We’ve mistaken complexity for progress — and forgotten how things work. A 41-year-old computer still boots instantly, while today’s “smart” tech buckles.
She gave it to me, I took it apart. One of the headers that connects the power switch to the mainboard was just unplugged. It took literally 10 minutes to “fix” including disassembly and assembly, and all I needed was a screwdriver.
My buddy has a $6000 projector. He found it in the trash. The only thing wrong with it was a cracked solder on the power supply.
Similarly, I have a $5000 audio console that I got for ~$100 in parts; it had a bad power supply. Honestly, probably just a bad capacitor on the power supply, but I didn’t feel like desoldering every capacitor to check their capacitance. Diagnosing the power supply took about 5 minutes, and most of that was just finding all of the screws that were holding the case together. A quick read with a multimeter told me everything I needed to know. Swapped out the supply, and it has been working fine ever since.
My buddy has a $6000 projector. He found it in the trash. The only thing wrong with it was a cracked solder on the power supply.
Similarly, I have a $5000 audio console that I got for ~$100 in parts; it had a bad power supply. Honestly, probably just a bad capacitor on the power supply, but I didn’t feel like desoldering every capacitor to check their capacitance. Diagnosing the power supply took about 5 minutes, and most of that was just finding all of the screws that were holding the case together. A quick read with a multimeter told me everything I needed to know. Swapped out the supply, and it has been working fine ever since.
I can top that. I got a broken $100 BlueYeti microphone for $10 on eBay. The USB cable they shipped it with was bad.