This trend is really depressing me. Most of the time it's cheaper to buy new stuff than to actually repair it.<p>This weekend I was trying to repair some bike's wheel, some spokes (4) were broken and needed to be changed, I called the bike shop and the guy told me he doesn't keep a stock of spare parts anymore. That he would have to order them by a box of 100 for me. If I let him repair the wheel (having only minor damages) it would cost me more than to buy a new one.
I've noticed that after being zapped like this, a lot of electronics manufactured in the last decade often just need to sit unplugged and self-discharge for a while. Real frustrating when you uncable it, fill out the paperwork, throw it on the cart, and take it down to maintenance, only to find that in a week when they get around to dealing with it shit starts working on its own.<p>Real common with power supplies that just don't work after an abrupt building power outage, but I've had it happen with protection circuits on ethernet and firewire ports too (though it took a lot longer).
If I didn't just get my arduinoscope working (<a href="http://code.google.com/p/arduinoscope/" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/arduinoscope/</a>), I'd probably ask where your trash dumpster is located and I'd be there on 3/23 :-)
I still have my childhood oscilloscope. Its only 25Mhz but its all analog and dual trace (Phillips PM3214). When I run into something particularly vexing, I still get it out even though I have a 100Mhz DSS now.<p>Call it a sentimental "security blanket" thing, but it seems like I can <i>feel</i> circuits on that little analog screen.<p>I've also definitely felt the pain of weird high frequency transients blowing motor controller components. They tend to be high voltage as well. Fortunately I haven't lost any expensive gear yet! Good luck TLB, your bots are awesome.
One who throws away a $2000 item without even bothering to pull the back cover off and look for something obvious like an inline fuse with a Schottky-diode clamp has already wasted far more than that on their EE education.<p>Must be nice to have more money than brains. Most of us don't have enough of either.
silly question, but why cant someone who knows how to use a scope simply repair it? Off topic i had a bit of fun the other day fixing a HP pavilion laptop which has a design fault (look on ebay) and all it cost me was some copper pipe and heat sink compound.