11/34 irks

[Tony Duell]

> Being a hardeware repair kinda guy,  this has been a pet peeve of mine for a 
> very long time.  I have run across some stuff that was designed to be easy to 
> work on,  and in some cases which actually got better over time.  And while 

My favourite 2 'easy to work on' items are both video displays -- a Barco 
colour monitor nad an HP1311 XY vector display. The point being there's 
an extended card for the plug-in PCBs stored in a spare slot inside.

One of my least-favourite machines to work on is the DEC Rainbow. It 
seems almsot impossible to set that thing up so that you can get to 
testpoints on the mainboard. I can rememebr having the PSU balanced 
upside-down alongside the logic board assembly, for example.


> in some cases there may be slight extra costs incurred to add some bits,  
> there are other cases where just a little bit of consideration for such 
> things in the design process can make all of the difference.

Half the time it seems things are deliberately difficult to repair. Using 
heat-stakes in place of screws, putting things in the least accessible 
place possible, and so on.

> 
> "Classic" example (and yes,  it's over 10 year old :-):  I was trying to 
> change out the battery in a Lumina APV.  Like a lot of other stuff,  there 

I am gettign fed up with the number of cars where it's difficult to 
change the timing (camshaft) belt. I've seen many examples where the belt 
goes _through_ an engine mounting, meaning you have to support the engine 
and remove the mounting to change the belt. Or drop the engine a bit to 
get to the crankshaft bolt, or...

-tony