Could the chip shortage be a blessing in disguise?

a reply to: RedKaliBlack

My wife hates it when I spot a garage sale, I always stop.

I make an effort to look for hard rubbish days in suburbs. It’s surprising what people throw out.

I have found some great hand tools, and vintage toys. Quality old Hi-Fi.

a reply to: robsmith

I have a load of Phillips gear around the house it was made to last .my surrounding sound is a 1000 watts and still works perfect but it is never used to its capacity as it would blow the walls of the house down ,but when they sold out and outsourced to China the usual happened .now people are paying 3 times the original cost for something good in the box and they were a expensive brand to start with , I am going to start selling of what I do not need anymore as in a 1 bedroom property I have 8-9 systems boxed in my attic and will hopefully be moving in the next 6 months back to the sticks

It could be, but they are not going to let go of the tech..the problem will be corrected, and we can then carry on to hell in a hand basket

Wish I had the energy for more garage sales, as that's about the only place where you can find those kinds of gems any more. When I used to live in Los Angeles, the main charity shops had different days where people could put out big items for donation, and they'd come around and get them. In the ritzy areas of town, people would go in the middle of the night or early morning and scout the sidewalks. It was like a high end second hand store out there (not great for the charity shops, I know, but then again, L.A. county also had what they called "boutique" shops where anything "nice" was three times as much. My local charity shops--not thrift, charity--tier prices the same way. They are a national chain of thrift shops, so people don't always care if the donations are stolen, I suppose). This was before the Internet took off big, mid-90s, and it was like an underground culture. Now where I live, dumpster divers who aren't necessarily homeless are a definite culture, too. One man's trash and all that. a reply to: robsmith

Technology has become too invasive. Whatever slows the production of invasive new devices is alright with me.

a reply to: SeriouslyDeep

The whole idea of something like a tractor is to have a rugged machine that can be fixed in the field. After years of abuse and neglect with simple tools. Not to have a chip blow and then have to call the manufacturer to get their authorized techy in to fix it. That's almost like extortion and sabotage if you don't play the game.But not quite always on the brink they are a clever bunch of scoundrels

originally posted by: robsmith
a reply to: infolurker

Agreed, I prefer old school tech, it’s simpler don’t need to get diagnostic gear to identify what broke and fix it.

and them g d electronic bells you can barely hear even when on top of it.

a reply to: sarahvital

The whole point of good engineering is "Keep it simple" What they have done is inserted a middle man. The new electric cars can be switched off remotely, which means another level of complexity that will go wrong.

a reply to: anonentity
I know what your talking about when a timing belt goes and it screws up the engine.

Up until i had my honda mini van most of my cars i had before that had timing and fan belts.

yes they can give some warning but we all from time to time ignored it and/or wanted it to last a little longer due to finances.

but when they did break what happened... your car didnt go and your engine was (for most part) just fine.. maybe had to get a new pully , wheel or bearing, but that was small potatos compared to what happened to my old van when i gave it to my dad (needed a vehicle for scrapping and the family needed a more updated one due to ours became a "beater with a heater" but sound).
he had the belt break and the engine needed a rebuild

imo another example of built in obsolescence aka designed to break bad.

how hard is it to go back if it breaks your just stuck, not screwed.

scrounger

originally posted by: robsmith
a reply to: gb540
I find this whole connectivity thing awkward.

I was recently looking for a new home amplifier, issue was it was incompatible with my laserdisc player and turntable.

I bough an older pioneer amp made in Japan it’s over 20 years old, still decodes dts and Dolby I’m happy with it. Plus it the amp probably was destined for scrap. Upcycle.

Even finding a 4K DVD player with analogue audio outputs is hard to find every amp and device now only has HDMI.

It’s ok if you are getting into Hi-Fi now, though some amps don’t have any analogue inputs.

I get it’s for restricting copying of movies and music.

i know your pain

i dont need the latest updated audio/video equipment (not saying i dont pant and want the latest thing) because the practical part of me if i like what its doing/showing i dont need that extra XX pixel that will cost me thousands every few years to keep up.

i keep it until it fails.

when part like two times ago the tv failed. the new one my wife got me required me to replace my receiver and DVD/VCR because (as you found) the "wires and plugs" didnt match the old equipment.
the old stiff still worked, but not with the tv.

when when lately my receiver the ONLY THING FAILED was the one HDMI output port . as would happen the projector i had to replace years ago only used (i didnt know to look for it) HDMI . i had three wires hardwired as backup (and old projector had both, note didnt put it in, the old owners did) and the receiver did have that, but the projector didnt.
so off to get a new rebuilt (not made of money) receiver due to old one to fix would have been more.

yea it worked but guess what.. the dvd player (three d and HD compatible) refresh rate not with receiver..
back to the store for a new but basic dvd player to work with it.. it was the basic model so not expensive but money not budgeted for due to the receiver.

now to give you some hope thanks to a demand for adaptors for older gear (like vcrs) and games amazon now has converters to help.. yes you have to pay attention to see if it will work (no industry standards for one stop shopping) but they are out there

scrounger

originally posted by: RedKaliBlack
Wish I had the energy for more garage sales, as that's about the only place where you can find those kinds of gems any more. When I used to live in Los Angeles, the main charity shops had different days where people could put out big items for donation, and they'd come around and get them. In the ritzy areas of town, people would go in the middle of the night or early morning and scout the sidewalks. It was like a high end second hand store out there (not great for the charity shops, I know, but then again, L.A. county also had what they called "boutique" shops where anything "nice" was three times as much. My local charity shops--not thrift, charity--tier prices the same way. They are a national chain of thrift shops, so people don't always care if the donations are stolen, I suppose). This was before the Internet took off big, mid-90s, and it was like an underground culture. Now where I live, dumpster divers who aren't necessarily homeless are a definite culture, too. One man's trash and all that. a reply to: robsmith

i know what you mean

back in the 90s a well loved and known stereo store went out of business.
i and my parents (had a small store next to it) went dumpster diving.
found antennas (wire) , walls used for displays, cabinets and miles of heavy speaker wire (to name some things) we salvaged.
we used the walls for many building projects and i still have plenty of the heavy guage speaker wires still left after all my projects that work great.
the only regret was they just threw out all their "repair" and spare parts projects that i wish i had saved and wish more had the experience/time to bring them back to life
or very least use now in the "vintage market"

but to those reading.. dont loose hope ..
there still is alot of "older" stereo equipment to be found in garage sales, goodwill, ect that you can build a great sound system
yes it will not be as compact as today, but still blow the doors off your room.. with many having "aux" adaptors you can put your phones on to stream.

scrounger

originally posted by: anonentity
a reply to: sarahvital

The whole point of good engineering is "Keep it simple" What they have done is inserted a middle man. The new electric cars can be switched off remotely, which means another level of complexity that will go wrong.

along with alot of "bells and whistles" are really unneeded.
in fact in the old days if you say wanted a "new fancy car stereo" you could just put one in and go.
you didnt need to find xx specific adaptor and need yy tech spending hours to put it in.

i do miss the days you wanted fancy, you got it. if you wanted just plain but works, you got it.
you wanted to upgrade part of it... you could do that too.

funny when that existed the companies still made money.. be fixing , upgrading and parts.

scrounger

originally posted by: ArMaP
a reply to: charlyv

Some years ago there was a large batch of capacitors built in China that used a cheaper electrolyte and failed in a short time. Many computers of good brands, although they built their own boards, used those capacitors, so they had many failures.
The only thing that was needed was to replace the capacitors to have the equipment work again.

On a large scale, it's cheaper to replace the board, but on a personal situation, if we know how to do it, it's still cheaper to do it ourselves.

I remember this. They were used in LED and Plasma TV's and lots of motherboards on computers. You could see the failure on the electrolytic caps as the scored tops would expand under pressure and some actually exploded.

Caps are a cheap and easy fix, and I fixed a bunch of components and power supplies that used them as well.

Cool you brought that up!

You can make some good bucks today if you can fix automobile computers. The boards are mostly modular and use a lot of discrete components that are easy to source. The logic, rom's and memory are largely proprietary, but many can be sourced if you know where to go.

Trouble is, that some parts or "mini-boards" that are the most frequent to fail, they cover with epoxy glue so you cannot disassemble without destroying ... built-in protection on their part so you need to buy a new unit from them.

My cousin in Canada had his computer fail on a 2014 Honda Civic. He could not get the parts in Canada , nor the states.
He wound up buying a used one on Ebay. After it arrived and had a shop install it, it failed the Emissions test with a computer serial number that came up for a stolen vehicle. The RCMP impounded the car and he still does not have it back for a month...