[sdiy] [OT] puzzling EPROM problem

[TooManySynths]

--- harry <harrybissell at prodigy.net> wrote:
> I'm in the industrial market... where long (abusive)
> life is very
> important.

And, where customers think nothing of spending five
times what an equivalent consumer product would cost.

> We have not seen any difference in boards that
> are... and are
> not socketed as far as reliability.  Service is much
> easier with
> sockets.

So you are saying then that you never have to push the
chips in on socketed boards to fix them?  I have, even
with good sockets, granted less often than the cheap
ones, but often enough that I don't agree with what
you're saying.  That type of repair is never necessary
when there isn't a socket. But the point is moot, if
the product doesn't usually need repair over its
lifetime, then, any socket is a waste of money.

It's a game of odds, a game bean counters are good at.
> 
> You must use appropriate sockets. The little gold
> plated screw
> machined sockets just do not have the retention
> force needed...and
> most failed sockets I've seen are this type. Second
> is the real cheap
> econo-plastic single leaf sockets... they are worse
> than BBD's !!!
> 

I agree harry, good sockets work really well, but
synths are not an industrial product and musicians
already whine about the price.  It doesn't make sense
to put expensive sockets in a synthesizer which would
come close to doubling the parts cost for many
products. That contributes a SIGNIFICANT amount to the
retail cost, which musicians wouldn't pay.  Same with
home computers, video games, or really ANY consumer
product.  

Cheap sockets would decrease reliablity, so it doesn't
make sense to manufacturer an inferior product where
electrical abuse is not a signficant factor. 

Quite frankly, I've NEVER had to service ANY of my
modern synths.  NEVER!!!  Even my "notoriously
unreliable" K2000 has never needed servicing.  

Servicing for consumer products is overrated and a
fast dying field.  It makes more sense in almost all
cases to limit servicing of complex consumer products
to board level repair.   It just doesn't save the
consumer money to pay a repair technican $35 to $100+
an hour to fix a board that can be manufuactured for
pennies. Surface mount is just a natural extension of
this.  There isn't any need to make parts that can be
easily manipulated by a repair technican if you can
replace the entire board for less than it will cost
him to turn on the oscope.  

I've worked consumer repair on sevaral fronts.  The
kinds of consumer products that really benefit from
service oriented design are things like power amps. 
They experience a lot of electrical abuse. Perhaps
products with a high mechanical component such as tape
decks should be designed so the transport can be
easily unplugged and replaced.  That's a good
application of sockets because it is something that
might need to be replaced over the life of the
product. IC's in those products, not worth the
trouble, almost all VCR repairs cost half as much as a
new VCR. I can count the number of times I've had to
replace an op-amp in a consumer product. 

It isn't fair to just say that sockets were eliminated
because bean counters run companies. Bean counters run
companies because consumers demand more product for
less money.  It is, imho, good engineering to consider
the entire product, not just the techy bits. 
Everthing from the life of the product to the market
window for the product SHOULD be factors in the
engineering phase.  Overdesigned products, imho, are
simply wasteful and as bad a call as underdesign.
Computers are an excellent example.  There is ZERO
need to consider component level servicing in
consumer, or frankly, even many industrial computer
designs.  The parts are obsolete in terms of
performance in such a short amount of time that you
are far better off to maintain some level of backward
compatibility so a newer design can work where the old
design was.  If a board fails, simply throw it in the
trash and put a new one in.  

> I use AMP Diplomate (dual leaf) and have never seen
> one intermittant
> yet. I
> ask all our service techs if they have had a
> problem... NO.

What's the cost?  I bet my entire paycheck it's
several hundred if not several thousand times the cost
of no socket ;), and I bet it's no more reliable.  So
we come back to the same question, sockets only have
meaning when the item in question should be serviced. 
Consumers are fickle, they don't wait for products to
quit to replace them, they just have to be out of
style. 

> 
> OTOH surface mount makes this all moot point.. don't
> it !!!  ;^(

Yep :)

Daryl



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