Mechanical vs electric film camera repairibility

AgX said:

I have been driving two samples of the Type C were the engine was going made whilst driving. Making it undrivable in even a dangerous way. The first one spent three weeks at the official Mercedes garage as they did not find the cause.

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Which specific chassis was? The C series spans from 1982 (W201) to present day (W205).
There was a time (class W203) where Daimler bought Chrysler and quality went down including electronics...

AgX said:

But what does that tell us about cameras??

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My point is that electronics are as repairable as mechanics are. In cameras.
I think there is an anti-electronics bias just because the camera technicians were educated in the mechanical-camera era, and lack the necessary electronics knowledge. Thus, electronic cameras are perceived by them as unrepairable, inferior, etc.

It also has a coincidence in that the era of the electronic cameras also went hand-to-hand to the introduction of more affordable plastic SLR bodies, with percieved (or real) lower quality. Thus people equate "electronic camera" to "inferior camera", despite some really high quality cameras being totally dependent on electronics like the Nikon F3 or Nikon F4.

For a camera tech, it is easy to remove a mechanical slow-speed governor and soak it in naptha to degrease it. Just as for an electronic tech it is easy to remove a capacitor, test it with a tester, and solder the replacement if needed.

Flavio...

Have you ever earned your living as a camera repair technician?
Doesn't sound like it.

Have you ever repaired a modern surface-mount circuit board at component level?
Doesn't sound like it.

Do you have any professional experience on which to base your very strong opinions?
Doesn't sound like it.

- Leigh

Edited to separate the relevant parts. Hope you don't mind Flavio.

flavio81 said:

Second, thanks to modern engine control units, just plug a scanner that "talks" to the ECU and it will report you immediately what is wrong with the engine. So diagnostics is easier.

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It will only tell what its sensors "see". Whether the defect is mechanical, electrical, electronic or software related (or a combination of these) is still up to the person in charge of the repair. The self diagnosis could even be the culprit.

Case in point from my father's car: Speedometer suddenly gave up the ghost. in this car, it is electronic, and coupled to a sensor in the gearbox. No problemo, buy a new one and install it. Literally 5 blocks away after the repair, there it goes again. Back to the shop, guy replaces it AGAIN... 5 blocks and... you guessed it. Father takes the car to another mechanic after getting his cash back. Turns out, the self diagnosis system of the car didn't "accept" the new part and somehow was burning it out. The fix? install a new one, and let the car idle till the auxiliary radiator fan came up. Really. When that fan comes up, a self diagnose cycle is completed, and "accepted" the new speedometer.

flavio81 said:

Third, instead of removing the carburetor for cleaning, you remove the injectors for service or replacement.

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From my father's car as well, which is fuel injected. It is from 1997, and there are no new injectors available, either OEM or aftermarket. The injection module needs a specific nozzle shape to work, so when the injectors go, the engine will go too, since installing an aftermarket injection system is too expensive. Actually the whole car goes since putting other engine in would cost more than the car is worth. Expendability at its best. Same applies to some cameras manufactured too long ago to have spare parts available in abundant quantities, and which are no longer supported by its manufacturer.

flavio81 said:

Car maintenance has not become impossible at all, just different. I contend that (a) it is easier now, and (b) thus, modern mechanics know even LESS than older mechanics.

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And isn't that more dangerous? We risk a generation of part exchangers instead of mechanics, when something breaks, replace it. Without further thought to the potential underlying cause. Like on my father's car speedometer case above.

flavio81 said:

Moreover, for those who think that electronic spare parts can't be manufactured... Nowadays you can replace, if you want, your engine control unit (ECU) with a do-it-yourself ECU, for example the "MegaSquirt" ECU. You build the hardware, the software is already made, then you configure it according to your engine.

FAR easier than having to design a the "ideal-for-your-engine" carburetor from scratch and then having to manufacture it, not to mention test it...

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The devil's in the details, as they say. Not every engine will accept conversion to a MegaSquirt or FuelTech module well. And the configuration, the "mapping" of the engine is very tricky on some engines, too. Not to mention you may need some rather specialty equipment to get it right. It's easier than building a carburetor from scratch, but that's not what people do. They go to Edelbrock or Holley or such and get a carb that has the right CFM for their engine, and mount it on. Sure, they may need to adapt the fixation points, but you too have to do such things for the injection modules. Engine injection is more efficient though, no question about it.

flavio81 said:

If you had a "conventional" car with no computers, and your battery light turned on from time to time, you would have to review items 1,2,3, and 5 anyways. So there is no difference compared to "conventional" cars.

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Except there would be less suspects. Believing the electronic sensors/modules/etc won't ever fail is a bit of a naivety. Another case, fresh from last road trip, same car as the speedometer problem:

Suddenly, I look to the car's temp gauge and it is off scale! (I'm sitting shotgun) I warn my father to pull the feck up, and turn the engine off. We lift the hood, the engine is very clearly overheated. I reach to the bottom water hose coming off the radiator and squeeze it, since I see no waterline at the reservoir. The damn thing is dry as bone! No water left at all. What the hell happened here??!

We let the car cool on its own. We had fresh water for the trip, so we fill the reservoir to the brim when the engine was cool. I close it, and squeeze the same hose again. A leak from one of the top hoses shows up, pretty big actually. It connects to the exit of the water pump, so most of the water being sent off the pump, leaks away. We do a stopgap repair, and complete the trip to the nearest mechanic. Turns out the hose was only partly the culprit.... One of the temperature sensors in the engine, the one that controls a valve letting more or less water flow through the block, went crazy, and shut the valve. The water loop was thus interrupted, and the water temperature rose to the point it weakened the rubber in that hose, and the added pressure of water vapor teared a hole on it. So what really caused this, was a freaking sensor. Again.

flavio81 said:

Ignition timing is nowadays controlled by the ECU. As long as the crankshaft position sensor works, timing will never go off. Compare this with the old schema of having vacuum controlled timing retard/advance (anyone who has worked with engine vacuum diagrams knows how this is a pain to service if there is a leak or if some component has aged), and centrifugally-controlled timing advance.

My engine (Mercedes M112 V6) has 6 cylinders but 12 spark plugs. And 6 ignition coils. If this arrangement used the 1970s distributor-ignition, plus the old big ignition coils, it would have taken LOTS of space under the bonnet and would have a maze of wiring to connect. Rather, the coils are driven by the ECU, no distributor. As long as the wiring is good and the spark plugs are good (and these are spark plugs rated to last like 100K kilometers), it should work just fine.

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There's a little bit of oversimplifying the issue here Flavio, don't you think?

To sum it up, and to make an analogy to cameras. Electronics have been operating miracles, making stuff as precise and accurate and awesome as it has never been before. But there is an added risk of the electronics themselves betraying us. It is much a curse as it is a blessing. The rule of thumb is the simpler the thing is the less things it has to fail, and will always be.

And to address the "anti-electronics bias", I would agree were it not for the continuing miniaturization of components(solder a SMD with a loupe by hand anyone?), not to say of increased use of IC's which may or may not be proprietary, and may or may not contain proprietary firmware. If an electronic camera was built solely with discrete components, resistors, capacitors, etc and a few simple easy to find IC's that require no proprietary firmware, I'd be 100% with you Flavio.

flavio81 said:

Which specific chassis was? The C series spans from 1982 (W201) to present day (W205).
There was a time (class W203) where Daimler bought Chrysler and quality went down including electronics...

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I bought one of those used - a 2003 W220. The engine has been okay, but the rest of the car is lacking. I took such good care of it at first... but if it's going to act like a Chrysler, I'm going to treat it like a Chrysler. The automatic wipers stop mid-wipe for no reason. The radio dies until I restart the car. The wiring system simulates taillight problems I've only ever read about on 60-year-old cars. The climate controls blow how they want despite anything I do (yes, I can replace expensive parts, but really, this level of complexity is unwarranted - and was never an issue for me with fully mechanical systems). I had the crank position sensor die on me, leaving me stranded - I've never had a distributor have a catastrophic failure like that... I could always limp home.

I have to replace the door lock actuator, which is expensive, and very hard to come by. That is a mechanical part from a company still in business... finding replacement electronics from defunct camera companies will not be easy.

Back to cameras, I recently acquired a Super Speed Graphic with working electronics. Even if they were not working, it's simple enough I could service it (and even learn to service the shutter). My (Grandfather's) Sears KS-2 (Ricoh XR7) has some electronic problems, and though I can probably fix it, I know it will be much more difficult - and this is 80's level electronics - not so complex.

For a specialist, the electronics may not be a big deal - but for the average person it makes service much more difficult.

@Michael Guzzi thanks for your detailed response.

Note that people who repair mobile phones are well versed in soldering and desoldering SMD components... and there are more of those guys than camera techs around!!

Back in '64 I was in a country that could, of necessity repair almost anything.
Had a '53 Areil 350cc single and the throttle stuck open. No joy on that one and figured
it was toast. Took it to the village, found a guy with a couple of bikes in his work area
and thought "why not"?
He found a cracked piston and fixed(?) it and I was back on the road.
I don't know what tools he had or sources to something like a lathe but it wasn't in the shop.
For all I know he did it with a piece of tin and some sandpaper.

Think of those 50's autos in Cuba. Most of them would be rust here in the states with
the attitude that it ain't worth fixing.

flavio81 said:

If you had a "conventional" car with no computers, and your battery light turned on from time to time, you would have to review items 1,2,3, and 5 anyways. So there is no difference compared to "conventional" cars.

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Precisely my point: that built in diagnostics often do NOTHING to identify the source of your problem! You earlier made it sound like it made things a lot easier.

flavio81 said:

This is debatable. There were also cars with hard-to-access internals down to the 1950s or 60s.

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Add all the plumbing for emissions control, that did not exist until the middle to late 60's and was greatly simplified from today when it was initially mandated. Add all the electronic sensors, to greatly add to the points of failure.

flavio81 said:

Car manteinance, i repeat, is simpler. Because for example with a modern multi-point-sequential-fuel-injection car (MPSFI - many many modern cars have this kind of injection), you have something almost equivalent as having one carburator per cylinder.

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What about more stuff to break... troublshooting TPMS and antiskid/traction systems does nothing for adding to maintenance complexity? One CANNOT simply change a bulb, one now has to change out an entire LED taillight (my wife's Toyota center brake light cost hours of labor, resulting in (I forget how much exactly) a few hundred dollars to make the center brake light functional again.

flavio81 said:

Anyone that has had to work doing tuning on an engine that has one carburator per cylinder (i.e. some racing engines) knows that the latter is MUCH more difficult to tune properly than a modern engine-controlled MPSFI car. Not to mention service...

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Boy, you're reaching here! The average consumer vehicle had one carburetor. My 1960 MGA had two...I rebuilt them (new jets and needles, new floats) in an afternoon. Had em both running and both tuned the same day.

flavio81 said:

My engine (mercedes M112 V6) has 6 cylinders but 12 spark plugs. And 6 ignition coils. If this arrangement used the 1970s distributor-ignition, plus the old big ignition coils, it would have taken LOTS of space under the bonnet and would have a maze of wiring to connect. Rather, the coils are driven by the ECU, no distributor. As long as the wiring is good and the spark plugs are good (and these are spark plugs rated to last like 100K kilometers), it should work just fine.

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You have just admitted your Mercedes is inherently more complex to troubleshoot. If one spark plug misbehaves, which one is it? Oh, replace them both. Yes, and you just admitting how much more cramped your engine bay is because it has twice as many of everything under there for ignition.

wiltw said:

Precisely my point: that built in diagnostics often do NOTHING to identify the source of your problem! You earlier made it sound like it made things a lot easier.

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They do help you identify, because...

wiltw said:

Add all the plumbing for emissions control, that did not exist until the middle to late 60's and was greatly simplified from today when it was initially mandated. Add all the electronic sensors, to greatly add to the points of failure.

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... all those sensors, like oxygen sensor, knock sensor, will also help you identify the problem.

Let me explain. If for example there was excessive knocking on the cylinder, that could not be cured by retarding ignition by a small amount (which is what the ECU would do initially if it found engine knocking), then this fault code will be stored in the ECU and reported later when scanning.

Same if the mixture (reported by the O2 sensor) could not be established within acceptable limits.

There are many more sensors, yes, but faults read by the sensors will be logged on the ECU and be available when scanning. This does help you.

wiltw said:

You have just admitted your Mercedes is inherently more complex to troubleshoot. If one spark plug misbehaves, which one is it? Oh, replace them both. Yes, and you just admitting how much more cramped your engine bay is because it has twice as many of everything under there for ignition.

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If one plug is misbehaved, correct thing is to replace all 12 since this means we're reaching the end of the useful life of the plugs.

Now,

Yes, cars have more sensors, and this is because they have more features. And they have lower emissions by the way. And greater fuel economy. And higher safety. These are important features.

Of course a 1967 VW Volkswagen is much simpler to service. And perhaps it brings the same fuel economy than some modern cars. But it does not bring the same amount of safety than such cars, nor the same amount of power and driveability. Nor the low emission levels.

In the camera world, of course an Argus C3 rangefinder is far, far, far less complex than a Nikon F3 camera. But i would rather choose the F3 camera because the extra features (over a C3) are worth it.

Doing surface mount parts "by hand" at home isn't horribly hard. Sure, you don't really want to work on modern complex electronics with only a $15 soldering iron you got from a bargain bin and some scraps you pulled out of an old tool box you found in the back of the garage, but the tools and equipment needed to work and experiment with modern boards aren't restricted to multimillion dollar electronics labs.

This isn't the 1950s.
- A pick-and-place is not an unobtainable piece of equipment these days.
- Reflow equipment is readily available on the market or with homebrew design/modification.
- Specs, guides, technical information, and access to community knowledge is on hand for the price of a cheap cell phone.


It is not something I would even attempt to go into business for, simply because margins are far too thin and risks far too high, but it is by no means remotely out of reach for personal work by those who actually have an interest in it. (Personally I'm planning to build a home lab/shop in the next decade or so to play with semiconductor fabrication. Sure, I won't be building the latest intel chips or sensor tech at some insane modern nanometer scale, but it isn't magic beyond the reach of man.)

Luckless said:

Doing surface mount parts "by hand" at home isn't horribly hard. Sure, you don't really want to work on modern complex electronics with only a $15 soldering iron you got from a bargain bin and some scraps you pulled out of an old tool box you found in the back of the garage, but the tools and equipment needed to work and experiment with modern boards aren't restricted to multimillion dollar electronics labs.

This isn't the 1950s.
- A pick-and-place is not an unobtainable piece of equipment these days.
- Reflow equipment is readily available on the market or with homebrew design/modification.
- Specs, guides, technical information, and access to community knowledge is on hand for the price of a cheap cell phone.

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Yes you can substitute one operational amplifier for another, or one voltage regulator for another, assuming voltage values/ranges are similar in old and new chip. Resistors and capacitors are a relative piece of cake. The MECHANICS of part replacement is relatively easy.
But replacement of any custom designed chips is another matter...you cannot replicate an EPROM if it is dead and its data trapped inside. You cannot replace an image processing chip with another if you do not know its programming nor the pin-outs of its physical packaging based upon what you glean from schematic diagrams which are very seldom published for the general public (and often not even for technicians, who simply replace the whole circuit assembly on which the chip is mounted, rather than repair at the chip/component level). It is the 'innards' or the customized data or instructions which make proprietary chips hard to substitute something when the original part can no longer be scavanged from other cameras (or automobiles)

wiltw said:

It is the 'innards' or the customized data or instructions which make proprietary chips hard to substitute something when the original part can no longer be scavanged from other cameras.vtr

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Absolutely true.

Beyond that, even replacing common parts can be impossible when they're only identified with an OEM part number, and not an industry standard number.

I'll take specific exception to the comment about operational amplifiers (opamps).
There are zillions of these, each with slightly different characteristics.
If you only have a house number, you don't know which are important.
They may even have been "selected" for specific parameters within specific limits.

Motorola (where I worked as an engineer) was famous for this. They had a dozen different part numbers for a common op amp, each having been selected for meeting particular limits.

- Leigh

John Koehrer said:

Think of those 50's autos in Cuba. Most of them would be rust here in the states with
the attitude that it ain't worth fixing.

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+1

However, another factor with modern cameras and any other consumer item is if buy a new one is cheaper or not. Most consumer don't fix broken items is that it's always cheaper to buy another one or the newer version has more features or both. It's so competitive out there that manufacturers are trying to shave costs to keep the price of an item low as possible. My brother was an engineer at Intel and they employ engineers who's job is to shave cost from various components on a chip even though it might reduce the lifespan of the chip. I'm sure it's true with other areas of manufacturing.

In the old days, everything was expensive and shoes and other consumer items got repaired. It's just different now.

Luckless said:

Doing surface mount parts "by hand" at home isn't horribly hard. Sure, you don't really want to work on modern complex electronics with only a $15 soldering iron you got from a bargain bin and some scraps you pulled out of an old tool box you found in the back of the garage, but the tools and equipment needed to work and experiment with modern boards aren't restricted to multimillion dollar electronics labs.

This isn't the 1950s.
- A pick-and-place is not an unobtainable piece of equipment these days.
- Reflow equipment is readily available on the market or with homebrew design/modification.
- Specs, guides, technical information, and access to community knowledge is on hand for the price of a cheap cell phone.


It is not something I would even attempt to go into business for, simply because margins are far too thin and risks far too high, but it is by no means remotely out of reach for personal work by those who actually have an interest in it. (Personally I'm planning to build a home lab/shop in the next decade or so to play with semiconductor fabrication. Sure, I won't be building the latest intel chips or sensor tech at some insane modern nanometer scale, but it isn't magic beyond the reach of man.)

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IMHO, that would be beyond the reach of the ordinary man.

And the SMD sizes I'm talking about are the 0603 and 0402, which are by no means easy without practice and some decent equipment. Especially when the repair is on a machine assembled board with minimal space to work between components.

The ordinary man pulls his cell phone out when he wants a picture today. What is within their reach seems mildly nonsensical to this discussion.
I haven't seen many CNC machines or gear cutting equipment anywhere when visiting most of my friends, so how exactly is a broken fully mechanical camera supposed to be any easier for them to fix?


Yes, a digital camera's circuitry and chips are vastly more complex and far harder to replicate/reproduce/or reengineer replacements for. However this thread was about film cameras.

If you want to restore an old electronic film camera to factory originals, then you may be out of luck.

But if you have a mechanically sound camera with a merely electronic fault, or an old design that has excessive drawbacks for modern usage (such as a meter with circuitry designed for hard to get or unreliable batteries) then is is very much possible to take everything that provides an input, look at all parts taking an output, and design your own system to sit between them. Nothing says the electrical elements must be a 1:1 replication for the camera to function perfectly well


As far as Intel shaving small amounts off the cost of chips rather than strictly favouring overall longevity of the chip: Well, that just makes good business sense. Not like the majority of their products are meant to be in mainstream usage for decades without upgrades. The chip needs to last a decade or so at best in 99.9% of cases, and beyond that it becomes extremely questionable as to where or why it would continue to exist in general usage without an upgrade to a newer and more practical future device. Sure, I have a pentium 1 chip in a system that has some old 14 or 28k modem. At this point I'm not exactly going to worry about how much longer that box survives, and am far more interested in Intel continuing the invest the capital into research aimed at even better and more cost effective products, because I have lots of things in life that revolve around lots and lots of number crunching, and the demand for it isn't going anywhere.

OK I could have worded it better, I meant the ordinary film enthusiast man. Of course, the true ordinary man doesn't even know film is still alive.

Your CNC analogy is very valid. RE the replication, the same can be said for most mechanical parts, although I think it would be a more involved process. But the reverse engineering process would be similar.

wiltw said:

But replacement of any custom designed chips is another matter...you cannot replicate an EPROM if it is dead and its data trapped inside. You cannot replace an image processing chip with another if you do not know its programming nor the pin-outs of its physical packaging

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However, the ICs are the electronic parts that are less likely to fail. Unless they had manufacturing defects or really really cheap production standards.

Think of it. The Yashica Electro 35 cameras use an IC designed circa 1965 or 1966. So a very primitive IC, of very primitive manufacture. It is an analog IC responsible for metering and for shutter control.

Yet i've heard of nobody complaining about a dead IC on Electro 35 cameras. Failures are almost always due to faulty/misaligned electric contacts. Once this is solved the camera works again.

Similarly, the Canon AE-1 relies on a digital IC for everything. I'm yet to find an AE-1 with a dead IC. I've found AE-1s in battered shape, with faulty shutters, broken internal string (thus rendering metering inoperative), corrosion. But it's rare to see one with faulty IC.

flavio81 said:

However, the ICs are the electronic parts that are less likely to fail. Unless they had manufacturing defects or really really cheap production standards.

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My point is not solely about Integrated Circuits, but to any 'custom' electronics within a camera (or automobile)...once the supply of replacement assemblies (new or used) which are custom to a camera/car are fully exhausted, it is generally not feasible for a craftsman to fabricate replacement electronics components, whereas mechanical parts can often be fabricated from dimensioned drawings. As has already been pointed out, even something as relatively simple as an OpAmp is complicated by the fact that there are different versions of the same fundamental part, tested to different specifications. (My first job was in a semiconductor plant as production supervisor in a plant which made OpAmps and Voltage Regulators both to commercial spec and to MilSpec standards.) So 'custom' electronic parts be challenging to replicate or substitute. When my Canon 5D died last year, Canon no longer serviced them. Only an independent shop could fix my camera by scavenging a main circult assembly from a donor 5D camera that had a different part failure.

wiltw said:

My point is not solely about Integrated Circuits, but to any 'custom' electronics within a camera (or automobile)...once the supply of replacement assemblies (new or used) which are custom to a camera/car are fully exhausted, it is generally not feasible for a craftsman to fabricate replacement electronics components, whereas mechanical parts can often be fabricated from dimensioned drawings. As has already been pointed out, even something as relatively simple as an OpAmp is complicated by the fact that there are different versions of the same fundamental part, tested to different specifications. (My first job was in a semiconductor plant as production supervisor in a plant which made OpAmps and Voltage Regulators both to commercial spec and to MilSpec standards.) So 'custom' electronic parts be challenging to replicate or substitute.

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Almost every opamp can be substituted with another opamp. Yes, there are many different opamps, different specs, but a lot of compatibility as well. Because they can be divided into families and each manufacturer does have competing products on each family. Most of the time competitors are also pin-by-pin compatible.

wiltw said:

When my Canon 5D died last year, Canon no longer serviced them. Only an independent shop could fix my camera by scavenging a main circult assembly from a donor 5D camera that had a different part failure.

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Blame your shop, don't blame the camera designers.

Your shop does not want to DIAGNOSE the problem. As a typical lazy shop, they just want to REPLACE THE ENTIRE assembly. They don't want to find out exactly what is wrong inside.

Blame the shop.

If you had a mechanical camera with a malfunctioning Synchro-Compur shutter, and the technician told you "i need to scavenge a whole Synchro-Compur shutter from another camera", wouldn't you suspect that he didn't bother to dissasemble it thoroughly and check it ?

Again, typical camera technicians do not know much about electronics. But in the future this will change. New camera technicians will. Because some of those "new fangled" film electronic cameras you diss right now, will become classics and somebody will want to actually repair them. And that one would acquire or find the necessary knowledge.

flavio81 said:

Almost every opamp can be substituted with another opamp. Yes, there are many different opamps, different specs, but a lot of compatibility as well. Because they can be divided into families and each manufacturer does have competing products on each family. Most of the time competitors are also pin-by-pin compatible.



Blame your shop, don't blame the camera designers.

Your shop does not want to DIAGNOSE the problem. As a typical lazy shop, they just want to REPLACE THE ENTIRE assembly. They don't want to find out exactly what is wrong inside.

Blame the shop..

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As I stated earlier it was a CANON USA shop...no parts, no schematics. Makes you wonder what documentation (if any) is provided by Canon to independent shops, when their own staff cannot fix something.

I am so glad you are confident in ability to readily fix things electronic in the future, when manufacturer parts are not made for the repair market...perhaps you can advise me how the guy in the TV repair shop can find a replacement for IC3 in this Samsung TV, I provide the schematic for better idea of IC3 functions...



...while the part is available thru NEC, how would anyone be able to figure out it was the malfunctioning part?!

flavio81 said:

Blame the shop.

If you had a mechanical camera with a malfunctioning Synchro-Compur shutter, and the technician told you "i need to scavenge a whole Synchro-Compur shutter from another camera", wouldn't you suspect that he didn't bother to dissasemble it thoroughly and check it ?

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That "laziness" affects the purse of the client. The shop has an idea what their spare part costs, what their working time costs are and what the client likely would pay for that repair. If they can forsee that searching for the fault proper would be beyond the latter, why then even bother proposing to search for it?

The same with your Compur example. If they would offer to replace the shutter for a cleaned and tested one for less than the error search and repair would cost, which client then would refuse an exchange?

wiltw said:

As I stated earlier it was a CANON USA shop...no parts, no schematics. Makes you wonder what documentation (if any) is provided by Canon to independent shops, when their own staff cannot fix something.

I am so glad you are confident in ability to readily fix things electronic in the future, when manufacturer parts are not made for the repair market...perhaps you can advise me how the guy in the TV repair shop can find a replacement for IC3 in this Samsung TV, I provide the schematic for better idea of IC3 functions...

...while the part is available thru NEC, how would anyone be able to figure out it was the malfunctioning part?!

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LOL

The schematic is to tiny to read and there is no info on the external signals.

But to answer your specific question; first by ensuring that all power lines and ground lines are actually delivering current to the ICs!
Second, before blaming the ICs, checking out the components that are more prone to failure according to the problem.

flavio81 said:

Second, before blaming the ICs, checking out the components that are more prone to failure according to the problem.

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And how, pray tell, would you propose to do that ? ? ?

So far everything you suggest comes out of a textbook, with only vague relation to practical troubleshooting.

- Leigh

Go mechanical. The electronics inside cameras are impossible to repair. BUT then.... is the problem with the electronics or the mechanicals n sensors controlled by the electronics?

YEAH RIGHT!... Im not going to replace a CPU chip smaller than a grain of rice that has 150 legs, surface mounting by hand???? HAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAA

You cant even read the part numbers without a microscope, let alone see the legs on m. Those parts aren't standard off the shelf from radio shack either. Those parts were soldered in by ultraviolet light and placed ever so perfectly by robots.. not hot iron n solder, using solder with a comparative thickness of a sewer pipe compared to the leads coming out of that chip. hahaha you're dreaming.

BTW how are you going to troubleshoot a mini micro computer on the parts level? hahahaha you've never seen a flexible board inside a camera.

Even the manufacture wont replace parts on their boards. They trash the entire camera if it isn't a simple job. Wonder why they offer a discount on another camera when you send in a glitchy electronic camera?

Buy electronic.. plan on throwing it away when it goes bad.


.

flavio81 said:

The schematic is to tiny to read and there is no info on the external signals..

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you stated my point...there is ZERO information about the states of various inputs and expected outputs. It is immaterial that I posted the shot at a size too small to read...I could read the part numbers on the web drawing I consulted, to see the NEC part numbers! But ZERO diagnostic information to determine logic states of various inputs and expected outputs for any technician to derive any troubleshooting capability.