Comment on 'boardswapping' as part of the computer culture.

[Scott Stevens]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 05:40:43 +0100
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Tony Duell wrote:
> > As regards what's more successful, _every_ time I've tried 
> > board-swapping, I've had more problems than I started with. When I find 
> > the fault using test gear, I put it right, and the machine stays working. 
> > Quite likely board-swapping will get the machine to do _something_ again 
> > in a shorter time than finding the fault properly, but doing the latter 
> > will get the machine doing the _right_ thing, and will make sure it keeps 
> > on doing that.
> 
> You know, that always surprises me - I'd expect board swapping to rarely 
> cause problems for reasonably modular systems (I can believe it with 
> such as DEC hardware though, where you so much as cough near it and 
> something breaks ;)
> 
> Depends on the nature of the fault I suppose. For field faults on 
> current hardware I would expect board swapping to hardly ever make 
> things worse (my annoyance there would be if failed boards were just 
> tossed rather than being fixed back at base). For restoring classic 
> machines that may have been kept in bad conditions or not powered up in 
> years, it's likely a different story!
> 

A service environment where all the service techs were 'artisans' who constantly tweaked and improved each board out in the field would be a servicing nightmare.  There wouldn't be any consistent service, and every site that had been visited would have totally uncontrolled hardware revisions.

A service-bureau approach, where the techs in the field are trained boardswappers who ship boards back for rework by qualified staff at a repair depot makes the most sense, from a business, and from a technical point of view.

It just plain _doesn't_make_sense_ for highly qualified experts to be out driving around in vans scraping dirt and reseating boards.  There is a hierarchy of expertise within any organization, and component level troubleshooters belong at the repair depot.

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