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Right To Repair

For some years now, the shift preferred by those with 'high wealth' is that they own, and gain income from us *renting* from them. Land being the traditional way to do that. But now adopted in more and more other 'goods and services'. In effect, a re-invention of the Feudal system. So 'repair' is not what they want to see happen.

What I have found curious is that although I enjoy the BBC's "Repair Shop" it tends to focus on cuddly toys and other knick-knaks. The number of electronics items dealt with is very small. Shame as they could make more visible the ability to repair electronic items *and* show examples of items which are almost impossible to repair - by design. Few people will care about an old washing machine I guess. But they may about a radio, hifi, or mobile device or old computer as these are often more personal items. Indeed, some of them remain useful to use 'software' which modern kit ignores.
You are hoping for the moon there.
Jay Blades contribution seems to be painting furniture legs day glo colours and not much else.
 

Some more interesting points relating to the ongoing corporate shift towards a ‘buy and lease’ model. This certainly exists within the modern high-tech audio marketplace too.
 

I know I’m posting a lot of Louis Rossmann links, but he does seem to be the one driving this whole thing forward and this short seven minute video is more in our collective ballpark as it focuses on KRK active monitors and the attitude of parent company Gibson (guitars). I am certain Louis has his basic argument entirely correct and is right about the overall trajectory here. It is awful from both a consumer perspective and and environmental one. Sadly it is little surprise seeing Gibson way, way on the wrong side of this one.
 
Superb. That is good to know. My JC Verdier Control B came with a schematic too (as obviously did the vintage Quad and Leak stuff I picture in the opening post).

PS We should definitely highlight the good guys here. There are positives to be found.
 
Until now I had only dipped in and out of this thread but I finally had a chance (read: actively avoiding writing a funding application) to read through it.

One point that @Tony L made that I strongly disagree with is that there is no need for firmware source to be made available. Now, I come with a certain bias, having worked for many years at a demonstrably high level in Free Software (GNU). With that said, faulty firmware can also be a very big problem, albeit different from faulty/failing hardware components. If the company goes belly-up and a bug in the firmware exists, you're stuck with it. If the company makes the source available, they can benefit from public scrutiny of the code and potential bug or enhancement reports. Stallman forgive me, but if they want, they can provide the source code under a restrictive license that prevents copying and distribution but still enables scrutiny. In that regard, it's analogous to providing schematics of the circuitry. They don't need to make flashing the firmware easy (but, conversely, shouldn't make it impossible via signing and such which is completely unnecessary for hi-fi), but as long as a qualified professional has the right equipment, they should also be able to fix faults in the firmware.

I have had a good experience with SOtM, who make, among other things, network streamers. I have an sMS-200, which is basically an ARM computer like an RPi. What they provide as "firmware" is really just a Linux installation. When I bought the device, there was a problem in the firmware that led to rapid failure of the SD card. Every device has SSH installed on it, but no credentials are provided. I nevertheless got in touch with them and asked for the login information, which they provided (on the condition that I not share it publicly, which I agree to). I was able to log in, identify the problem that led to massive numbers of writes to the SD card, fix it locally on my own device, and then report it to the company. It has since been fixed in subsequent releases. Now, obviously this couldn't have happened so easily if we were talking about true firmware flashed to ROM, but hopefully it's illustrative.
 
One point that @Tony L made that I strongly disagree with is that there is no need for firmware source to be made available.

On this I’m taking a pragmatic stance. I’ll take a win that prevents landfill, encourages long service life etc. There is simply no way in hell companies are going to release source code, it just isn’t going to happen. Ever. If we dig in too hard on that point we’ll lose the whole battle. We have to start at the top with Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, John Deere, BMW, Audi/VW etc and work down from there. If you demand source code they’ll justifiably play the ‘security’ card, and with good reason. They’ll win too.
 
On this I’m taking a pragmatic stance. I’ll take a win that prevents landfill, encourages long service life etc. There is simply no way in hell companies are going to release source code, it just isn’t going to happen. Ever. If we dig in too hard on that point we’ll lose the whole battle. We have to start at the top with Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, John Deere, BMW, Audi/VW etc and work down from there. If you demand source code they’ll justifiably play the ‘security’ card, and with good reason. They’ll win too.

There are plenty of examples from computers. In my personal experience, I have two ARM-based computers, one a laptop and one a small desktop box, both of which are now landfill fodder because the company refused to provide drivers for the display, among other things. So, the devices are stuck with binary drivers from yesteryear that are made for an old version of Linux (pre-devicetree, if anyone is interested) that cannot be updated without the help of the company, which has abandoned the devices. I keep holding on to them as if there is something that I could do, but at some point they'll be binned or sent to someone who thinks they could do something with them. I won't use them as they are due to the security risks of using such out-of-date software.

One hi-fi example (to the extent that I understand it) is with the Naim pre-amplifier that I have, the NAC112. From what I understand, the volume control in this pre-amp is controlled by a microcontroller. In some cases, that can start misbehaving. Naim won't fix it (again, from what I undestand, happy to be corrected). If the firmware for that microcontroller were made available, maybe a community fix would have been identified by now. Since it hasn't, this device has a low resale value and some repair services won't touch it (I remember MJ from Witchhat said somewhere in this forum that they wouldn't work with it). In my case it still works fortunately but it's just something that I have to be aware of that will potentially shorten the life of the pre-amp.

Lastly, with more and more hi-fi gear being effectively Internet of Things devices, they contain small computers and are thus subject to security concerns. If the user cannot inspect and fix the software, then the device becomes a security concern. And we cannot accept the lie from companies that "security through obscurity" is security at all. Competently written software can be both highly secure and open source. See, for example, the end-to-end encrypted chat software, Signal. Not to mention all the standard security libraries that underpin the internet like openssl/libressl, gnutls, etc. Yes, there have been major security problems identified in these, but that only led to fixes.
 
a case in point.

I don't get on with laptops computers. I have, what many would think of as an 'old computer', desktop type. I have had it for over a decade, and it has served me well.But I have had to replace bits of it over that time. When I say 'bits of it', in reality, it's all of it. And a few weeks ago the p/s gave up the ghost (so I thought). Dead as the do do. So I looked on that auction site, and found two which looked the ones I needed. Only one was compatible, the second didn't, a pity as it was unused, according to the seller. The compatible one is working fine, and with the benefit of a silent motor, much to my partner's relief!

So what to do with the other power supply? I decided I could use it as a lab power supply, and looking on the net showed this was possible. And ebay had plug and play boards to facilitate my ideas. These have a 20/24 way input connector which connects with the one from the computer power supply, intended to connect with the computer mother board.

So for about £14 I have a source of 3.3v, 5v and 12v, a USB1 port and a variable from ~2v to ~10v. And as I now know what all the other wires have on them, a whole range up to ± 12v are available, I'm sorted. A nice feature of the board is 'magnetic feet', which allows the board to stick to the steel p/s enclosure:



As it worked out, I tried the new board with the duff power supply, and that worked as well! (go figure!) So I have ordered another board.

For those wanting to know what the different coloured wires have on them, here is a list:

 

I know I’m posting a lot of Louis Rossmann links, but he does seem to be the one driving this whole thing forward and this short seven minute video is more in our collective ballpark as it focuses on KRK active monitors and the attitude of parent company Gibson (guitars). I am certain Louis has his basic argument entirely correct and is right about the overall trajectory here. It is awful from both a consumer perspective and and environmental one. Sadly it is little surprise seeing Gibson way, way on the wrong side of this one.

Orvil must be spinning in his grave..


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Another story for the pile.

My beloved Arcam AV9 was subject to a power surge fairly recently. It was on a surge protector / mains conditioner but I did not realise surges can travel through HDMI cables from adjacent kit, and my PS4 was not on the surge protector circuit.

This has killed the HDMI board on the amp, which is extremely annoying.

Arcam have a fixed repair cost - regardless of what work they need to do - of £470. I am weary about paying this as I've used the Arcam repair service before and it doesn't involve a recap or anything like that. They literally do the bare minimum needed to get the unit operational again.

I approached a respected third party repair service (won't say which) and they informed me Arcam won't release any spare parts so whilst they were happy to look at the amp their best guess was they would just conclude it needed to go back to Arcam.

No service manual online, no spare parts available (even to repair centres), so my flagship amp is now all but junked.

I seriously doubt I would buy any Arcam kit again.
 
Superb to see. That will add so much weight to this movement, I really feel optimistic that some real progress will be made this year. Rossmann is trying to get Woz to help fund some of the campaign too. Sadly real progress in America, e.g. ballot initiatives, costs real money. Biden is making the right noises too, but we shouldn’t underestimate the absurd amount of money the other side will fling at this to scupper it.
 
Surely Steve Wozniak was influential in directing Apple company policy at the point when they decided to make units of all types defunct well before the end of their useable life as a sales strategy. No?
 
No, Steve Wozniak was the technical brains behind the Apple I, II etc, he’d left by 1985. Even I could work on an Apple II, it’s all through-hole, DIMs etc, and there were licensed clones, third party cards etc. It was quite an open architecture. It is great to see him piling in on this one and it makes total sense that he has at is is where he has always been.
 

A quick report the Australian Right To Repair Summit from Dave Jones (EEVBlog) fearuring testimony from iFixIt’s Kyle Wiens. There is a lot more of the Summit to watch on Dave’s channel. Kyle makes some great points, one I found interesting was ‘warranty void if broken’ stickers are already considered fraudulent in the USA!
 


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