Museum of failure.

[electronicskip]

Pippin Atmark?(apple) Casio loopy., Amstrad GX4000 all flops.

[The Philpott]

If not already mentioned- The Therac-25 system. More of a software and over-confidence problem than hardware as such, but devastating nonetheless.

[emeritus]

Is this the same as the Sony ICF 7600 D? I have two of them that I don't use, inherited from a deceased relative, and they still work OK ( that's tempting fate!).

I wonder if electrolytic failure could account for the systematic fault that has affected three JVC DV camcorders that I have had, where the manual settings menu appears, but is ineffective, making it impossible to manually select shutter speed. The local JVC authorised repairers hadn't come across this fault and could only suggest fitting a replacement board that is no longer available.

[HamishBoxer]

JVC were indeed known for smd cap failure.

[vidjoman]

Originally Posted by HamishBoxer

JVC were indeed known for smd cap failure.

So were Canon. My son bought a Canon DV camcorder which seemed to be good. He went on holiday and it gave good results. Next year he went to the USA and again used the camera only to find the recordings were poor. The dealer said it was a common problem and it was out of guarantee so he would have to pay for new boards to be fitted. He won't touch Canon again

[Nuvistor]

SMD capacitors had a bad time in many pieces of equipment about 10-15 years ago, computer mother boards had many problems for some PC makers.
Frank

[Refugee]

Most of those faulty capacitors in computers that I spotted were thru-hole.

[Nuvistor]

It seems through hole and SMD types were giving problems at that time then.

[Radio Wrangler]

It was a bad era.

Tant dust prices started to rocket. Capacitor manufacturers economised and went far too far relying on people de-rating their parts. measured reliability was terrible. HP banned some makes.

Meanwhile on the aluminium side of the hill, there was the business with stolen recipes for secret sauce where the wrong, incompletely developed one got nicked.

Bad times for those who like their reactances negative.

David

[ColinTheAmpMan1]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

Another failure: Phonecards. They enjoyed a brief burst of popularity in the late-1980s through to the mid-1990s but thereafter faded into obscurity and irrelevance as phone-booths were obsoleted by ubiquitous and cheap mobile-phones.

These days there's still a niche-interest in collecting phonecards, In times past rare ones changed hands for truly unbelievable prices but they were a bad long-term investment. http://www.telephonecardcollector.co...rent-value.htm

Looking for something else, I came across these phonecards. Any value other than as ice-scrapers or pub table-levellers?

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by chriswood1900

ooh and Tantalum caps.

And Suflex caps.

[HamishBoxer]

Must agree ,Suflex used in the 60's and failed in the 60's.

Try Peto Scot 738. 9 times out of 10, it was a Suflex and all that was needed was a quick snip.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by kalee20

Videodiscs took 3 major attempts to get them going... Baird's Phonovision; Philips's Laservision, until DVD's took off.

You missed out CED and VHD, we had to know about all three for the Granada Rentals TechIVe qualification.
Predictably we weren't examined on Photovision

[Brigham]

Phonovision had the longest time-lag between recording and replay.

[Nuvistor]

Originally Posted by rambo1152

And Suflex caps.

Interesting post on Suflex capacitors, question, were they Suflex that failed or another make of polystyrene capacitors. See post 6

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...d.php?t=113911

Frank

[ColinTheAmpMan1]

Originally Posted by emeritus

The London Ambulance Service was awful at that time. I was a first aider at work and in 1989 I was summoned to attend to someone found collapsed and semi-conscious with a head wound in a toilet in our office block in Holborn. When our internal switchboard operator dialed 999, it took three quarters of an hour to get put though to the ambulance service: - permanently engaged. This was at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon.

While it may be considered that the LAS software was a failure (yes, it failed to do what it was needed to do), I think I may be able to shed a bit more light on it. I believe that I know who programmed this software and he was, and is, a very good software engineer. If I am right, he admits to the disaster that happened, but it wasn't really his fault, because he wrote software as it was specified. Unfortunately for many people, the specification was wrong. So where do we lay the blame for the failure, at the feet of the software engineer, or at the incompetent specification?
Colin.

[stuarth]

I'm not sure it's been mentioned here, I may have missed something in 300+ posts, but a trip to Stockholm to visit the museum would end in failure, the museum is in Helsingborg.

Stuart

[Tractionist]

Nice one Stu !!!

[Skywave]

I find this to be a fascinating thread, but have not read all of its many posts. So what follows may have already featured - but I doubt it.

I recently purchased this slim little booklet: 'Extraordinary Inventions', by Tim Healey. I found this to be a truly riveting read! The amount and breadth of the truly bizarre notions that people have come with over the years is quite amazing. And, surprise, surprise, many of them didn't get off the ground (and in same cases, that applies literally!). In many respects, this is a publications which is a comprehensive list of things eminently suitable for entry into a Museum of Failure.

It's a Reader Digest publication; dates from 1983; unfortunately, no ISBN is provided.

Al.

[The Philpott]

I nominate the 'Christmas Bullet' aircraft designed by William Christmas.

Wings not strutted or braced as he believed they should have a degree of motion like a bird's wings. I think you can guess what happened to the prototype and its pilot. He built another one, and it happened again.