Reply #19: Its a knock on effect of electronic miniaturization [View All]

[sweetheart]

I used to work 20 years ago fixing electronics, and even then, the
shift towards highly integrated packages was changing what we did.
In "old" times, repairing electronics was a challenge. An oscilloscope
and a logic analyzer would allow you to "see" the electronic pulses on
a circuit board that you could isolate and replace 1 IC. But now what
used to look like 50 black bugs on a circuit board with 50 blue
decoupling flat caps, now is 1 tiny IC the size of a dime. So then the
electronics is all in 1 chip, and the only option is to replace the
brain. And since that PC board is inevitably the entire system as well,
then all "repair" involves tossing the entire unit, even IF labour is
involved fixing it.

I really don't think the public gets how awesome semiconductor miniaturization is, perhaps they've never seen it. After a year of
prototyping in old electronics engineering, a massive cage filled with
circuit boards covered with IC's and thousands of wire-wrap wires...
something the size of a microwave oven would then be sent off and
etched in to 1 single chip.

But i don't miss the work. It was tedious. The supervisors were anal,
and the work was not creative. Sure there was the thrill of fixing
broken electronics... but this is not designing them, and for the
smell of flux in your face, i'm much happier tossing out a DVD player
and buying a new one. The corresponding price cheapness of these
new 50 dollar DVD players has made them ubiquitous... a better thing
net net methinks.