[Coco] An interesting computer repair story

[Phill Harvey-Smith]

On 03/05/2012 15:07, Louis Ciotti wrote:
> I totally agree with you Mark.  America has become the throw away society,

Not just America, it's the same a lot of ways in the UK, sad though it is.

> to fix things.  I grew up wanting to know how things works, and was
> constantly taking things apart, sometimes breaking things in the process.

I think that goes for a lot of us on this (and other retro computing 
groups), we're hackers and tinkerers......

> Part of the problem today is that some items can be had for such a low cost
> many times it is just not worth reparing the items.

> Old electronics are the same in many peoples
> eyes.  Why fix the old one when a new one can be had so cheaply.

This isn't always the case the (CRT) TV that we have in our sitting 
room, we had fixed a couple of years back for around £60, it was worth 
it because to have replaced it would have probably cost around £400 for 
a similar specced LCD, so in this case it was worth it, especially as 
said TV was only a couple of years old at that point, and the fault was 
a dodgy degauss circuit causing the colours to be all funny :( A quick 
look on Comet's website suggests the cheapest 32" LCD is still £200, so 
still worth doing :)

Besides the fact that I actually prefer the picture on a CRT (for TV 
anyway), but then I'm strange like that :)

Cheers.

Phill.