vintage computers and lead poisoning?

From: Scott Stevens <sastevens_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Fri Jun 4 22:51:27 2004

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004 22:25:09 -0400 (EDT)
der Mouse <mouse_at_rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote:

> > 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.
>
Unless I have a compelling and immediate need for a particular piece of
electronic equipment, I would always rather receive it in a non-working
state. By acquiring it that way, I:

1. Get it for dirt cheap, if not for free.
2. Get to take it apart immediately and fool with the innards, and fix
it, and get it back up and running.

I am a little bit less enthusiastic these days about non-working
consumer-electronics devices than I used to be, but when I was younger,
I considered it fun to troubleshoot bad Television sets. When I was in
tech school I got a lot of troubleshooting practice buying tons of TV
sets at the thrift store. The biggest problem at the time was getting
rid of the working TV sets that resulted from the process. I'd do
things like reverse the deflection coils then give them away (with
mirror-image reversed displays) to friends.

With the quality of programming on Television, for me a non-working set
is like an uncompleted crossword puzzle. A working set is just an
annoyance, a 'filled out' book of crossword puzzles to be disposed of.

The new challange with computers is to find the obscure unknown
machines, then try to bring them up, and find operating system software.
 Certainly more interesting that old Tee Vee sets.
Received on Fri Jun 04 2004 - 22:51:27 BST