The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

RE: The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

colporteur — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 23:21:34 GMT

I would prefer a tear down of something I actually have knowledge about. "Hey there is the...." Tearing down sfuff I have no background on is just a task to make room for new stuff.

When I worked for a national telco, tear downs were only done if the space was needed. Tax rules didn't permit claiming the expense of tear downs if it didn't directly relate to the project. The bean counters would not permit just cleanups for the sake of cleanup. I walked around a few racks of abandoned, obsolete equipment because it couldn't be cost justified.

RE: The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

dougw — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 14:07:49 GMT

How about reverse engineering a game controller with enough detail that members could build a custom controller from the info.

RE: The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

xxdeltaxx — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 21:35:41 GMT

Hi, just wondering if you may be interested in an old Alienware monitor? (AW2310)

About a month ago it stopped working after a great number of years of use - it was still detected by the PC, but the screen wouldn't turn on; it doesn't have physical buttons, so I couldn't try any of the recommended Dell / Alienware techniques to try to prompt it to reset / clear the problem... it might just be dead.

I did try looking for any signs of damage and / or replacement parts, but a second problem arose when I opened it up - the insulation on some of the display cables is falling off. I did try looking for replacements, but can't find anything.

It was a great monitor, and the reviews for it were / still are pretty positive, so sending it to the recycling pile in the sky is a bit sad - be nice if someone gets a use out of it.

RE: The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

azurejf — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 10:59:27 GMT

I would like to see a good teardown and analysis of a Metcal RF Soldering Station

RE: The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

mayermakes — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 13:31:09 GMT

While I would love to see what makes an IBM tapedrive work, I'd also besitant to damage it. So I vote for an electric vehicle

RE: The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

dougw — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 21:07:18 GMT

An early model VCR would have lots of complexity.

The camera in a current high end cell phone is unbelievably complex.

RE: The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

beacon_dave — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 16:25:34 GMT

Something old and big you say ? How about a Boeing 747 jumbo ? [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-177f6492-d30d-4f38-89a2-c5c1c6da8fe0/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

RE: The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

Andrew J — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 16:03:45 GMT

Good question! I think I'd prefer to teardown something where everything came to bits and there wasn't anything hiding away in MCUs. Not sure what though as I think I'd be interested in taking anything apart!

If you're really interested in getting hands-on with maintenance and repair of computer equipment, volunteer at TNMoC! You can get your hands on:

- an ICL tape drive; we have a full ICL 2966 installation to play with!

- plenty of PCs from the late 80s / 90s

- home computers from the 80s.

- analog computers

- computers and machines from the 1940s onwards.

They are all expected to run and need maintenance from those who can.

RE: The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

dubbie — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 11:43:43 GMT

I'd quite like to teardown an original IBM PC but I guess they are probably too expensive to do that to now. I had one when they first came out (I was the first person in my University department to have their own PC!) and I can still remember being impressed with it's modularity abd the fact that you could obtain complete schematics and descriptions of the hardware and software. I followed that up by teaching PC maintenance short courses.

Dubbie