Every so often, and even more so nowadays, one has to have a chuck-out to get rid of the sets that are dumped on you. A colleague recently hired a large skip (and believe me, that isn’t cheap) and loaded it to overflowing with sets that customers had either not picked up or had been dumped on him when the repair quote was rejected.

The amazing thing was that by next morning, it was nearly half empty again. But even more incredible was the queue of people bringing the scrounged sets back in to be repaired or quoted for repair, each one of course being subject to a quote fee.

My colleague explained the situation to each new customer but several still insisted that he go ahead. And because the job labels were still stuck to the backs of the sets, it was often just a case of looking up the job number on the computer to retrieve the details from the original estimate!

In the end, he found this recycling extremely profitable – nearly enough to pay for the skip, in fact! And several sets were repaired that would otherwise have become landfill.

The "faulty" cassette deck

One old dear went to a garage sale many years ago where she spied a beautiful cassette deck for only $10.

Delighted with her purchase, she took it home, plugged it and loaded it with her favourite music. The lights came on and the tape moved but no sound could be heard.

"Oh well", she thought, "I only paid $10 for it; I will take it in and get it repaired".

My colleague could see that it needed cleaning and lubricating, plus new belts and tyres, so he quoted accordingly. A week later, our little old lady picked the cassette deck up and took it home to try it out.

Well, she was back again the very next day, still complaining that there was no sound. My colleague apologised and said he would check it out for her by the end of the day. He soon found that the unit was working perfectly and the sound was just great. What’s more, he could do nothing to make the unit misbehave.

He told our heroine that he could find nothing wrong with it and advised her to take it home and try again. If there was any problem, he invited her to call and he would help her over the phone.

Sure enough, she called a few hours later and said that there was still no sound. And by now, she was beginning to become rather agitated.

My friend was quite perplexed by this. He was fairly sure there was nothing wrong with the unit, so what could she be doing wrong? He made various suggestions – such as turning up the volume control and pressing play, etc – but she assured him that she was doing all these things.

Finally she brought it back in and my colleague connected it all up again. And as before, the sound was perfect.

There was only one way to resolve this and so he invited madam to come in to the workshop and listen for herself. When she arrived, he turned the volume up for her and the workshop filled with sound.

What happened next was quite unexpected. The little old lady pointed to the amplifier on which he had adjusted the volume and asked what it and the external loudspeaker were for. And she wanted to know why he was adjusting "that box" rather than the controls on the cassette deck.

After a little confusion, the penny dropped. Our old dear thought that the cassette deck was complete with its own amplifier and speakers. She didn’t realise it was just a deck to be used as an accessory in a hifi system!

Speaker pyrotechnics

On another occasion, a young man came into the showroom to purchase some speakers. He spied a pair which had white cones and was rather taken by them, so he asked the salesman to give a demonstration.

A brand new high-power amplifier had just arrived in the store, so the salesman connected it to the switching console, along with the loudspeakers. He then switched the amplifier on and turned the volume up.

At first, everything sounded fantastic and the young man was really impressed by the quality.

However, it was at this moment that there was a loud thud and the sound went dead. And then, right in front of their eyes, the voice coils in the loudspeakers began to glow a beautiful orange colour, this quickly changing to a red glow, in turn followed by smoke.

"Wow", he exclaimed, "I love it! Does it come in any other colours?"

The amplifier had not only failed in both channels but the protection circuit had also failed. The result was a high DC output from each channel which had fried the speakers. And to add insult to injury, the salesman’s last sighting of the young man was of him leaving for another store, to see if he could get some speakers which glowed a different colour!

Reversed brain cells

It’s not always the client that is lacking in the old brain power. Yours truly occasionally stuffs up too.

The other day I had to repair an electronic distance measuring device. The repair was straightforward and when I had finished I fitted all the batteries for a final test.

I then discovered that although the machine was trying to work, it was struggling and barely giving any sort of output.

I dismantled it and checked all my work thoroughly again but could find nothing wrong except that the power supply was low. It took far too long before I realised I had actually fitted two of the batteries the wrong way around.

Duh!

The caring facade

We live in a world where, superficially at least, it seems as though every-one is extremely concerned for our safety and well being. Of course, this is all really a facade and the level of genuine concern is usually in inverse proportion to the rhetoric.

For example, you enter one of our leading hardware stores and are met by one of the "team" with a jolly "how are you?". That’s then followed by the now obligatory "have a nice day" as you are leaving. Do they really care whether I have a nice day, an indifferent day or a rotten one?

Want another example? Well, we’ve all seen the "For Your Safety" blurb that appears in the instruction manual for just about any piece equipment we buy these days. Call me a cynic if you like but I think it’s there mainly to save the manufacturer from litigation.

Ever tried to get help for a software problem or other types of help over the phone? A common response from the software companies is that it is a third party’s responsibility for the problem – just uninstall, reformat or start again.

I had a frustrating experience many years ago with a help-desk operator who worked for a cable TV company. In this particular case, I wanted to know the default RF output channel that the company’s cable box was set to, so that I would have some idea where to find it when tuning the TV. And the answer from the help-desk operator? "The box is not set to any channel – it’s on ALL channels and all you have to do is tune your TV into it."

I held my temper and tried rephrasing my question in several different ways but kept getting the same answer. Eventually, I said "well, how do I go about tuning my TV to your cable box?"

"Sorry, can’t help you with that", was the answer. "You will have to get the TV manufacturer’s technician to show you how as they are all different".

In the end, I asked a colleague who immediately told me what the default channel was. He also told me how to change it to avoid co-channel interference, if necessary.

French arrogance

We had an arrogant Frenchman drop his Teac CTM519 TV into the workshop for repair. He told us it was dead and he wanted an immediate quote. There was no "s’il vous plait" either – this was an order.

We looked at the set, gave him a quote, repaired the power supply and were happy to see the back of him when he picked the set up and left. However, a few weeks later, he returned, complaining that we hadn’t fixed his set properly and accusing us of incompetence. We asked what the problem was and were told that there was no colour on AV playback.

Unfortunately, he no longer had the remote control or the instruction book. He insisted again that we fix it immediately and this time he wanted it done for free.

We said that we would look into the problem and advise him – when we got the chance. We also explained that all we had done was repair the power supply and that our warranty covered this repair only. Furthermore, that was all he had paid for and we hadn’t been advised of any other symptoms when he first brought the set in.

He really didn’t want to know about this and stalked out in a huff, leaving us with the set.

Eventually, when we had a spare minute, we connected the set and tried it out. All TV channels came up in full colour but when the set was switched to AV1, there was no colour although the OSD displayed PAL as the selected colour system. Unfortunately, not having either the remote control or the instruction book meant that we were unable to immediately confirm whether it was a hardware or software problem.

The AV signal went directly to the jungle IC inside the set, so it could have been the IC or one of its peripheral components, or it could have been the EEPROM and/or the microprocessor IC.

We didn’t have the correct remote control for this set but we did notice that the RC747 remote for the Teac CTM342HWQ controlled some of the functions. Each time you pressed the relevant button, it would cycle between each system – ie, NTSC1, NTSC2 and PAL. And when we cycled it back to PAL, the colour came on and no matter what we did, we couldn’t make it disappear again.

This proved that there was nothing wrong with the set or the repair we had done on it. Rather, it showed the customer to be not only arrogant but stupid as well, as he had continued to abuse us over the phone and was even threatening to call the police because "we were ripping him off".

As it turned out, it was his own incompetence that had caused the problem. He sure didn’t say much when he picked the set up, although he could have at least tried an "excusez-mois" or a "pardon monsieur", or even a "je regrette" – not that we really expected it!

The spooky Teac

A good friend of mine purchased a Teac PC-D800SR Tuner/CD Player which worked fine for years. But then, one day, the CD motor stopped turning and the player started making a loud "clicking" noise.

He asked me to have a look and after I removed the lower shell, it didn’t take long to find the cause. The sled assembly was jammed and the clicking noise was caused by the motor jumping a gear tooth every so often. But what was really strange was that the sled assembly was jammed against a fixed electro on the PC board. This electro was normally bent out of the way but somehow this one had got bent the wrong way and was now hitting the sled.

The owner assured me that no-one else had ever been inside the machine. So who or what had caused the capacitor to move? Spooky . . .

One man’s burden

A rather haughty "lady" brought in an old amplifier with one channel out of action. The fault turned out to be quite straightforward and was due simply to a faulty (noisy) balance control. We replaced it and soak tested the amplifier before returning it to the customer.

A week later, the woman phoned up to say the amplifier sounded terrible and had "never been so bad". And she was none too polite about it and didn’t hold back on the bad language either.

We naturally apologised and tried to explain that it was fine when we checked it after the repair. We also told her that she was more than welcome to bring it back and we would check it out again for her at no cost.

So she brought it back and we connected it up for her and demonstrated it. She still complained that it used to have a lot more bass, so we turned the bass up and the treble down. Whereupon she really threw a hissy fit. "Why did you move those controls?", she fumed. "You have ruined it by adjusting them! You had absolutely no right to touch those controls"! And on and on and on . . .

When she calmed down, we did our best to explain that in order to service the unit, they had to be adjusted. After all, they were "consumer" controls and it was up to the consumer to set the bass and treble controls to their liking.

But it was no good and she continued to rant and rave. Finally, she picked up the amplifier and walked out, warning us that we would be hearing from her husband.

We did, the very next day, but far from giving us a rocketing, he humbly apologised for her rude behaviour, intimating severe oestrogen-fuelled psychological problems! Furthermore, he went on, we were not the only people he was having to phone that day!

Unfortunately, we can’t fix faulty customers.

A bizarre story

Finally, here is another slightly bizarre story.

A JVC AV-25PX TV (JK chassis) came in under warranty five years ago with a picture tube problem. This particular set was manufactured in 2000 and there was an intermittent heater-cathode short inside the green gun.

The 60cm set was considered a write-off and so the customer was given a new TV. We kept his old set as a possible source of spare parts and it remained undisturbed in a corner of our workshop for five years.

Recently, however, I wanted to demonstrate my old picture tube rejuvenator and tester and so this set was chosen as the guinea pig. After a few blasts from my machine, the picture tube was as good as new, the set now giving a consistently good clear picture with perfect greyscale, purity and convergence.

However, the colours were incorrect, as though the incorrect TV colour system had been selected. However, this wasn’t the case as the correct CCIR B/G PAL D had been selected and there were no Hanover blinds. Furthermore, the OSD (on-screen display) menus all had the correct colours and a monitor connected to the output of the TV was also giving the correct colours.

I quickly isolated the problem to be somewhere around IC251 (CXA2039M-X), a 24-pin surface-mounted IC costing over $60. In fact, by running my fingers over the IC pins, I could get the set to display the correct colours. But that was as far as I could go, because no-one could justify the extra cost of repairing this television even though it was otherwise in mint condition. The cost of replacing this IC – if indeed it did fix the fault – could not be recovered from the sale of this set in today’s market.

So the set remains on death row as a donor for any similar set.