A Year of PCB Repair; By the Numbers

DarrenF

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About a year ago, I started working through a couple boxes of PCBs, testing them all and repairing as needed. Also mixed in have been a few PCB for a couple local friends. During the process I've build adapters for some common platforms/pinouts, refined my test bench, and learned a whole lot. I keep a spreadsheet log with data. Here's a brief summary.

Total PCBs processed: 26 (about one every two weeks... I work at a leisurely pace, and sometimes go weeks without sitting down to at the test bench).

PCBs not requiring repair: 4 (not including clearning edge connector, replacing PCB spacers, and dusting off as "repair"...)

PCBs I was unable to repair: 2. (Konami Jail Break; suspect bad Konami1 CPU, don't have a spare one to swap in... and Data East Last Mission; missing the 8751 MPU, can't find a dump of the EPROM data for it.)

Of course, this leaves...

PCBs repaired: 20.

These ranged from 1978 (Space Invaders) to 1995 (Area 51).
Median year of PCBs repaired: 1984.

I also catagorize them according to difficulty/complexity/expense, on a three-point scale: I, II or III. I is a fairly easy or straightforward repair. II is moderate complexity (or sometimes multiple easy problems). III is an in-depth repair, particularly expensive parts, or a very difficult to identify problem.

I: 5 (25% of repairs)
II: 8 (40%)
III: 7 (35%)

I'm pretty sure I enjoy board repair at least as much as, perhap more than, playing the damn games...
 
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