"I'd like to say that soldering is a basic life-skill, but it isn't. " I think it is.

If you do any kind of electronics repair or hacking, then you must know how to solder. It isn't difficult. You just need practice. Tutorials abound on YT. Knowing how to use a multimeter is also an essential life skill. Without these fundamental skills you must trash equipment that somehow went awry and buy another one. This is similar to mending your clothing. You can just pitch the clothing and buy new, or buy better quality and learn to mend what you have. The choice is yours.

With the quality of product dropping as time passes, there is more of a need to repair older but better quality products (computer tech excluded) than to simply buy new. Learn how to solder and sew yourself, find someone that knows, or pay someone to do it for you.

On Sat, 20 Jan 2024 at 11:51, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk@gtalug.org>

| I've had a CDP-L2520DW for at least a decade.
| Touch wood, no problems like this.

I've found Brother laser printers to be fairly reliable, especially
considering how complex and mechanical they are. I don't buy other brands
so I cannot compare them.

I've bought several refurb Brothers from their web site. Since the
pandemic, the prices seem to be way higher.

Brother seems to allow clone toners. That's good.

Brother's say that the toner cartridge is empty a bit prematurely.
Luckily there are sequences of key presses that override this.

| FWIW, I've found Brother tech support to be quite helpful

Good to know. I've rarely found any tech support useful so I try them
last. Google is much better. I wonder if chatGPT would be better still.

| While I have no
| idea where she was located, she did know her stuff.

I always ask CSRs "what City are you in" as a kind of stamp collecting. I
do it at the end because it isn't important and I don't want to throw the
conversation off.

| For those of us not intrepid enough, or lacking confidence in keeping a
| soldering gun steady -- I wonder if Brother might make available a
| replacement circuit board.
| More expensive than buying a single capacitor but less than replacing what
| has otherwise been a pretty good unit (from a company that has supported
| Linux very well).

I'd like to say that soldering is a basic life-skill, but it isn't. One
could try Dropping in on the Hacklab open house (Tuesdays starting at
18:00)? <https://hacklab.to/visit-us/>

Ohh: I thought that the Repair Cafe had died but I'm wrong:
<https://repaircafetoronto.ca/>

The repair is pretty easy if you've done any soldering. I solder about
twice a decade, so I'm not very good at it.

I don't know what soldering guns are good for. Probably not electronics.
I use a cheap soldering iron I bought three to five decades ago.
Probably from Radio Shack. For electronics work, you want a low power and
small iron.

The latest cool cheap soldering iron is the PINECIL V2. It has a RISC-V
processor and open source software. Why, I don't know. I'd have bought
one but the shipping doubles the price and irks me.
<https://pine64.com/product/pinecil-smart-mini-portable-soldering-iron/>
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