No User Serviceable Parts Inside | Hacker News Reader

No User Serviceable Parts Inside

jacquesmattheij.com

35 pointscolinprince11 comments

Ah, nostalgia.

However, he's also missing the part where the devices have a lot more functionality as well. It isn't just that things are smaller and hard to trace (even if they aren't deliberately obfuscated) but that they do a lot more, too.

And people do still replace single components on a board, if they know how to use a soldering iron and can see what piece is broken. Sometimes it's impossible, but many times there are visual hints as to which piece died.

Plus there is always all the fun you can have with something like the arduino kits that in some small way let you relive those days plus do so much more.

This. If you want to tinker -- these things are a gold mine.

Another point is that electronic devices don't seem to break down nearly as often as they used to. Or maybe it's just that they've become so cheap that people replace them earlier. But aside from one dodgy clock radio which I bought in a closing-down sale, I can't remember suffering from any broken electronic devices in my adult life.

PS Anyone want two free perfectly functional CRT-based televisions? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Supporting example: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Plasma-Capacitor-Repair-Replac...

I often wonder if there would be a market for appliances designed to be easily repaired and upgraded. Obviously it would be a niche market, but based on the popularity of the "Maker" movement recently, I think it has some potential. The real problem is keeping up with the pace of innovation in the more custom consumer electronics.

Sure! Just toss your MP3 player in the trash, and replace the whole thing with a new/upgraded model. That's the ultimate stage in integration.

I think you could get there with appliances that existed in the 60s or 70s, but in many cases you simply aren't going to duplicate functionality of a modern device any other way. An MP3 player needs an IC to decode the MP3, if nothing else.

Although this makes me wonder if an analog MP3 decoder made out of maintainable parts is possible. It would be awfully big, though.

Big, expensive, and unreliable. The most unreliable parts of most electronics I've owned are user-manipulated wires, connectors, and ports. Taking the whole unit back to the store for an exchange when there's a tiny defect (as I did with my iPad a couple months ago) is actually more valuable to me than the prospect of being able to do maintenance and component replacements on something the size of the box an iPad comes in and twice as expensive.

And things are continuing to change, too. More and more FPGAs and CPLDs are showing up in end user electronics - our hardware is becoming software.

you can still find quite a bit discrete electronics in audio recording gear, and some PA gear.

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