Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[URI]

I shall be there this evening 

Edit: unicorn alert!!! https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F184210156865

Scam, probably hacked account "abhstrading".
Same as last week with account "Junorecords"   
Just reported.

Quoting myself...
Same happened to account "herbhealuk".       Reported.   

Edit: These scams do annoy me and destroy my joy of surfing/searching ebay for  T H E  next interesting piece of TE...   

[Specmaster]

Now I'm confused, Apple don't sell parts, infact they don't even have "proper" authorized repair agents,

Plain untrue. There are Apple authorized repair agents. There's availability of spare parts and even rather good documentation available to them - where do you think Louis Rossman gets his detailed schematics from. I suspect, but can't prove, that there's also an official price list on what to charge for what repairs.

I've no problem with people bashing Apple for the things they actually do/don't do, but it's a bit tiresome to hear the same old fictions repeated third hand. It's no different in essence to all the "All things cinese (sic) are crap, countefeit (sic) or contain stolen ideas" that are rolled out by the same old knuckle-draggers on here. Yes, Apple are vociferously opposed to truly independent repairs and lobby at great expense against "right to repair" legislation, but it's completely untrue that there aren't Apple authorised third party repair agents. They are rare as hen's teeth, they are no cheaper than Apple, but they exist.

The truth is that these "Apple Authorized Repair Agents" are restricted in what they can do and what parts that they can have access to, and if they attempt to step beyond these restrictions they get their arses sued by Apple. They are restricted in essence to just replacing screens, home buttons and batteries. Take anything that has suffered water damage to them, and they tow the same lines as Apple do, the device is unrepairable and as I mentioned before also say that they cannot even recover any personal data etc from the device.

Louis Rossman and other unauthorized repair agents get their schematics from here https://pldaniels.com/flexbv/, they are nothing to do with Apple and I guess that they are reverse engineering etc to compile the schematics and turn them into working computer programs that go above normal schematics. These repair agents also have to source many of their spare parts from old scrapped boards that they have to source from China etc as Apple will not supply them with any parts. Why do Apple find it important to embed a chip with a special locking software on that has to locked to the device it is fitted to? It is just a switch, nothing else, the same with the battery and the screen. I've heard arguments before about they do this to protect the user from having duff batteries fitted that do not have the protection circuits etc fitted, and that is plausible but for the fact that Apple will not sell their official batteries to people like Louis Rossman, despite them stating that are perfectly happy and willing to buy their spare parts etc, directly from Apple. The question has to be asked WHY?

Why is that other manufacturers design their equipment to customer replaceable batteries for example? The customer can source their own battery and replace them, I have done so many times without any loss of performance or bad battery problems?

EDIT. If apple were to offer these same services as Louis Rossman and the others offer, then these arguments / discussions would be taking place but the simple plain truth is that they don't offer anything beyond what they allow their "Authorized" agents to do, anything else is just meet with, you need to buy a new device, full stop.

[bd139]

Apple has end to end hardware and software integrity via Secure Enclave etc. If you replace some parts then the trust chain is broken and the device should brick itself. That’s basically why.

Same thing we did in defence sector and for the same reason.

Read: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/secf020d1074/1/web/1

More detailed here: https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1902/en_US/apple-platform-security-guide.pdf

This is incidentally why we have an iOS only policy. It is the only thing that complies with our security policy.

[mnementh]

...I've no problem with people bashing Apple for the things they actually do/don't do, but it's a bit tiresome to hear the same old fictions repeated third hand...

Indeed.

Now the right to repair I don't necessarily agree with because quite frankly, to paraphrase tggzzz, a lot of people suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. "I am allowed therefore I can" is a dangerous concept in the wrong hands. One dickhead changing a Li-poly pack in a tower block and we've got Greenfell two. As mentioned I've seen the guy down the Treaty Centre in Hounslow doing phone repairs and he's a rip off merchant and dangerous to boot.

We should focus on mandatory materials buy-back, recycling, price capping of repairs and "fit for purpose" statuatory warranties on all things. Manufacturers need to support their products for the entire reasonable lifetime rather than kick them over the fence and forget about them. Apple are actually one of the only companies that does all that believe it or not...

I wouldn't take Apple's place in this litigious world for all the money in the world. Throttle-gate is a prime example. They took note of the phone fires that Samsuck and LG were having, so did R&D and determined that older batteries being overloaded had a real potential to bloat and cause similar fires. So they proactively took steps to prevent older, long out-of-warranty devices from becoming fireballs in people's pockets, and then they get sued for making old POS phones run slower and "harming" fuckwits who keep using these old phones long beyond their design life. 

Yes; the problem with all this "Pro-Corporate" lunacy is the fact that by dint of their legal DNA, they WILL try to pass the TRUE COST of their "product" on to someone else... ANYONE ELSE... rather than cut into the quarterly statement. Apple operates at a much more enlightened level of self-interest than the Donald Chumps of the world, yes, but they STILL ARE a megacorporation.

Requiring a per-item "recycling cost tariff" as is required in some of the more progressive countries is a necessary first step in reducing the carbon footprint of all this technology we take for granted. PERIOD. If we don't, as a species, take this concept of "paying the true cost" to heart and embrace it, we will not survive to the end of the century. There simply isn't enough raw material left in the world, nor storage space for refuse, to support the current exponential growth rate of waste we take for granted.

We were once on the right track towards living in a true "fit-for-purpose warranty" state; of course, that was the trigger of the current hostile corporate takeover of the US and first world nations we're observing (it's not like we're REALLY being allowed to participate) now.

I think that is the real problem a lot of folks are having with Apple in particular... the definition of "reasonable lifetime". 

They've always stated quite clearly that the reason their products don't have easily replaceable batteries is that the batteries they use (argue all you want, they simply ARE better batteries...some of the best you can buy, constantly under development to get the most from the least space as well) under normal use (honestly, even under abnormal use) WILL outlive the design life of the product by a large margin. Apple typically supports their products for 2-6 years in-store, and lets be honest... normal folks use a phone for 2-3 years at most, and a tablet for 3-5 years before it is SO slow compared to the content on the intardnet it becomes unusable, and usually by this time, it has some hardware exploit that makes it unsafe to allow it any contact with the intardnet anyways. They are STILL supporting an entire ecosystem... the iPod/iTunes ecosystem... years after they stopped making iPods.

The folks who STILL expect them to factory-support an iPwn 6 (actually, even a 7 now) at this point are just being ridiculous. These are devices that are being sold as a POCKET COMPUTER first and a PHONE second. PERIOD. Expecting a manufacturer to maintain it "Just because there's a phone in it, and phones are a utility so nyah, nyah!!!" are even MORE ridiculous. If you want a phone first/computer second, get whatever cheap LG flip-phone VeriSuck is flogging. You'll get the same quality as TracFone sells for $20, only pay $300. 

mnem
 

[med6753]

Now I'm confused, Apple don't sell parts, infact they don't even have "proper" authorized repair agents,

Plain untrue. There are Apple authorized repair agents. There's availability of spare parts and even rather good documentation available to them - where do you think Louis Rossman gets his detailed schematics from. I suspect, but can't prove, that there's also an official price list on what to charge for what repairs.

I've no problem with people bashing Apple for the things they actually do/don't do, but it's a bit tiresome to hear the same old fictions repeated third hand. It's no different in essence to all the "All things cinese (sic) are crap, countefeit (sic) or contain stolen ideas" that are rolled out by the same old knuckle-draggers on here. Yes, Apple are vociferously opposed to truly independent repairs and lobby at great expense against "right to repair" legislation, but it's completely untrue that there aren't Apple authorised third party repair agents. They are rare as hen's teeth, they are no cheaper than Apple, but they exist.

What's really  rolling-my-eyes-so-loud-you-can-hear-it-through-the-computer-screen dumb is hashing the SAME EXACT ARGUMENT OVER AGAIN... multiple times with the SAME PEOPLE. We had this very same discussion IN HERE about a year & a half ago: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/12600/

Since it's the same memespace, and the same recidivist perps at large, I'm going to copy my response from then lock, stock & 2 smoking barrels right here... it remains as true now as it was then:

It’s the day job leaking into the escape I think

Physical cards are a nightmare. One reason I like Apple Pay. It generates a new card number for every transaction basically. Zero chance of reusing any snatched data right up until the bank. Plus you can’t just grab someone’s handset and use it. The biggest security risks these days are with the merchant and vendor.  Look at ticketmaster recently.

Well I can't even pretend to understand what all security protocol chat is about but your Apple pay has me intrigued, why couldn't I for instance just grab your iphone and use that to pay for something? Its a contactless payment method isn't it?

I will never drink the apple juice....out of principle. In 1984 Apple trashed my employer with this commercial:

*MacIntosh Ad*

They have become 100x worse than IBM ever was. All those drones sitting there are the same drones lined up outside an Apple store for the privilege to buy a $900 I phone. You gotta be freaking crazy.

You're thinking too small; thinking like an ordinary person with bills and a limited amount of money.

What Apple is selling is convenience and TIME; time YOU don't spend figuring it out, time you don't spend fixing it if it breaks, time you don't spend arguing with customer support. All you have to do is fit your needs within the confines of their ecology, and give them boatloads of money. In return, they constantly revise their ecology to fit more and more of the people with money, so eventually you will get more and more functionality from them.

Honestly, it's not that bad a deal, unless you are one of those people who just HAS to do it for yourself; then you're well and truly boned.

mnem
Time is your most valuable commodity; the one thing you can't make or buy more of. Trading mere money for more time is a deal that's ALWAYS in YOUR favor.

And I absolutely stand by what I said then. Apple is overpriced and they have their customer base fooled.

[bd139]

"Overpriced" always depends on value derived from something. My XR costs 0.53% of my daily income (over 2 years and not including the return I get when I sell it) and returns more value than that, mostly because without it I wouldn't be able to pull that daily income!



<--- A good chunk of my posts come from one and look at that spam count 

[mnementh]

Now I'm confused, Apple don't sell parts, infact they don't even have "proper" authorized repair agents,

Plain untrue. There are Apple authorized repair agents. There's availability of spare parts and even rather good documentation available to them - where do you think Louis Rossman gets his detailed schematics from. I suspect, but can't prove, that there's also an official price list on what to charge for what repairs.

I've no problem with people bashing Apple for the things they actually do/don't do, but it's a bit tiresome to hear the same old fictions repeated third hand. It's no different in essence to all the "All things cinese (sic) are crap, countefeit (sic) or contain stolen ideas" that are rolled out by the same old knuckle-draggers on here. Yes, Apple are vociferously opposed to truly independent repairs and lobby at great expense against "right to repair" legislation, but it's completely untrue that there aren't Apple authorised third party repair agents. They are rare as hen's teeth, they are no cheaper than Apple, but they exist.

The truth is that these "Apple Authorized Repair Agents" are restricted in what they can do and what parts that they can have access to, and if they attempt to step beyond these restrictions they get their arses sued by Apple. They are restricted in essence to just replacing screens, home buttons and batteries. Take anything that has suffered water damage to them, and they tow the same lines as Apple do, the device is unrepairable and as I mentioned before also say that they cannot even recover any personal data etc from the device.

Louis Rossman and other unauthorized repair agents get their schematics from here https://pldaniels.com/flexbv/, they are nothing to do with Apple and I guess that they are reverse engineering etc to compile the schematics and turn them into working computer programs that go above normal schematics. These repair agents also have to source many of their spare parts from old scrapped boards that they have to source from China etc as Apple will not supply them with any parts. Why do Apple find it important to embed a chip with a special locking software on that has to locked to the device it is fitted to? It is just a switch, nothing else, the same with the battery and the screen. I've heard arguments before about they do this to protect the user from having duff batteries fitted that do not have the protection circuits etc fitted, and that is plausible but for the fact that Apple will not sell their official batteries to people like Louis Rossman, despite them stating that are perfectly happy and willing to buy their spare parts etc, directly from Apple. The question has to be asked WHY?

Why is that other manufacturers design their equipment to customer replaceable batteries for example? The customer can source their own battery and replace them, I have done so many times without any loss of performance or bad battery problems?

EDIT. If apple were to offer these same services as Louis Rossman and the others offer, then these arguments / discussions would be taking place but the simple plain truth is that they don't offer anything beyond what they allow their "Authorized" agents to do, anything else is just meet with, you need to buy a new device, full stop.

You are willing to buy and put up with a cheap POS battery that has half the design life and half the real capacity (yes, deliberate exaggeration, but still nowhere near the same quality from your no-name supplier) as an original battery, you have that right. You do NOT have the right to EXPECT a manufacturer to help you do it. You ALSO don't have the right to expect them to supply you a part that requires expert installation when they don't know what kind of 1d10t you might be, and in their experience, those who want to DIY ARE 1d10ts, because they are NOT buying what Apple is selling, which is the Apple Ecology I've already described.

THAT  is the core problem... people buying Apple because "it's the hawtness" and hating them because it's not what they really want, which is "the new hawtness" without actually having to pay for it.

You don't have the right to expect them to support you in that unreasonable desire, or to design their product such that parts are easily replaceable just because you don't like it. Their design is what they're selling; the "sleek seamless thing" design is their stock in trade, FFS.

Same is true of the screen, and I've bought more than a few 3rd party screens... they are NOT anywhere near as good glass or digitizers. PERIOD. And the same is true of the buttons. They incorporate a security feature. That security feature was asked for by the majority of their customers. Your edge use-case is irrelevant here.

If you want the "Apple Hawtness", buy Apple product and be happy with it. If not, buy something else; Samsuck and Lucky GoldStar will gladly take your money. But FFS, stop bitching that Apple is Apple.

It's not like you didn't KNOW their phone/tablet/PC/dong polisher/WTF-ever was hermetically sealed when you bought it; it's a FUCKING ADVERTISED FEATURE.

mnem
Just say "No, thank you."

[Cerebus]

Louis Rossman and other unauthorized repair agents get their schematics from here https://pldaniels.com/flexbv/, they are nothing to do with Apple and I guess that they are reverse engineering etc to compile the schematics and turn them into working computer programs that go above normal schematics.

FlexBV is a bit of software for displaying files - that is all.

You don't even have to move down the page you link to, to see this

Note: Boardviews and schematics are intellectual property owned by the respective parties, as such it is not legal to distribute them with FlexBV any more than it would be to distribute SpaceX raptor engine plans with AutoCAD (no matter how impressive that would be).

Why do you think they place this SO prominently on the first page for that software? Because the principal use for this is reading hooky schematics and board views that walk out of the back of authorised Apple repairers.

These repair agents also have to source many of their spare parts from old scrapped boards that they have to source from China etc as Apple will not supply them with any parts. Why do Apple find it important to embed a chip with a special locking software on that has to locked to the device it is fitted to? It is just a switch, nothing else, the same with the battery and the screen. I've heard arguments before about they do this to protect the user from having duff batteries fitted that do not have the protection circuits etc fitted, and that is plausible but for the fact that Apple will not sell their official batteries to people like Louis Rossman, despite them stating that are perfectly happy and willing to buy their spare parts etc, directly from Apple. The question has to be asked WHY?

Why is that other manufacturers design their equipment to customer replaceable batteries for example? The customer can source their own battery and replace them, I have done so many times without any loss of performance or bad battery problems?

EDIT. If apple were to offer these same services as Louis Rossman and the others offer, then these arguments / discussions would be taking place but the simple plain truth is that they don't offer anything beyond what they allow their "Authorized" agents to do, anything else is just meet with, you need to buy a new device, full stop.

And on and on and on rehashing the same arguments which have been either rationally countered or agreed with 1,000,001 times. Why not look here "Apple Authorized Service Provider Program" and check the actual facts. One can become an Apple authorised repairer, one can get parts from Apple if you are one.  Is it a cheap and cheerful alternative to using Apple service directly? No.   Are Apple friendly to independent, non-authorised repairers? No.   Are other vendors of similar scale friendly to unauthorised third party repairers? No. (Let's see the schematics and spare parts price list for a Microsoft surface, or a Samsung or Motorola phone or tablet.)   Do I have some hooky copies of Apple service manuals for kit I own? Answer that was most probably in the affirmative redacted because 'lawyers'.   Do some people fixate on particular vendors for hate and abandon facts and rationality when they do so? Yes.

[Specmaster]

I think you will find that most of the devices that end up going to people like the LR Group and others are in fact either items that are only just outside the warranty period or still in the warranty but have deemed by the local Apple Store / genius bar to have suffered "liquid damage" and therefore are not covered by warranty as a result. When some of these machines find their way to LR for instance, and opened up, show zero signs of liquid damage other than one of the detection spots have changed colour and the fault has been discovered to be something as trivial as a ribbon cable not fully seated properly etc.

Others that have been liquid damaged, have been totally recovered and restored back to health again be the replacement of the chip which was subjected to the liquid damage resultant corrosion of the connections and or pads / traces and the repair carried out without any difficulties by the assistance of a donor board surrendering its chip or the pad / trace being rebuilt and all of this without the device being "bricked" or compromised in any way whatsoever.

As to the Secure Enclave, how does this prevent the items from repaired using genuine parts supplied by Apple I fail to see this argument being valid. As we know Linus had an accident with his new iMac Pro and admitted that he broke it and was willing to pay Apple to repair it for him, and their response was no, he would need to buy a complete new system costing thousands of $, they were not able to get the few parts required to fix it for him.

He was not looking to do it himself, or go to a unauthorized agent, he went direct to Apple themselves who declined to help.

Apple still continue to sell items that they know to have bad design flaws in them and often fail within the period of warranty and this has been the case for a number of years now, keyboards being one of these items affected.

This is NOT me just bashing Apple for the sheer hell of it, I have an iPad Air, use it daily and I love it, I also have a Samsung SM-T520 which is the same age, has a larger and better screen, can be user extended memory wise via microSD and can be connected to external devices like hard drives, USB drives etc. The iPad runs rings round the Samsung when it comes to things like speed of games and screen updating etc, so I'm not anti Apple, just anti their attitude towards getting items repaired once out of warranty and their whole outlook on customers in general is one of where they see the customer as a walking cash machine for them.

[mnementh]

I've spent over 30 years doing component-level repair, in many cases as an ASP for major manufacturers. LR is a fucking HACK. PERIOD. There's a HUGE difference between "repairing to factory spec" and what he does on yoobToob... I see repairs he's so proud of that make me cringe. 

Literally shit-splatter bodges I wouldn't even do for MYSELF, much less give to ANYONE ELSE FOR FREE, that he charges real money for and offers a crap warranty because he knows he has no idea where else there's a rotten trace or eaten-up component that just hasn't shit the bed YET. A CLEVER hack, but still a fucking hack.

Again, some people are willing to pay him rather than Apple. That's fine; but he's an asshole who thinks somehow Apple is indebted to him and obligated to help him sell shit repairs.

Selling THAT controversy is the only thing that keeps him afloat; if he had to survive on the quality of his work, he'd have been sued into oblivion by CUSTOMERS by now.

mnem

[bd139]

@Specmaster: Think of secure enclave like your ECU, immobiliser, security system and keys being one replaceable component in a car, but some of them are soldered on and laminated to the screen so tampering physically destroys it too. This is part of the security model. It's much much cheaper to buy a new phone than a new ECU and keys these days even though it is several orders of magnitude more complicated.

Linus was talking shit reagarding his iMac Pro. If you did that to a Samsung TV they'd laugh at you and tell you the same. We have insurance for such things. Or we don't and then we have to shell out $200 for a hooky repair job by Rossman

Apple still continue to sell items that they know to have bad design flaws in them and often fail within the period of warranty and this has been the case for a number of years now, keyboards being one of these items affected.

Not sure if anyone remembers the MacBook Air I bought. I took it back after 3 weeks because the keyboard was duff and they just refunded it immediately onto my credit card . Same with that Apple TV the other week. You can do that unconditionally with any of their products most of the time unless you've buggered them.

Edit: a point on Rossman - do you think a bit of bus wire and hand soldering on a multilayer apple board is a permanent repair? that's a can of foam you spray in your tyre to get home, then have to replace the entire hub as well.

It's really easy to do a hit job on a manufacturer if you have something to gain from it and that's where LR lives. Linus is just a muppet.

Eidt 2: this is average customer:



 

[McBryce]

I thought I'd share today's project with you guys. The plan is a make a new attachment for my DER EE DE-5000 with 4x BNC sockets so that I can use my BNC kelvin clips with it. I didn't want to hardwire the kelvin clips as I use them on other test equipment too.

This is the bottom half of the case. It's slightly taller and wider than the original attachments to allow for the BNC sockets and the slits are slightly wider to allow for a standard two sided PCB to be used. I've just started the print on my Ender 3 Pro. In 5 hours I'll know how badly I messed it up

Once the top and bottom case parts have been confirmed I'll upload the STL models here for others to use. The model doesn't have the holes for the BNC sockets yet as I wanted to have a blank version too for general use.

McBryce.

[Mr. Scram]

Yeah, apple authorized repair agents aren't repair agents, they are sales agents for new phones.

Sent in a phone to have the battery replaced. They quoted me a new phone. Never got the phone back despite several requests.

[tggzzz]

Played by Marty Feldman; one of the greats of "slightly off" comedy. Passed much too young; almost 2 4 decades ago now.

Ahem. 4 decades ago.

That's further away than the second half of this century.

Shit; 1982. I was thinking it was early 2000s...

mnem
holy fuck I'm old... 

Yup, it was that long ago. I remember several of us raising a glass to him in the university bar on getting the news. As we did my friend Robin said "At least there's a good side to it. Maybe now people'll stop calling me 'The fella that looks like Marty Feldman'". Robin had curly hair, the same shape face as Feldman and also suffered from hyperthyroidism so had the same bulging eyes - the resemblance was quite remarkable.

One of the people in my cell block bore a marked resemblence to Rowan Atkinson

Aside: this thread is beginning to have all the style and elegance of GeoCities websites, circa 1997

[mnementh]

Seems oddly familiar... 

In all honesty, I've considered a similar project, but decided "Why bother...?" when the best, least-stray-capacitance design is a PCB soldered direct to peg-mount BNCs. Take a little care in layout, and it'll even be reasonably attractive; no plastic shell required.

Designing the PCB is where I'd spend my CAD time; or spend the 20 clams on a whole alligator-clip module and drill it to accept those same peg-mount BNCs.

mnem

[mnementh]

Aside: this thread is beginning to have all the style and elegance of GeoCities websites, circa 1997

Thanks for the compliment. 

mnem
Stylin, yo.

[McBryce]

Seems oddly familiar... 

In all honesty, I've considered a similar project, but decided "Why bother...?" when the best, least-stray-capacitance design is a PCB soldered direct to peg-mount BNCs. Take a little care in layout, and it'll even be reasonably attractive; no plastic shell required.

Designing the PCB is where I'd spend my CAD time; or spend the 20 clams on a whole alligator-clip module and drill it to accept those same peg-mount PCBs.

mnem

The original aligator clip module isn't large enough to fit 4x BNCs.

McBryce.

[Specmaster]

You are willing to buy and put up with a cheap POS battery that has half the design life and half the real capacity (yes, deliberate exaggeration, but still nowhere near the same quality from your no-name supplier) as an original battery, you have that right. You do NOT have the right to EXPECT a manufacturer to help you do it. You ALSO don't have the right to expect them to supply you a part that requires expert installation when they don't know what kind of 1d10t you might be, and in their experience, those who want to DIY ARE 1d10ts, because they are NOT buying what Apple is selling, which is the Apple Ecology I've already described.

THAT  is the core problem... people buying Apple because "it's the hawtness" and hating them because it's not what they really want, which is "the new hawtness" without actually having to pay for it.

You don't have the right to expect them to support you in that unreasonable desire, or to design their product such that parts are easily replaceable just because you don't like it. Their design is what they're selling; the "sleek seamless thing" design is their stock in trade, FFS.

Same is true of the screen, and I've bought more than a few 3rd party screens... they are NOT anywhere near as good glass or digitizers. PERIOD. And the same is true of the buttons. They incorporate a security feature. That security feature was asked for by the majority of their customers. Your edge use-case is irrelevant here.

If you want the "Apple Hawtness", buy Apple product and be happy with it. If not, buy something else; Samsuck and Lucky GoldStar will gladly take your money. But FFS, stop bitching that Apple is Apple.

It's not like you didn't KNOW their phone/tablet/PC/dong polisher/WTF-ever was hermetically sealed when you bought it; it's a FUCKING ADVERTISED FEATURE.

mnem
Just say "No, thank you."

What I'm saying is yes, Apple is known for their stock-in-trade of being sealed and sleek etc, but none of that removes their stance on the right to repair. I'm NOT on about the right to buy and fit poorly designed items from 3rd parties, but the right to having your device fixed by Apple or authorised agents BUT using genuine Apple replacement parts built to the same spec as originally fitted, the same is true for batteries then there wouldn't be a possible Grenfell 2, at a sensible and affordable price and within a reasonable time frame.

The same can be said for other manufacturers who have a similar outlook, the time has come to act responsibly, the planet cannot accept this amount of built-in throwaway concept. I do not for a single moment believe Louis Rossman would ever fit cheap counterfeit and dangerous parts in his repairs, this is why he and so many others are lobbing congress for the right to be able to access genuine parts so the original design integrity is maintained throughout the products' life. He and others are not seeking to have access to the code so that they can rewrite code, all they want is for the parts to be made accessible at sensible prices without the need for software locks etc. So if a digitizer is at fault, or the chip that handles the digitizer is faulty, then getting those parts etc from Apple and replacing them does not involve them in having access to the software so the software integrity remains 100% intact and no breach in security is made.

[bd139]

Anyway back on topic. Need a second handheld DMM. I'm using the Fluke 87 and the BM22s at the moment but the BM22s is a little awkward. I'm looking at the BM257s as that has thermocouple support. 6000 count is enough. Not as big as the BM867s and the backlight stays on for 10 minutes apparently  . Thoughts?

[WastelandTek]

It was a joke. 

oh, sorry

[tggzzz]

Aside: this thread is beginning to have all the style and elegance of GeoCities websites, circa 1997

Thanks for the compliment. 

mnem
Stylin, yo.

I forgot to include the most important point, doh: readability.

Some of the garish fonts take too much effort to read. I'm used to speed reading, and if I can't speedread my eye automatically skips to the bits I can.

Life it too short for ordinary speed reading (or watching talking-head videos that aren't by Alan Bennet). I believe the last time I forced myself to slow-read was when read Lord of the Rings for the first time, when I was about 16.

[Specmaster]

Anyway back on topic. Need a second handheld DMM. I'm using the Fluke 87 and the BM22s at the moment but the BM22s is a little awkward. I'm looking at the BM257s as that has thermocouple support. 6000 count is enough. Not as big as the BM867s and the backlight stays on for 10 minutes apparently  . Thoughts?

Yes thats a good choice, what about Dave's meter 121GW, that does temp and I think it can have its backlight timer changed or disabled in the same fashion as the auto power off can?

[Wolfgang]

Anyway back on topic. Need a second handheld DMM. I'm using the Fluke 87 and the BM22s at the moment but the BM22s is a little awkward. I'm looking at the BM257s as that has thermocouple support. 6000 count is enough. Not as big as the BM867s and the backlight stays on for 10 minutes apparently  . Thoughts?

Yes thats a good choice, what about Dave's meter 121GW, that does temp and I think it can have its backlight timer changed or disabled in the same fashion as the auto power off can?

BM121 is a bit awkward too, but can do a lot. If really in doubt, another 87 V ? 

[AVGresponding]

Wow, I don't check in for a few hours and the thread has turned into World War Apple   

FWIW my 2 basic units of currency is that Apple have always been a triumph of style over function. I never desired anything they made going all the way back to the early 1980s, preferring to lust after Commodores and IBM compatibles instead. Something about them just didn't sit right. Once upon a time their software gave them an edge in certain areas, though that gap seems to have pretty much been closed, or at least considerably narrowed.
The fact that so many of the people I have personally encountered that liked them have been those easily led by marketing hasn't encouraged me to change my mind.
I have found LR to be quite insightful on subjects outside electronics, and it's easy to see the truth of his posts where Apple Genius Bars have outright lied to people, and it's also quite plain the utterly laughable thermal design on some of their products.

I find the idea that right to repair can be pooh-poohed by people on this forum frankly astonishing. The same tired old arguments are rolled out again and again. There are many ways that people can perform dangerous modifications to many types of equipment, due to lack of competence and/or substandard parts. Whether it's legal or not will make no difference whatsoever to this; the people that do things like that are fucking morons who have no sense of consequence or personal responsibility.
Arguably giving access to reputable and reliable repair businesses to manufacturers components reduces this risk as there's little doubt that many people try to repair their own stuff when they can't afford what the manufacturer tells them it's gonna cost, which is of course usually a complete new unit.
I rather doubt anything LR has ever repaired has set fire to a tower block or ever will, and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous at best.

I recommend we drop this subject before it causes the heat/light ratio in the thread to become unsustainable.


And now, the reason I logged on...   

Woohoo! Finally I got a decent soldering iron to replace my 30 year old Weller W60D that I accidentally killed   

Been using a complete pos Katsu station, one of those dimmer circuit variable power jokes, and cursing it on a regular basis as it either fails to melt the damn solder, or burns a fucking hole in the board I'm working on   

Got myself an Oki Metcal PS-900 for mumblety-mumble quid, and also a Tenma SMD rework station and Tenma SMD preheater, to commence my journey into knackering SMD pcb's as well as through hole ones!   

[Ero-Shan]

And now for something completely different: A finished project!

My GPSDO has finally found a decent housing.

I added a small distribution amp. Inside view:



Front view (which gives the time and date of the photography away):



Onward to the next project! Can only take years ...