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E-waste is growing 5x faster than it's recycled, says UN
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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About a month ago my neighbor left a nice looking TV out by the trash for bulk item pickup with a note saying, "not sure if this works, but free if you want it." Cosmetically the unit looked to be in good shape, but sure enough when I bring it inside to test, none of the HDMI ports would pick up a signal. I tried different HDMI cables and devices to double check. All of the TV menus would work and there was static on the cable channel, so I knew the pixels themselves were fine. I opened the unit up to find 3 separate circutboards inside, a main board (with the HDMI ports soldered on), a power board, and I think a timing board or something like that (forget the acronym I came across researching). Well I decided to roll the dice and replace the main board with a $130 purchase for a replacement, took about 30 minutes to swap out. Sure enough with a new main board the TV, HDMI units and all, worked perfectly. Now I'm up a 60" Sharp AQUOS TV (~$1500 new) for the price of the replacement board. More importantly, the satisfaction of plugging in an HDMI and seeing a signal come through was priceless. Support right to repair, we have an obligation to preserving and reusing the resources we have access to.
Have you ever had a Logitech mouse start to act funny with the left click? Maybe it double clicks when you know you've single clicked, or you click and drag and it doesn't? Yeah it's probably the microswitch. I've got a little herd of M570's, after a few years they all start doing that, so I pop them open, it's like 4 or 5 screws hidden under the little rubber feet and one in the battery compartment, desolder the switch, solder on a new one, and it's back to working like new.
I've had a guy arguing with me that that's not worth it.
I had a random orbital sander stop working. So many people these days would say "It's a $99 tool, I'll just throw it away and buy a new one." I took mine apart and cleaned the dust out of it. Running like brand new.
Why are people so afraid of fixing things?
There’s a lot of answers to that question.
Device/tool repair is typically not taught in schools, and from my perspective seems far less likely to be taught at home than it was in previous generations.
Most people have substantially less free time than in previous decades. Sure, some things only take 10-30 minutes to repair, but learning how to make the repair is often a significant time investment.
Devices and tools are intentionally designed to be less reparable, if only to cut costs (e.g. using glue instead of screws). Less obvious repairs take more time to learn.
Lastly, a lot of people never learned how to do any of this; they just took their broken stuff down to a VCR repair. Repair shops nearly don’t exist anymore, and the ones that do charge a substantial sum to repair modern devices. It’s often more financially prudent to buy a new laptop than it is to replace the screen of a four-year-old one, for example.
That is a big part of it.
But it is taught online, with a lot of very detailed, very specific tutorials.
You can find step-by-step repair guides for almost everything on youtube. Sites like Ifixit or Repairclinic or Truatedrepair have tons of very detailed guides as well.
.
I think a big part of the problem is that people simply don't have the mindset of fixing things.
How many times do you see comments like "you spent all this time fixing that, but you could have just bought a new one at Walmart in 20 minutes ".
Another issue is many ppl are just not technically apt or are able to problem solve, so many times they dont know what key words to use for finding a repair guide on google... It almost like a mental block for many...
I think the mouse repair issue needs to be fixed. It's criminal that they're not user serviceable with replacement parts.
A switch or battery going bad should not require a brand new mouse.
In this case, I don't think it's too bad. The mouse in question is powered by a AA, the shell is held together with five phillips screws (one of them is hidden under a sticker), and the switch in question is a common through-hole microswitch that's fairly easy to solder by hand. It's not like a smart phone that's made of microscopic surface mount components you can't actually get on the open market held together with microscopic 7.6666 lobe non-euclidean screws in a chassis that's welded shut like your average smart phone.
The mouse in question has also been discontinued, another reason why I fix mine rather than buy new.
Yeah, all the Logitechs and Razors I've ever had are glued (or some other non-obvious method of entry). Gaming mice tend to be the worst about this.
I have gone with Logitech over Razor as I have found them to last significantly longer. My last Logitech lasted ~5 years compared ~2.5 I was getting out of my razor mice.
It's incredibly common for Logitech and Razor to put a rechargeable battery in all their wireless mice instead of a user serviceable battery as well. This is in part because the general population seems to prefer this strategy (and it's better than non-rechargable AA or AAA batteries ... but that doesn't mean it's good).
I've never owned any Razer gear, I've seen some of their stuff in person and I wasn't impressed. Always felt very toy grade to me. Never did like the Gigatron's Nutsack With A Neon Tribal Tramp Stamp GAMURRR aesthetic either, but that's not unique to Razer.
Yeah, I've been happy that's been toned down more recently in general with gaming gear ... everything doesn't look like some ridiculous "if hasbro designed a computer peripheral/component/case/etc."
A lot of gaming stuff was just ugly and lacking any good design elements for a loonnngggg time.
Yeah, like I have a nominally gaming-related Cooler Master keyboard, and...it's black plastic and there's some very understated jimping on the front edge. It doesn't have mechamandibles or plate armor or whatever.
weirdly, my mx ergo came with a note mentioning the user replaceable battery. Weirdly it also uses torx, and deep set torx. While the battery is cool and all.
Thanks logitech.
Personally, I think a factor is there's been a shift by companies in general to not make things as obvious to repair. My dad has a unibody 2012 MacBook Pro and the book literally tells you how to open it so you can service it by upgrading the RAM; a far cry from the situation today.
Older tools were held together with some common screws and were all built the same, so there wasn't too much concern from the layman popping one open to clean it out to service it. Modern power tools just don't look like you should be opening them, as the screws are completely hidden, they're hard to open comparatively, and its usually the battery that goes anyway, which can't be replaced when it's been discontinued.
Until the late '90s, almost everything Radio Shack sold came with a schematic included in the user manual.
Today, everything is glued together with no non-destructive way to even open it.
older tools were also much simpler, and usually clam shell halving. Modern tools have overmolding, overlapping clam shells, friction fits, screw posts, set posts. Clips, the single most hellishly thought up invention ever for fucks sake. And all kinds of voodoo magic electronic fuckery going on inside half the time.
My Logitech G500s had the funny clicker, I have a soldering iron but that felt a bit too fiddly (at the time) but I was able to dismantle the switch itself on the board and bend the contacts a bit. Been three years and it's still behaving. The cable went too at one point, with random disconnects as it moved. Was surprised to discover I could just order a new cable that plugged into the internal socket and it was good as new!
Sometimes it can be an exercise in frustration. My wife's Redmi note 10 is on its 4th screen, the original and third ones were dropped, the second was shit and crapped out after a couple of months, the fourth is showing signs of going the same way. Along with occasional locking up and WiFi problems that are fixed with a reboot (pretty sure I didn't break it on my many delves into its guts) I decided fuck it, its a ~£200 phone, get something else this time.
So instead I'm tearing my hair out trying to get her new Samsung A54 to restore the last Google backup.
Wish I had your neighbors. Mine almost always smash their stuff before dumping in the bin so no one else can use it.
Although a few things have creeped through. My current desktop is a AMD something or other, 4Ghz, 32GB Ram, 500GB ssd and all I had to do was get an IO shield and replace some fans.
Reminds me of the time I found a TV in the trash that said "remote doesn't work." I opened it up and the sensor had somehow been bent out of alignment, so I bent it back and that TV's been in my bedroom ever since.
btw with most modern tvs using side mounted hdmi on the pcb directly, it's bad solder joints causing these issues. Resoldering the connectors fixes it like half the time.
Interesting, I had ruled this out as likely because all 4 HDMI ports didn't pick up a signal, but I'll take a closer look at the board I pulled out.
usually you can get some form of signal flashing back at you if you jiggle the ports just right. And generally it should be pretty obvious when they have bad solder joints. They're usually completely loose and can be seen flopping about just a little.