Right to Repair Featured

On apple laptops yup... they have cunningly designed the pinout of an internal connector so that the LVDS video straight out of the CPU/GPU ends up right next to the 50V supply to the LCD. So one drop of moisture in the wrong place and it fries the CPU.

Often they just put a different model number or badge on the box.

Possibly a backward step with regards reliability, cost and heat-sinking. More likely in future boards will be made with un-packaged chips wire bonded to the PCB and then potted with a protective cover. The replacement part will be the whole board and not necessarily any individual component on it.

I remember a TV aerial maufacturer who reduced the build quality of his products because the trade complained they didn't get enough call backs.

Basically, the makers wouldn't like it. In the same way as there was a fight to get phones to use the same charger. It would need some form of international cooperation to enforce it. And of course when the EU attempts to make a standard, lots on here call foul.

Think my first electric drill (mains, of course) cost a week's wages. A cheapy now more like an hour's wages.

I'm quite happy buying Lidl cordless for my DIY stuff. Allows me to buy as needed. Unlike Makita.

But are they strong enough to be a moving part on a fire engine?

Generally speaking a non starter with a laptop anyway. Most laptop motherboards will only take a limited number so revisions of a CPU, so unless you are upgrading not long after buying it, you will probably find it difficult to get a compatible CPU anyway. (same is true for desktop machines, but it's easier to swap the motherboard while you are at it)

Soldered on SSD with no header connector to allow it to be connected to an external system is more of a PITA - since it then makes data recovery very much harder.

Scott wrote on 01/07/2021 :

The manufacturer got the best of that settlement I suspect.

Dave Plowman (News) has brought this to us :

Those cheap chinese magnetic connection charge leads go some way towards it - one usb lead, with an adaptor magnetically coupled connector to the end of the lead for each phone type.

My first electric drill (1974-ish) is still my electric drill. The working parts were all designed to be replaced. And have been. Many times. A bit of a Trigger's Broom.

Nick

These probably are:

Harry Bloomfield; "Esq." snipped-for-privacy@harrym1byt.plus.com> wrote

Yeah, love mine, wouldn't go back now. I use it for the kindle, the keyboard and headphones etc too.

Becoming less relevant with phones now tho with wireless charging which is even more convenient again.

I'm impressed!

The motor for my Bosch electric chain saw was £22 dearer than a new machine.

Bill

Why not offer a pack of spares with every appliance? Then the customer can choose.

Bill

The pack will put away safely for future use never to be found again :)

One of the problems with "the soldering thing", is PCB designs vary in their ability to support rework.

Computer motherboards are rather shoddy affairs, and it's easy to lift a pad that has no track joined to it. I changed out a VCore regulator chip on my first motherboard (so it could take a Tualatin), and managed to lift a pad. And I was being careful.

This makes doing 1000 ball BGA repairs with hot air, a challenge.

There are some PCB blanks, that are so robust, you can leave a soldering iron touching a pad, with the iron temp control turned all the way up. Soldering can still leave burnt residues on the board, that are not good, but at least the tendency for pads to lift, is not nearly as great. The blank PCBs in that case, cost as much as a laptop (nobody is going to make a laptop with that quality of PCB).

With such a board, they're intended to support replacement of something the size of a Southbridge, three times.

You might well manage to change out a CPU.

Chips can be re-balled as well, if you wanted to recycle the original CPU. While we had the service mentioned as on-offer at work, we never used it.

When you do hot air rework of BGAs, part of doing a good job, is shooting two Xrays using a 2.5D XRay machine. And that's how you verify the balls were successfully soldered. If the chip being soldered was not dessicated properly, any moisture can boil and screw up the ball. This is why modern chips come in dessicated bags (sealed to keep moisture out). If the bag is opened before its time, the chip has to be dried down again, in an oven.

The practice of soldering down eMMC, that's just abuse. I'm convinced, if someone had an incentive offered to them, they could make a co-planar assembly that would slide into place, and give the same thickness of assembly. Since eMMC can fail, not having them removable is a sin.

Paul

In my life I have only ever had one processor die on me - a SPARC that lost its fan.

Hardly worth socketing