Clueless Field Service

From: jpero_at_mail.cgo.wave.ca <(jpero_at_mail.cgo.wave.ca)>
Date: Mon Jun 8 18:56:34 1998

> << A few months ago, PC World did a similar thing, only they made real
> hardware problems. Cutting the IDE cable on some machines, and
> rearranging RAM in others (so the SIMMS were no longer paired). Noone
> solved this. Better yet, the next issue, they published a letter
> saying that these were clearly artificial problems, and I quote,
> "IDE cables just don't fail". The guy said that a tech would never
> think to look at it. >>
>
> yes, someone at work told me about it and i just had to read it myself. it was
...SNip!...
> it back to the customer. either A+ certification is bogus, or every servicer
> needs it.
>
> david

Asolutely true! And that takes real skill that you don't see and
learn and go by the book.

I add to this tricky problems:

- Loose drive power connections (the famale connectors is opened up
not making firm connections on male connectors)

- "Invisiable" Slit in ribbon cables cut by the sharp solder side
pins. Real pain to find it.

- hard to spot bad ribbon cables.

- wrong i/o cables for specific boards.
 
- labels stuck on cpu's top with heatsink installed
   a. no heatsink grease
   b. low quality heatsink n fan
   c. wrong voltage (requires skill to read the # on the cpu and
refer to website info).
   d. motherboard partially supports the certain cpu. Tricky!

- Cheapo motherboards (very often!) or cheapo jumpers (did that
once after swapping for good jumpers on whole thing).

- Invisiable dirt and grease film on PCI and VLB, hi speed edge
connectors cards and some gold shiny contacts on simms.

- Card bracket too low with too short edge connector.

- clock timekeeping drifting. Many don't have voltage meter to check
the cmos battery, all it needs is just 0.2V from 3.0V off to lose
accuracy on many boards using coin lithium.

- Partially working PSU's this one is hard to catch.

- Cracked solder joints or low quality solder joints, often seen that
in portables and cheapo stuff.

- Scratched board traces even it's still good, becomes
resistor to create voltage drops or opens. Very rare to find a low
quality board with badly etched traces acting as fuse when that
happens, opens up. That's real toughie one!

- Dead machines with loose screw or metal standoff(s) in wrong
locations wedged and out of sight finally shorting out after years.
Sometimes lucky somestime not.

- Wrong multi-sector setting in bios, screwing the filenames with
bit of grabage characters with specific motherboard and specific hard
drive (the hd can be latest one) combination.

Jason D.
email: jpero_at_cgo.wave.ca
Pero, Jason D.
Received on Mon Jun 08 1998 - 18:56:34 BST