Re: ....And Another One Bites the Dust!

"Cursitor Doom" <cd@notformail.com> wrote in message news:ect1jjdbn2lpeehjha3lvpj75kpp1blav6@4ax.com...

I find that about 20% of the stuff I try to repair I just make worse
and end up throwing it in the garbage. The reason in every case is
down to ham-fistedness and carelessness. Fortunately I don't do this
for a living and none of the stuff that blows up belongs to anyone
else. Funny thing is, you'd expect to get better over time with this
activity, but I haven't. My kill rate remains at one in five and there
doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it.The other day I had a
vintage tape recorder burst into flames because I forgot to discharge
an electrolytic cap that I'd diligently re-formed before fitting it.
It brushed against something it shouldn't have done in the process and
*bang!* another one went west. Sigh...

I was definitely much better at equipment repair 40 years ago.
These days I'd rather not touch hardware if possible.

Sometimes I get asked to fix computers but if a box full of dust has motherboard failure then I don't want to know, other than maybe
extracting data from the hard drive.

If a box full of valves has microphone failure or needs electrolytic capacitor replacement then I might take it on.

Otherwise I'll stick with firewalls and cybersecurity so that I only have to configure hardware by sitting at a computer and not
repair it.