HK wrote:
jps wrote:
On Tue, 05 May 2009 13:27:10 -0400, HK wrote:

wrote:
On Tue, 05 May 2009 12:41:32 -0400, HK wrote:

Stop infringing on deer habitat.
I have seen deer in downtown DC (on the Whitehurst freeway), what is
"deer habitat".
I've seen deer on the national mall.

The deer habitat under discussion here typically is surburban and
rural land on or adjacent to meadows, forests, et cetera.
Deer are becoming overpopulated in many areas. The lack of hunters and
large predators has made them 150 pound rats. They simply breed up to
the food supply, which tends to be just about anything that grows.

BTW seeing a deer on the mall is not as exciting as seeing one 35 feet
above K street on the Whitehurst (an elevated freeway exactly 2 lanes
wide wall to wall). N39.54.9.54 W77.03.43.56 for you google E fans
No Don I wasn't doing the speed limit. it was about 4AM and I was on
my way to GEICO to fix 2 broken laser printers. doing about 50
I did manage to dodge them although one did jump over the wall. I
thought about looping around on M street and seeing if she was OK but
I had to go.


You fix laser printers? Now *that* is a real skill. I am impressed. I
met a TV guy a month or so ago who fixed a board on my glass picture
tube HD TV by pulling the board, removing some chips and soldering in
new ones. He's gotta be one of the last of the breed, too.

I replaced a cmos chip on my Raytheon scanner 5 years ago and I didn't
know a damned thing about it before cracking it open to diagnose. Was
able to search the net for clues, talked to a raytheon tech over the
phone and isolated the problem. Soldering iron, solder suck, solder
and a $2 cmos chip and the thing worked like new. Damned gratifying.

Replacing the board would've been $600.

Well..I am pretty good at assemblying computer from component parts, and
general soldering, but you guys are beyond my abilities.

By component parts do you mean assemblies or discrete components? Any
three year old can screw together a case fans PS MB etc. Especially if
he has a set of fine German screwdrivers to work with.

"jim78565" wrote in message
...

HK wrote:

Well..I am pretty good at assemblying computer from component parts, and
general soldering, but you guys are beyond my abilities.


By component parts do you mean assemblies or discrete components? Any
three year old can screw together a case fans PS MB etc. Especially if he
has a set of fine German screwdrivers to work with.



In the old days, real "skill" meant determining *what* component or
components needed to be replaced using a schematic, meter and/or an o'scope.

Much of today's modern electronic circuitry has built in diagnostics that
scream "replace me" when they go bad.

Eisboch

Eisboch wrote:

"jim78565" wrote in message
...

HK wrote:

Well..I am pretty good at assemblying computer from component parts,
and general soldering, but you guys are beyond my abilities.


By component parts do you mean assemblies or discrete components? Any
three year old can screw together a case fans PS MB etc. Especially if
he has a set of fine German screwdrivers to work with.



In the old days, real "skill" meant determining *what* component or
components needed to be replaced using a schematic, meter and/or an
o'scope.

Much of today's modern electronic circuitry has built in diagnostics
that scream "replace me" when they go bad.

Eisboch


Well, since moving over to the "silver side" with an Apple desktop and
an Apple laptop, I haven't given a lot of thought to building up another
fast "PC" computer. I did turn my last PC desktop into a server.

I have been keeping up to speed, though, on the "Hackintosh" projects.
These are computers built from standard PC components to run the Apple OS.

There's really no need to solder components in order to build a
superfast desktop computer, and there hasn't been for decades.

"HK" wrote in message
m...
Eisboch wrote:

"jim78565" wrote in message
...

HK wrote:

Well..I am pretty good at assemblying computer from component parts,
and general soldering, but you guys are beyond my abilities.


By component parts do you mean assemblies or discrete components? Any
three year old can screw together a case fans PS MB etc. Especially if
he has a set of fine German screwdrivers to work with.



In the old days, real "skill" meant determining *what* component or
components needed to be replaced using a schematic, meter and/or an
o'scope.

Much of today's modern electronic circuitry has built in diagnostics that
scream "replace me" when they go bad.

Eisboch


Well, since moving over to the "silver side" with an Apple desktop and an
Apple laptop, I haven't given a lot of thought to building up another fast
"PC" computer. I did turn my last PC desktop into a server.

I have been keeping up to speed, though, on the "Hackintosh" projects.
These are computers built from standard PC components to run the Apple OS.

There's really no need to solder components in order to build a superfast
desktop computer, and there hasn't been for decades.



Soldering isn't what I was referring to. That's a basic physical skill that
anyone can learn, along with the more important skill of how to "de-solder"
without destroying a printed circuit board.

At the technician level, I was referring to having the knowledge of how
individual components worked, meaning tubes, resistors, transistors,
capacitors, etc. and having the ability to determine which of them were not
working properly ... or at all by applying measurements to your knowledge
base. Electronics obviously has changed. It's now mostly board level
replacement, based on published problem symptoms and troubleshooting guides.
It's a vast improvement, for sure, but I can't say it requires the same
level of education, skill and knowledge required of the old fashioned TV
repairman of yesteryear.

Engineers used to design products uniquely for the types of components they
used and for their application. In the old days that's what made a
Macintosh (the amplifier, not the computer) sound like a Mac, and not a
Pioneer or Sansui.


To me a computer is just a case that houses a bunch of third party supplied,
standardized components that basically plug in and work. If your Seagate
drive dies, unplug it, unscrew it and replace it with a Western Digital and
it will work fine. Most of the board level replacements in a computer cost
less to replace than the time it would take to find a specific component
problem.

Eisboch (old school)

On May 5, 5:25*pm, "Eisboch" wrote:
"HK" wrote in message

m...





Eisboch wrote:

"jim78565" wrote in message
...

HK wrote:

Well..I am pretty good at assemblying computer from component parts,
and general soldering, but you guys are beyond my abilities.

By component parts do you mean assemblies or discrete components? Any
three year old can screw together a case fans PS MB etc. Especially if
he has a set of fine German screwdrivers to work with.

In the old days, real "skill" meant determining **what* component or
components needed to be replaced using a schematic, meter and/or an
o'scope.

Much of today's modern electronic circuitry has built in diagnostics that
scream "replace me" when they go bad.

Eisboch

Well, since moving over to the "silver side" with an Apple desktop and an
Apple laptop, I haven't given a lot of thought to building up another fast
"PC" computer. I did turn my last PC desktop into a server.

I have been keeping up to speed, though, on the "Hackintosh" projects.
These are computers built from standard PC components to run the Apple OS.

There's really no need to solder components in order to build a superfast
desktop computer, and there hasn't been for decades.

Soldering isn't what I was referring to. *That's a basic physical skill that
anyone can learn, along with the more important skill of how to "de-solder"
without destroying a printed circuit board.

At the technician level, I was referring to having the knowledge of how
individual components worked, meaning tubes, resistors, transistors,
capacitors, etc. and having the ability to determine which of them were not
working properly ... or at all by applying measurements to your knowledge
base. * Electronics obviously has changed. *It's now mostly board level
replacement, based on published problem symptoms and troubleshooting guides.
It's a vast improvement, for sure, but I can't say it requires the same
level of education, skill and knowledge required of the old fashioned TV
repairman of yesteryear.

Engineers used to design products uniquely for the types of components they
used and for their application. * In the old days that's what made a
Macintosh *(the amplifier, not the computer) *sound like a Mac, and not a
Pioneer or Sansui.

To me a computer is just a case that houses a bunch of third party supplied,
standardized components that basically plug in and work. * If your Seagate
drive dies, unplug it, unscrew it and replace it with a Western Digital and
it will work fine. * Most of the board level replacements in a computer cost
less to replace than the time it would take to find a specific component
problem.

Eisboch *(old school)- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Yup, that's how it was in the 80''s when auto computers were just
coming to be. I worked with a schematic and an Occilliscope. As time
went on the dealerships just wanted to change parts until the car ran.
Lot's of times it would just be a connection or even a wire but they
didn't care, charge the customer 800 for a CPU and if that didn't
work, start changing other parts until something worked...

Eisboch wrote:

"HK" wrote in message
m...
Eisboch wrote:

"jim78565" wrote in message
...

HK wrote:

Well..I am pretty good at assemblying computer from component
parts, and general soldering, but you guys are beyond my abilities.


By component parts do you mean assemblies or discrete components?
Any three year old can screw together a case fans PS MB etc.
Especially if he has a set of fine German screwdrivers to work with.



In the old days, real "skill" meant determining *what* component or
components needed to be replaced using a schematic, meter and/or an
o'scope.

Much of today's modern electronic circuitry has built in diagnostics
that scream "replace me" when they go bad.

Eisboch


Well, since moving over to the "silver side" with an Apple desktop and
an Apple laptop, I haven't given a lot of thought to building up
another fast "PC" computer. I did turn my last PC desktop into a server.

I have been keeping up to speed, though, on the "Hackintosh" projects.
These are computers built from standard PC components to run the Apple
OS.

There's really no need to solder components in order to build a
superfast desktop computer, and there hasn't been for decades.



Soldering isn't what I was referring to. That's a basic physical skill
that anyone can learn, along with the more important skill of how to
"de-solder" without destroying a printed circuit board.

At the technician level, I was referring to having the knowledge of how
individual components worked, meaning tubes, resistors, transistors,
capacitors, etc. and having the ability to determine which of them were
not working properly ... or at all by applying measurements to your
knowledge base. Electronics obviously has changed. It's now mostly
board level replacement, based on published problem symptoms and
troubleshooting guides. It's a vast improvement, for sure, but I can't
say it requires the same level of education, skill and knowledge
required of the old fashioned TV repairman of yesteryear.

Engineers used to design products uniquely for the types of components
they used and for their application. In the old days that's what made
a Macintosh (the amplifier, not the computer) sound like a Mac, and
not a Pioneer or Sansui.


To me a computer is just a case that houses a bunch of third party
supplied, standardized components that basically plug in and work. If
your Seagate drive dies, unplug it, unscrew it and replace it with a
Western Digital and it will work fine. Most of the board level
replacements in a computer cost less to replace than the time it would
take to find a specific component problem.

Eisboch (old school)


That's pretty much it, plug and play.

wrote in message
...
On Tue, 5 May 2009 16:39:41 -0400, "Eisboch"
wrote:

In the old days, real "skill" meant determining *what* component or
components needed to be replaced using a schematic, meter and/or an
o'scope.

Much of today's modern electronic circuitry has built in diagnostics that
scream "replace me" when they go bad.


We called it "the bad part falls out smoking on the floor".
I liked working on computers when a CPU was the size of a commercial
sub-zero fridge and had 1000 cards. Since then it is "cut open the box
and plug in a new one".



I've been out of the electronics field for over 30 years, but am absolutely
amazed at the advances made since I went to school. I learned vacuum tube
theory, transistors and had a basic introduction to digital in the form of
TTL (5v) logic devices, soon after replaced by 12v CMOS mainly because TTL
just wasn't reliable. A digital display was a row of Nixie Tubes with the
proper internal elements illuminated for a display. Electronics then was
all discrete components and a piece of gear designed with them mounted on a
single layer PC board was "High Tech".

Now, a complete FM receiver and 5.1 surround sound decoder is on a single
chip that costs about 53 cents to manufacture. It's really an amazing
evolution. Soon, PC boards will lose their copper conductors, replaced by
modulated LEDs and fiber optics. The size of products will continue to
shrink and become even more powerful.

Eisboch

On May 5, 8:52*pm, "Eisboch" wrote:
wrote in message

...

On Tue, 5 May 2009 16:39:41 -0400, "Eisboch"
wrote:

In the old days, real "skill" meant determining **what* component or
components needed to be replaced using a schematic, meter and/or an
o'scope.

Much of today's modern electronic circuitry has built in diagnostics that
scream "replace me" when they go bad.

We called it "the bad part falls out smoking on the floor".
I liked working on computers when a CPU was the size of a commercial
sub-zero fridge and had 1000 cards. Since then it is "cut open the box
and plug in a new one".

I've been out of the electronics field for over 30 years, but am absolutely
amazed at the advances made since I went to school. * I learned vacuum tube
theory, transistors and had a basic introduction to digital in the form of
TTL *(5v) logic devices, soon after replaced by 12v CMOS mainly because TTL
just wasn't reliable. * A digital display was a row of Nixie Tubes with the
proper internal elements illuminated for a display. * Electronics then was
all discrete components and a piece of gear designed with them mounted on a
single layer PC board was "High Tech".

Now, a complete FM receiver and 5.1 surround sound decoder is on a single
chip that costs about 53 cents to manufacture. * It's really an amazing
evolution. * Soon, PC boards will lose their copper conductors, replaced by
modulated LEDs and fiber optics. * The size of products will continue to
shrink and become even more powerful.

Eisboch

I am a bit younger but the first time I ever did a repair was taking
apart a tube CB radio and bringing the tubes to radio shack where they
had a tester.. It was a big box about the size of a video game.. You
plugged in the tube and hit the button.. I think I was about 8-10 at
the time.

On Tue, 5 May 2009 18:01:38 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

I am a bit younger but the first time I ever did a repair was taking
apart a tube CB radio and bringing the tubes to radio shack where they
had a tester.. It was a big box about the size of a video game.. You
plugged in the tube and hit the button.. I think I was about 8-10 at
the time.

When I was a kid there was a tube tester at the drug store. Radio
Shack sold to radio amateurs mostly, and it was downtown. Everything
was downtown there were no malls.

Casady

"Richard Casady" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 5 May 2009 18:01:38 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

I am a bit younger but the first time I ever did a repair was taking
apart a tube CB radio and bringing the tubes to radio shack where they
had a tester.. It was a big box about the size of a video game.. You
plugged in the tube and hit the button.. I think I was about 8-10 at
the time.

When I was a kid there was a tube tester at the drug store. Radio
Shack sold to radio amateurs mostly, and it was downtown. Everything
was downtown there were no malls.

Casady


I think I mentioned before that I remember as a young kid going with my Dad
to the original Radio Shack that was located somewhere near the "Common" in
Boston.

Eisboch