are there alternatives? And can we source it from asteroids?
    - jkestner 3y ago
      I’m in favor of regulation, but that’s not happening now for the same reason that we have the problem in the first place. We’re all tied up together in capitalism, and anything that slows the acceleration of growth that our retirement funds require is not going to fly. If it’s going to happen, it’s because enough people have been excluded from the rewards of the system (we’re getting there). Easy to nay-say, though. To me, a solution starts with spreading those values that make it possible for _consumers_ to stop sliding down the growth-over-everything slope. Mittelstands, shinise, Patagonia, yada yada. Can you as an entrepreneur make a sustainable business that isn’t just for well-off conscious consumers? What’s the product where longevity is inextricable from the core feature set, not just a trade-off with cost? Right-to-repair is a decent example of where regulation has enough support across the ideological spectrum to get a foot in the door. It would be cool if a company who made profit on service now decides it doesn’t want to compete on service and instead takes more profit upfront with a higher-quality product. Forcing USB-C on phones feels like a small thing to me, but if it sets a precedent where interfaces are standardized for sustainability, that could be amazing. (No, I’m not worried about governments slowing progress. Locked ecosystems are doing just fine at that.)
grishka 3y ago
Not only schematics, but what amounts to a complete service manual. You were expected to troubleshoot and fix things yourself back then.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Including nice and handy little drawings of what your scope (if you had access to one) should show you if you put a probe to a particular test point.
raverbashing 3y ago
That's a lot of time ago in the before times ;) I've seen a product like this, yes, but I wasn't the one buying it (got the schematic for some later products, for a fee)
systems_glitch 3y ago
And source code for the customizations (essentially drivers) that the OS needed for your particular hardware! #1 reason I hack on vintage computers: top to bottom documentation and source, and still small enough to fit in one human's head.
notsurenymore 3y ago
I had an old IBM luggable at one point that had the BIOS source listed in manual.
- passion__desire 3y ago
  Well things are so complex now that if they provide you with source code, it would be so easy to make 0days.
  - wincy 3y ago
    Don’t you think in the long term this would result in better source code and hardened software, similar to what’s happened with the Linux source code? Right now the NSA just has all the 0days instead.
    - passion__desire 3y ago
      I agree with you, I am just highlighting companies' thinking why they would wanna protect their source code. security by obscurity. Also having a copy of source could also mean the companies might have cut corners. Many leaks of future products are now guessed from source code. Also it is so easy to copy as well by other companies.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    The relative security of open and closed source operating systems implies not much of a difference in that regard.
naruhodo 3y ago
I remember my father opened up a TV set to fix it in the early 80s. The circuit diagram was affixed to the inside back cover of the set.
0xEF 3y ago
This blew my mind as a younger person who took an interest in repairing tube radios from the 30's & 40's. One of the first things I realized was how generally easy it was to find schematics of popular brands and models. Some were even pasted right inside the radio shell! I also hack and repair modern stuff, and it is so common to open up a product just to end up staring at an epoxy blob. User manuals hold no mention of service tips, but instead are near-useless "quick start" guides that might review functionality, if the manufacturer is feeling generous. Modern tech seems so remarkably spiteful toward the consumer and consumers themselves just seem to roll with it. Sometimes I hear them use arguments like "Company X doesn't want Company Z making knock-offs" as though these knock-off manufacturers aren't already expert reverse engineers. I feel the locking down of consumer tech is more about forcing the consumer into a state of dependancy on the manufacturer than it is about protecting any intellectual properties. They conflate "repeate business" with customers being forced to return for repairs or replacements instead of willfully returning because they trust the quality and brand.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  I wouldn't say they are intentionally spiteful, just that modern electronics are complex enough, especially highly integrated stuff like smartphones, that the OEM's suppliers would be unhappy if detailed schematics were released. Since they would not be willing to guarantee on the record that they are correct, nor would they want stuff impinging on actual trade secrets to be revealed.
  - throwaway4220 3y ago
    Both can be true. It may be a happy side effect that you can’t easily repair your device and it’s hard to give schematics
  - b112 3y ago
    Trade secrets are not secret once in the wild, and are immediately invalidated as a result. Schematics for things sold, are never trade secrets.
    - 3y ago
MarketingJason 3y ago
I wonder if gaming consoles had a big hand in this? Going back to Atari pong in the early/mid 70's and I don't recall if any of the major players (Magnavox, Atari, Coleco, Sears) included anything close to schematics.
- carapace 3y ago
  > Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) chips were developed and then widely adopted, enabling complex semiconductor and telecommunication technologies. The microprocessor and memory chips are VLSI devices. > Before the introduction of VLSI technology, most ICs had a limited set of functions they could perform. An electronic circuit might consist of a CPU, ROM, RAM and other glue logic. VLSI enables IC designers to add all of these into one chip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLSI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLSI
- api 3y ago
  It was mostly the mobile revolution. Consoles were always considered something separate from computers. It was phones that normalized not only locked down OSes but surveillance as a normal thing. I remember in the late 2000s hating everything about the mobile revolution and predicting where it would go. I was mostly right but wow did people ever think I was nuts. Tech groupthink back then was the literal phrase “mobile is the future” repeated like something out of a political talking points memo. What I got wrong was underestimating how evil social media would become. I never imagined how addictive it could be made or how toxic the content would get, or how it would help re-mainstream a whole raft of horrible ideologies. The addiction factor and brain dead content machine really hit with mobile too, so it’s not unrelated. Something about that little screen that is always there and swiping to scroll seems to facilitate addiction better than a PC or laptop screen.
  - andai 3y ago
    Agree with everything you said, but what bugs me most is that I like computers, and phones are computers but they're designed for people who don't like computers, so they pretend not to be computers. Worse, those same ideas have infected the desktop too.
smitty1e 3y ago
That just has to return to being a market differentiator and sales feature for gear.
RobotToaster 3y ago
I bought a vintage printer (juki 6100) to tinker with recently, I was pretty shocked how the manual included circuit and timing diagrams, and gave instructions on how to construct adapter cables for various machines. Also the "driver" installation for IBM PC is just instructions on how to manually patch wordstar to work with it.
kalleboo 3y ago
I took apart an old bakelite phone to replace the cord with an RJ11 one (connected two old phones together with a Cisco SPA adapter, the kids love calling each other) and was surprised when there was a little bit of paper wedged between two components with the full schematic! edit: went to the trouble of uploading some photos https://kalleboo.com/microblog/posts/111001749605994561.html https://kalleboo.com/microblog/posts/111001749605994561.html
protomolecule 3y ago
In Russia it was the case even in the 90s, but all locally produced consumer electronics in ex-USSR quickly got replaced by Japanese and Western devices.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago

My first computer was a BBC B. The schematics were IN the manual!

perihelions 3y ago
Indeed they seem to be: https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Manuals/Acorn_BBCSMOct85_Sec2.pdf https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Manua... ("BBC Microcomputer Model B +") There is a circuit block diagram, a PCB layout diagram with all the components' part numbers that I guess you can replace broken ones (?), and circuit diagrams for the power supply and for the keyboard circuit. (starts on page 97) Skimming the text, the manual seems to assume an owner has access to a multimeter, an oscilloscope, and a soldering iron.
jacquesm 3y ago
I have that thing etched into my memory to the point that I probably could still fix a beeb without resorting to looking at the schematic.

ume 3y ago

I still have the circuit diagram (paper copy) that shipped with my Acorn Atom in, ahem, 1981. Didn’t ask for it! (Edit: with the help of the circuit diagram we did make a simple mod to one of the output ports of the device)

guy4261 3y ago
Your and others' comments on this thread remind me of a though I had lately. In the "before times", you would buy things that would last. So naturally, the companies that made them could not sell new products. Planned obsolescence was one natural outcome that we ended up with. An electrical engineers I know told me how designing a CPU that would last a lifetime is relatively easy compared to designing an equipment that will fail only 5 years from now, but not earlier. I wonder if there was a way we could take the other path. Keep manufacturing solid, long lasting products but also being financially sound. Right now economy, to me, seems like a thing of perpetual growth, but in a cancer-like way.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  > I wonder if there was a way we could take the other path. Keep manufacturing solid, long lasting products but also being financially sound. Regulation. Fun fact: this is still possible! It's a little harder – it'll have to be steadily introduced, in multiple countries at once (so we don't break international trade), starting in the areas where it's cheapest to produce lasting equipment (so enforcement doesn't take out entire sectors), and I don't yet know what the regulations would look like, but if it's possible to make lasting things, it's possible to require manufacturers to make things last. We need to do this, sooner or later, anyway: we simply don't have the raw resources to continue as we are.
  - echelon 3y ago
    > we simply don't have the raw resources to continue as we are What runs out, and when does it run out? Are there alternatives? And can we source it from asteroids?
  - jkestner 3y ago
    I’m in favor of regulation, but that’s not happening now for the same reason that we have the problem in the first place. We’re all tied up together in capitalism, and anything that slows the acceleration of growth that our retirement funds require is not going to fly. If it’s going to happen, it’s because enough people have been excluded from the rewards of the system (we’re getting there). Easy to nay-say, though. To me, a solution starts with spreading those values that make it possible for _consumers_ to stop sliding down the growth-over-everything slope. Mittelstands, shinise, Patagonia, yada yada. Can you as an entrepreneur make a sustainable business that isn’t just for well-off conscious consumers? What’s the product where longevity is inextricable from the core feature set, not just a trade-off with cost? Right-to-repair is a decent example of where regulation has enough support across the ideological spectrum to get a foot in the door. It would be cool if a company who made profit on service now decides it doesn’t want to compete on service and instead takes more profit upfront with a higher-quality product. Forcing USB-C on phones feels like a small thing to me, but if it sets a precedent where interfaces are standardized for sustainability, that could be amazing. (No, I’m not worried about governments slowing progress. Locked ecosystems are doing just fine at that.)

grishka 3y ago

Not only schematics, but what amounts to a complete service manual. You were expected to troubleshoot and fix things yourself back then.

jacquesm 3y ago
Including nice and handy little drawings of what your scope (if you had access to one) should show you if you put a probe to a particular test point.

raverbashing 3y ago

That's a lot of time ago in the before times ;) I've seen a product like this, yes, but I wasn't the one buying it (got the schematic for some later products, for a fee)

systems_glitch 3y ago

And source code for the customizations (essentially drivers) that the OS needed for your particular hardware! #1 reason I hack on vintage computers: top to bottom documentation and source, and still small enough to fit in one human's head.

notsurenymore 3y ago

I had an old IBM luggable at one point that had the BIOS source listed in manual.

passion__desire 3y ago
Well things are so complex now that if they provide you with source code, it would be so easy to make 0days.
- wincy 3y ago
  Don’t you think in the long term this would result in better source code and hardened software, similar to what’s happened with the Linux source code? Right now the NSA just has all the 0days instead.
  - passion__desire 3y ago
    I agree with you, I am just highlighting companies' thinking why they would wanna protect their source code. security by obscurity. Also having a copy of source could also mean the companies might have cut corners. Many leaks of future products are now guessed from source code. Also it is so easy to copy as well by other companies.
- ben_w 3y ago
  The relative security of open and closed source operating systems implies not much of a difference in that regard.

naruhodo 3y ago

I remember my father opened up a TV set to fix it in the early 80s. The circuit diagram was affixed to the inside back cover of the set.

0xEF 3y ago

This blew my mind as a younger person who took an interest in repairing tube radios from the 30's & 40's. One of the first things I realized was how generally easy it was to find schematics of popular brands and models. Some were even pasted right inside the radio shell! I also hack and repair modern stuff, and it is so common to open up a product just to end up staring at an epoxy blob. User manuals hold no mention of service tips, but instead are near-useless "quick start" guides that might review functionality, if the manufacturer is feeling generous. Modern tech seems so remarkably spiteful toward the consumer and consumers themselves just seem to roll with it. Sometimes I hear them use arguments like "Company X doesn't want Company Z making knock-offs" as though these knock-off manufacturers aren't already expert reverse engineers. I feel the locking down of consumer tech is more about forcing the consumer into a state of dependancy on the manufacturer than it is about protecting any intellectual properties. They conflate "repeate business" with customers being forced to return for repairs or replacements instead of willfully returning because they trust the quality and brand.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
I wouldn't say they are intentionally spiteful, just that modern electronics are complex enough, especially highly integrated stuff like smartphones, that the OEM's suppliers would be unhappy if detailed schematics were released. Since they would not be willing to guarantee on the record that they are correct, nor would they want stuff impinging on actual trade secrets to be revealed.
- throwaway4220 3y ago
  Both can be true. It may be a happy side effect that you can’t easily repair your device and it’s hard to give schematics
- b112 3y ago
  Trade secrets are not secret once in the wild, and are immediately invalidated as a result. Schematics for things sold, are never trade secrets.
  - 3y ago

MarketingJason 3y ago

I wonder if gaming consoles had a big hand in this? Going back to Atari pong in the early/mid 70's and I don't recall if any of the major players (Magnavox, Atari, Coleco, Sears) included anything close to schematics.

carapace 3y ago
> Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) chips were developed and then widely adopted, enabling complex semiconductor and telecommunication technologies. The microprocessor and memory chips are VLSI devices. > Before the introduction of VLSI technology, most ICs had a limited set of functions they could perform. An electronic circuit might consist of a CPU, ROM, RAM and other glue logic. VLSI enables IC designers to add all of these into one chip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLSI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLSI
api 3y ago
It was mostly the mobile revolution. Consoles were always considered something separate from computers. It was phones that normalized not only locked down OSes but surveillance as a normal thing. I remember in the late 2000s hating everything about the mobile revolution and predicting where it would go. I was mostly right but wow did people ever think I was nuts. Tech groupthink back then was the literal phrase “mobile is the future” repeated like something out of a political talking points memo. What I got wrong was underestimating how evil social media would become. I never imagined how addictive it could be made or how toxic the content would get, or how it would help re-mainstream a whole raft of horrible ideologies. The addiction factor and brain dead content machine really hit with mobile too, so it’s not unrelated. Something about that little screen that is always there and swiping to scroll seems to facilitate addiction better than a PC or laptop screen.
- andai 3y ago
  Agree with everything you said, but what bugs me most is that I like computers, and phones are computers but they're designed for people who don't like computers, so they pretend not to be computers. Worse, those same ideas have infected the desktop too.

smitty1e 3y ago

That just has to return to being a market differentiator and sales feature for gear.

RobotToaster 3y ago

I bought a vintage printer (juki 6100) to tinker with recently, I was pretty shocked how the manual included circuit and timing diagrams, and gave instructions on how to construct adapter cables for various machines. Also the "driver" installation for IBM PC is just instructions on how to manually patch wordstar to work with it.

kalleboo 3y ago

I took apart an old bakelite phone to replace the cord with an RJ11 one (connected two old phones together with a Cisco SPA adapter, the kids love calling each other) and was surprised when there was a little bit of paper wedged between two components with the full schematic! edit: went to the trouble of uploading some photos https://kalleboo.com/microblog/posts/111001749605994561.html https://kalleboo.com/microblog/posts/111001749605994561.html

protomolecule 3y ago

In Russia it was the case even in the 90s, but all locally produced consumer electronics in ex-USSR quickly got replaced by Japanese and Western devices.