vintage computers and lead poisoning?

From: der Mouse <mouse_at_Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Date: Fri Jun 4 21:25:09 2004

> I can't think of any electronic devices made today that are
> repairable.

I can - or else, I can't think of any that ever were.

The only question is what level the FRU is at. In the days of early
(firebottle) consumer electronics, swapping out a tube with a blown
filament was a routine repair for many, though many were afraid to try
it; replacing something else - say, a fried resistor - was the province
of repair shops and the rare end-user. The valves would be considered
FRUs in today's terminology, the resistors not. Repairing a defective
tube was out of the question for almost everyone.

Today, we have exactly the same situation in computers, except that the
"tubes" are now called things like "PCI cards" and the "resistors" are
things like power supplies and motherboards. (There are numerous
differences, of course, such as the number of "tubes" and "resistors"
in a typical computer is rather different, but I believe the principle
is basically valid.) For most people, repairing a PCI NIC with a
defective transceiver chip is as out of the question as repairing a
valve with two grid accidentally shorted together would have been in
the heyday of valve electronics.

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Received on Fri Jun 04 2004 - 21:25:09 BST