Comments on: Will we be repairing our iPods a hundred years from now?

By: Yakezie Challenge Time

Yakezie Challenge Time — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 11:02:26 +0000

[...] Will we be repairing our iPods a hundred years from now? @ [...]

By: Jacob

Jacob — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:21:12 +0000

@Stephen – I took some classes back in 9th grade. Mostly soldering and following blueprints, so I basically know how to solder and make print boards with ironchloride and a drill press. Beyond that I did a little bit in lab in the first year at the university (protoboards and opamps.). I have also played with counters and displays. Never graduated to EPROMs though. For the theoretical stuff, Horovitz (big grey book with black lettering) is very very good. For the practical stuff, you’re in luck http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/01/its_learn_to_solder_month.html
Get a 15W soldering iron. You might get away with 20W but don’t go larger. I learned to solder by making grids of copper wire when I was about 8 (also helped that my mom used to be a soldering tech )—recommended, as you can’t destroy anything valuable like burning out a print board. Then get a simple kit and make that. Then go to bigger kits. Then start making your own boards. The most important thing is to be careful and not rush things.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:25:45 +0000

@Jacob – Constructing electronics out of components requires a bit more time and effort than buying an iPod. I’m thinking more along the lines of “connect small display, processor, memory, and headphone jack modules” for an mp3 player. It’s like Legos, you know, for kids.

I’ve wanted to learn about electronics but haven’t yet. I’m a controls engineer who uses Matlab. How did you learn, and can you recommend a book on the subject?

By: Jacob

Jacob — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 18:23:22 +0000

@mockum – I have often seen a tendency to believe that the world can be programmed. Every field tends to suffer from believing its methods can be applied everywhere else and that all the interfaces to other fields will automatically be invented. Many CS seem to have supreme faith in technology.

By: mockum

mockum — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:08:47 +0000

What do you have against computer scientists? We certainly have a better grasp of reality than artists and Latin majors.

By: Knobby Kabushka

Knobby Kabushka — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:41:31 +0000

Where’s my flying car that 1960′s Science Illustrated & Popular Mechanics magazines promised we would all be flying around in by now?

By: Jacob

Jacob — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:27:33 +0000

@Stephen – Does this not still exist? Consumer electronics contains a lot of surface mounted components, but you can still buy “ordinary” components. I built a 20W stereo amplifier some 10 years ago, and I do think that I could fix it, if it ever breaks.

@FB – I agree about the configurability. I think, however, in terms of human labor costs, there seems to be a battle between profitable design and sustainable design. I think such designs could be made today, to be taken apart. They would just be more expensive and people wouldn’t buy them. I hope for fusion power as well. It it the only think with a sufficiently big foot to replace oil and gas.

By: Frugal Bachelor

Frugal Bachelor — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:30:52 +0000

One thing that could be done is to make all chips reconfigurable FPGA’s (hopefully socketed!), which would aid in their recyclability, unlike nowadays where there is a custom design for every single type of device. Also, if we have something like 3D atomic-level printing, that would basically eliminate the whole silicon fabrication process we have today, although who knows if it would be lower energy?

But my main point was human labor costs, if by then we have computers and robots which are more capable than us, I don’t think it will be worth human time to look at this stuff. The existing computer salvaging industry is quite interesting in its economics – containers full of old American & Euro junk shipped to Asia and Africa, and then people strip the gold and other precious metals out of them.

I of course hope we have a big energy breakthrough within the next 100 years ..

By: Knobby Kabushka

Knobby Kabushka — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 13:57:32 +0000

A small segment of humans, if humanity as a whole survives the next 5 to 10 years, will be WAAAYYYYYYY beyond ipods by 2109.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 11:30:36 +0000

Do you think there will soon be a market for configurable/repairable electronics? I envision something like Legos that you can put together to build a radio, remote control, mp3 player, whatever. When one component breaks, replacing or repairing the one broken piece would be cheaper and easier to diagnose than repairing the whole unit and less wasteful than replacing the whole unit. It would be a tinkerer’s dream but also appropriate for the masses.