On 2019-03-05
10:04 p.m., Howard Gibson via talk wrote:
>
> One of the basic rules of Design For
Manufacture and Assembly is that
> you should not use screws. The preferred way
is for everything to
> snap together.
Snaps are okay for a short time if you can access
the service manual to
see where they are. Slide the spudger in the wrong
place and you'll
break a snap, ending up with a case that sags in one
spot. So /design
for manufacture/ can be counter to /design for
repair/.
The original Apple Macintosh was one of the first
/design for
manufacture/ computers. It required the dealer-only
"case cracker" tool
- a long Torx T15 bit with a spudger lever on the
end:
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/118/439
- that told the story
that Users did not belong inside the case*. Apple's
previous computers
invited you inside - the Apple II's top just lifted
off without tools.
Right to Repair is important. I'm slightly
disappointed by the general
reaction on this list. We'll spent lifetimes
fiddling with software
configs to keep it running against all odds, but
hardware gets short
shrift. I know that processing power and storage
improvements have made
it poor business practice to get sentimental about
keeping older
computers running, but some curiosity over how
repair and replace is a
good thing. We can't live on a growing mountain of
e-waste, after all.
Stewart
*: the Macintosh had a CRT inside and thus
hilariously fatal voltages
for the unwary. It could be said Apple were only
doing the right thing
keeping Users out. But other computers had built-in
CRTs with only the
usual warnings and mounting screws. One example
would be the Commodore
SX-64, a device clearly designed for confusion. The
SX-64 appears to be
a random collection of boards held together by ...
another random
collection of boards and little else.
Totally with you on snaps: even with cautious
disassembly you're likely to have breakage by the
third time you go into the case. Screws are
definitely the way to go. Tedious, yes, but sturdy
and repeatable.
Also totally with you on Right to Repair: I
volunteered for Repair Cafe (
http://repaircafetoronto.ca/ )
for about three years, and even in that time saw how
much harder it was getting to get inside a standard
laptop.
Upgrading RAM used to be a common activity, even
on a laptop. But now the manufacturers solder RAM
to the board (and glue the case shut even if it's
not soldered down). Yes, this makes the machine
marginally slimmer, but it also makes it totally
non-upgradeable. Same with hard drives (spinning,
SSD, NVMe ... just give us an access hatch.)
Another major argument in favour of
right-to-repair is something as simple as cleaning
dust out of your processor fan. I think it's a bit
crazy to have to pay the manufacturer several
hundred dollars to do that for you. These are all
things that used to be simple and still could be,
but consumers have been deliberately locked out for
a small increase in profits - and to the detriment
of the environment. <sigh>