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Old 24th Sep 2017, 3:07 pm   #21
paulsherwin
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

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Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler View Post
I wonder, though, to what extent we as a group are susceptible to someone who does know popping in pretending to be an absolute beginner and asking a few questions as a "Henry Root" sort of wind-up?
I can't see it matters much. Even if the OP is only pretending to be clueless, any help given will still be of use to genuinely clueless people in the future (and there is no shortage of those).
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Old 24th Sep 2017, 4:41 pm   #22
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

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So which way does the voltage flow...
Downhill.
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Old 24th Sep 2017, 4:51 pm   #23
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So which way does the voltage flow...
It doesn't, current does.
 
Old 24th Sep 2017, 6:21 pm   #24
Boater Sam
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It's electrons and they go the opposite way to current (thinking). But holes move too.
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Old 24th Sep 2017, 6:32 pm   #25
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

I doubt anyone is "having a laugh".
They just don't know.
Dansettes ETC with 1 valve amps needing very high output cartridges.
Trying to reduce the tracking weight ETC
Hum which may be normal.
All on, Items which were always crap but even we did not know at the time.
They may well be better off with crossley and its like which do no more harm than the old players
It is not about hi fi or even what many of us ended up with which was what we could afford in the way of medium priced separates of a very pleasing sound quality.
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Old 24th Sep 2017, 6:56 pm   #26
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

Many years ago I worked for a firm that among general tv and radio repairs (house calls rather than in a workshop) had a contract with Rumblows or some similar company that sold on higher purchase so were repaired during the repayment period so washing machines were also dealt with. One of the technicians told me that he called at a house where the brand new twin tub was reported to not be working. The owner, an Asian lady with no grasp of English having recently arrived here showed him the washer and shrugged. The technition held the plug and looked around for a power point. You may have guessed. She had no idea it needed to be plugged in. It seems unbelievable but not having any experience of such technology she simply did not know.
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Old 24th Sep 2017, 8:18 pm   #27
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

I don't really care whether someone is "having a laugh" by asking questions they know the answer to. At the end of the day, someone else may be reading and learning from/enjoying the discussion, or someone in the future could refer back to the thread and fix that particular item. There is no joke, or if there is, the joke's on the person trying to wind us up. I don't get wound up. I have met plenty of people in the past who have attempted to do so. If someone thinks I'm a bit of a geek, so be it. I won't lose sleep over it.
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Old 24th Sep 2017, 11:54 pm   #28
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

There must be some very sad people if they ask questions as a joke. Perhaps they get bored when they get the right answer first time.

That is unlike elsewhere where I have seen allsorts of 'advice' including cleaning records with a certain brand of hair shampoo. Now I really did wonder if that was a joke.

As long as we have joke questions and not joke advice I suppose less experienced people like me will be fine.
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Old 25th Sep 2017, 2:56 am   #29
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

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Originally Posted by peter_sol View Post
I doubt anyone is "having a laugh".
They just don't know.
I think this is true a lot of the time.

It is amazing what non technical people can believe about technical people and the challenges they face in their work. I remember a fellow once remarking that it must be very easy to fix VCR's and TV's because to do it you just "follow the wires and see what is wrong". Or another customer upset about a hundred dollars of time spent on a job, to find a shorted 50 cent ceramic capacitor.

Obviously for a repair technician to be effective they have to understand the theory of the circuit they are working on and how the sub circuits are implemented, so as to be able to home in on a fault quickly with the knowledge of where the likely sub circuit responsible for the signs of the fault resides.

Still even with this knowledge & experience there are situations where the logic can fly out the window and make even the most experienced technician struggle. One classic is new sub circuits that get created by leakage pathways on a pcb, caused by leaked electrolyte or tin whisker conduction. The faults can seem bizarre or even impossible and not relate to the original circuit architecture.

Another is in cmos logic where an output of an IC goes open leaving some gate inputs floating, they discharge immediately when the scope probe is attached making it look like a logic 0 when some of the time it is not. And of course there would be numerous other examples.

But the layperson expects the technician to be on top of it 100% of the time and are baffled when some equipment takes a while, or is costly to repair.
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Old 25th Sep 2017, 4:07 am   #30
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

I can remember an engineer whom lived in an area that had become quite posh.
A woman who lived quite close to him heard a noise she did not understand and assumed it was the electricity and called the power company out.
It was a burglar alarm and the house it was on had been robbed and she had not even bothered to try to find out where it was coming from.
Everybody else had just ignored it.
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Old 25th Sep 2017, 9:03 am   #31
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

I agree with Biggles (#27).

For my part, I have a couple of personal mantras that I find very helpful on a daily basis:

- my perception may not match with your reality - and vice versa;

- assume nothing; check everything.

The latter applies equally to an individual's personal motivations as well as a piece of equipment.

Best wishes

Guy
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Old 25th Sep 2017, 9:26 pm   #32
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

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But the layperson expects the technician to be on top of it 100% of the time and are baffled when some equipment takes a while, or is costly to repair.
Worse yet is the client who wastes time insisting that his pet cure be tried and then grumbles about paying for that time...
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Old 25th Sep 2017, 10:30 pm   #33
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

I believe that everyone is doing the best they can, all the time.

That may seem ridiculous or a deeply challenging concept to some of us, but even if someone is asking such an apparently naive question that it looks like a joke, in my world, that's still the best they can do.

So I approach everyone as if everything they are doing is just that, the best they can be doing. It really simplifies my life!

For all that, I do feel sorry for people who for some reason moved the voltage selector from 250 to 220V, for no apparent reason, and in the process blow up a transformer. Or who keep running a high-end 1970s transistor radiogram even when one channel is blown, with really obvious distortion, until the thing is practically smoking and beyond redemption -- by which I mean a cascade of faults, suddenly, one on top of another. I've seen two or three beautiful examples of 70s Danish kit go into a skip for this reason.
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Old 26th Sep 2017, 11:45 am   #34
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

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Worse yet is the client who wastes time insisting that his pet cure be tried and then grumbles about paying for that time...
"My husband says it's probably just the picture valve and shouldn't cost much"

Oh how I loved to deflate them by showing them there were NO valves in the set!
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Old 26th Sep 2017, 6:12 pm   #35
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

Or, "There can't be much wrong with it. It was working fine yesterday when I switched it on".
WHAT? Where's the logic in that?
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Old 26th Sep 2017, 6:41 pm   #36
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Ahhh, the - "working when last used" bit
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Old 26th Sep 2017, 7:45 pm   #37
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

Every thing works until it stops!
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Old 26th Sep 2017, 9:26 pm   #38
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Default Re: Having a laugh?

And woe betide the last person to go anywhere near something while it was still working ..... The practice of blaming the poor unfortunate last person to touch something has been going on since at least Ancient Roman times, judging by the Latin phrase post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
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Old 27th Sep 2017, 6:51 pm   #39
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Probably the only thing about some threads that gets to me is the first (and only) post from a new member who asks if anyone has an "xyz" for a particular model, then when people kindly reply with offers, there is no response. No more heard. What happened to them? Waste of everyone's time, particularly when someone out of the goodness of their heart has probably spent an hour digging out a part they last saw three years ago.
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Old 27th Sep 2017, 7:53 pm   #40
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Agreed!
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