Clueless Field Service

From: Jeff Kaneko <jeff.kaneko_at_ifrsys.com>
Date: Tue Jun 9 09:57:33 1998

At 10:36 PM 6/8/98 -0500, you wrote:

>Remember: Good, Fast, Cheap pick any two. Here in the USA the cost to
>repair often exceeds value on unit, of comes very close to it. A new
>boom box 125$, an hour of service time is typically 35-50$ plus parts
>(usually a subassembly). If the set is more than x many years old the
>feature of a new one and the cost to repair... In some places where
>goods are scarce or expensive that level of waste can't exist.
           ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^

You know, I've heard of this. A friend of mine was visiting a customer
in Serbia (part of the former Yugoslavia), and he was totally amazed that
technicians there were repairing "throw away" modules from the motorola
"MX" portable UHF radios. They used home-made tools, and reverse-engineered
schematics (the exact contents of these modules was supposed to be a
secret).

Clever, these eastern europeans . . . .

>
>I've gotten some good equipment for this reason. I also have some old
>equipment because I could fix it real cheap. My first 11/23 was made
>from failed FS spares returns that were 'shot to the chip level. That
>includes the RL02 I got on a bet. It was mine of I could fix it, it had
>been totally taken appart by several people that couldn't fix it...
>problem was a bad crimp on a spade lug to the motor start cap. It's
>still running and I've never used a alignment pack that one of the
>people that took it apart said it would need despite the heads never
>being desturbed.
>
>Then again I can solder too.
>
>Allison
>
>
>
>
Received on Tue Jun 09 1998 - 09:57:33 BST