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Schematics
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blauerscharik:
So I'm not old enough to know the time when electronics were sold with a manual and actual schematics of that device.
(although I like to buy old stuff from flea markets which often have the manuals and schematics)

Why did that mentality change?
Were companies back then actually hoping the devices would be fixed instead of thrown away?
Were the devices made to be repaired, i. e. the design of the device itself and the board layouts and stuff.

Now companies are doing the exact opposite, but why? 5,000 different screws... everything is glued so it breaks when you try opening it... zero information of how things wok... etc. etc. etc. 
I guess the incentive is when it breaks you buy a new one, but why was it different before?

Or wasn't it?
ataradov:
This changed when ASICs appeared. What is the point of having a schematic if it uses a part that you can't buy. My dad used to repair TVs. And over the years it became harder and harder. Once the TV got optimized to one IC, the schematics were still available, but they were pointless because apart from obvious cracks in the connector solder joints, that IC was the major culprit.  For some time salvaged ICs were available, but then even that went away.

And then with more MCUs and other programmable devices being used, just having the schematic is not enough, you need the firmware.

There is mostly no point in having schematics for modern devices.

And for the glue - people demand slicker and cheaper devices. Unless forced by the law, manufactures will optimize the price over anything else.
blauerscharik:

--- Quote from: ataradov on July 23, 2023, 08:07:43 pm ---This changed when ASICs appeared. What is the point of having a schematic if it uses a part that you can't buy. My dad used to repair TVs. And over the years it became harder and harder. Once the TV got optimized to one IC, the schematics were still available, but they were pointless because apart from obvious cracks in the connector solder joints, that IC was the major culprit.  For some time salvaged ICs were available, but then even that went away.

And then with more MCUs and other programmable devices being used, just having the schematic is not enough, you need the firmware.

There is mostly no point in having schematics for modern devices.

And for the glue - people demand slicker and cheaper devices. Unless forced by the law, manufactures will optimize the price over anything else.

--- End quote ---

Yes I see your point.
But still, someone who designs a board still needs something to go by.
I do understand that everything is getting more complicated and on a smaller footprint. Everything used to be through-hole boards now it's SMD and you're lost witout a microscope.

What will the future be like?
ataradov:

--- Quote from: blauerscharik on July 23, 2023, 08:18:59 pm ---But still, someone who designs a board still needs something to go by.

--- End quote ---
What do you mean? People that design the boards have the schematics for the boards they design.


--- Quote from: blauerscharik on July 23, 2023, 08:18:59 pm ---What will the future be like?

--- End quote ---
It is not economical to repair most of the consumer stuff anyway if you factor in the time. And most people will not be repairing their stuff on their own.

So, things will be optimized to serve their useful life and be discarded. Increasing the price for everyone and making the design more complicated because a couple people may decide to repair it, may not balance well. Let's say you are making a power supply and instead of sonic welding the case, you decide to use screws. How many people will realistically be repairing the power supply instead of replacing it? But everyone will eventually discard it. So you will be discarding a lot of metal in the screws.
SiliconWizard:
That's a problem.

Even if you arrange to make the hardware easier to repair (which will inevitably add significant cost, plus you always have the problem of availability for all the components that are used, modern components are - often - much shorter-lived than the old parts which had a lot of equivalents), there's now the software which has become a major issue.

More and more devices rely on software to operate, and such software ends up becoming "obsolete" when the vendor decides to stop supporting the device. (It's often something around 2 to 3 years max for most consumer stuff apart from cars). So even if you could hypothetically repair a device forever, you'd be stuck with the latest version of software that was made available. And since more and more devices now need to interoperate with existing infrastructures, such software definitely does become obsolete in the sense that an older version may not support newer infrastructure and thus may make the device useless even if the hardware is still perfectly fine.

That is true for mobile phones, but also increasingly for TV sets, and soon even your washing machine will need to have up-to-date software in order to work at all, as an internet connection might end up becoming a strict requirement for normal operation.

In other words, the hardware side of things has certainly evolved a lot, making devices harder to impossible to repair, but the sofware side of things is every bit as problematic, and probably a lot more.
Of course that could be eased up (at least as much as possible) by mandating that any company selling products with software must open-source the software of said products when it stops supporting it.
That is pretty unlikely to happen, though. But who knows.
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