By Peter Cochrane, 11 July 2007 10:41
COMMENT
Written at my hotel in Orlando during a weekend stopover between assignments. Dispatched to silicon.com via free wi-fi from the unreal atrium of a world only possible, it seems, in Florida
Years ago moving office automatically meant a lot of IT grief. Computers, scanners and printers that had worked well for years would suddenly refuse to function, and things that had happily networked in the old location would suddenly refuse to see each other, let alone communicate, in the new.
It always seemed that no matter what precautions were taken IT was out to spoil your day.
Well, I have just moved office and have to report the angst was not palpable, and the need to keep business up and running did not involve prayers, incantations and other unnatural acts! For sure I had put a lot of time and effort into testing and installing the LAN, WLAN, broadband, telephones, television and radio feeds beforehand. But every switch, laptop, printer, scanner and device moved over seamlessly. Phew!
So where did the grief go to? Well it got me from an unusual direction and by an unexpected mechanism, as grief always does. Our new building is a renovated Suffolk barn and I enjoyed the opportunity to do a near 100 per cent rewire. So in went 1.5km of CAT5 plus telephone, intercom and coax TV wiring. All I had to do was install the sockets, switches and amplifiers.
Broadband, wired and wireless LANs, analogue and digital TV went in a treat. No problems. The SNAFU turned out to be the telephone system. After installing all that wire and a lot of sockets, the phone didn't work. I started fault finding by checking for dial tone on every socket, and then worked back to the midpoint termination hum. No sign of life anywhere.
At the phone company termination there was dial tone but at every socket throughout the building there was nothing. In fact, at a distance of just one mile away from the inlet termination, at the first socket, there was nothing. This was all a bit embarrassing for an ex-phone company lineman, I can tell you.
Out came my tester and off came the wires. It turned out the wiring was live at the back of every socket but nothing was getting to the connector pins. I dismantled a socket and probed around the printed circuit to quickly discover dry joints. Someone somewhere needs a lesson in soldering and the need for cleanliness and flux.
One-by-one I opened up each socket - and everyone had the same series of dry joints. Two telephone lines on each panel and four to six dry joints on every board. Bingo! Problem solved. I had unfortunately picked up a batch of bad sockets. Easily fixed of course with the purchase and installation of new sockets but at the unfortunate cost of a full day's work.
What had really gone wrong here? I have become so used to things being well manufactured by machines. Quality is no longer the issue it was 30 years ago and I always assume things are going to work. But it was obvious machines did not produce these items - people had been involved and probably ill-trained people at that.
I suspect my local hardware store buys from a supplier with links in the second or third world with low cost labour operating in less than ideal conditions. Anyway, they are now fully aware of the problem. The only question is, will they bother addressing the issue?
This trying episode took me back to a world some 40 to 50 years ago when you could safely assume if something you purchased wasn't faulty on day one, then it soon would be! Automated mass production has transformed everything to the point where product failure at the point of purchase is now a rare event and everything seems to last forever. I just hope that these telephone sockets are not a portent of globalisation going wrong.
Comments
There are 10 comments. Join the discussion
1. Richard
Lead-free solder teething problems?
Perhaps the poor joints were caused by teething problems with the new lead-free solder and less aggressive flux?
In 1971, I had a more surprising problem: Specially tested & space approved transistors which didn't work.
In spite of the expensive certified testing and burning-in, dissection quickly showed that the silicon chips had never been connected to the leads.
Worrying but not disastrous; except that the rest of the batch was already in orbit inside spacecraft!
2. Is It Just Me?
Things are more reliable now??
I have a 40 year old air rifle and 70 year old binoculars that work fine.
My 20 year old zx spectrum has worked faultlessly since the day I bought it. My PCs break right left and centre.
My 20 year old Izuzu car is far more reliable (and easier, quicker and cheaper to fix) than my 3 year old Merc. More MPG too.
Every electrical product I buy these days, from toasters to TVs to washing machines, breaks within two years, Suppliers hide behind unanswered premium rate phone lines, spare parts are impossible to source, support engineers are an endangered species.
Its a brave new world alright, but reliability and quality are long dead.
3. Jim Price
Peter
I have just recovered a still-working, black, sit-up-and-beg telephone with a chrome dial whilst clearing out my, now departed, aunt's house. I think it the date code is 1953 - I must go to the garage to find a line cord with a plug .....
=Jim
4. Peter Cochrane
Richard = Nice one - and I have also seen a few example that slipped through the batch sampling window! Peter
5. Peter Cochrane
Yes it is just you - Scapegoat.
Must be your nylon underwear or something!
Peter
6. Simon
I don't think it's quite that simple any more.
I'm not sure reliability is all that much greater these days, but consistency is. Go back 40 years when everything was hand built and there was a lot of variability - 'quality' and 'reliability' depended heavily on the skills of the people building things. BUT, things were 'well engineered' which would make things reliable and durable IF there weren't any manufacturing screw ups !
Head off into the 80's and 90s and automation came along which meant that variability was reduced greatly - and with the variability reduced it was then possible to see what was still causing unreliability.
These days I think the trend is reversing. 'Cost is King' seems to be todays motto, with everything else relegated. To a certain extent things are built down to a cost rather than up to a standard - and with that goes a lot of the built in by design reliability. Consumer electronics aren't expected to last more than a year or two - that way the manufacturer can sell you a 'newer, better' replacement. With that the consumers expectations have changed.
I think Peter is of the same generation as my parents, when the thought of throwing something out would have been unthinkable. If things weren't repairable then they'd quickly get a bad reputation and sales would dwindle. Now the reverse is almost true - there is no expectation (by todays youngsters) of repairing anything as it's so easy to just bin it and replace.
That leaves me and my frustrated generation - still with an expectation of keeping things running (I still use my original iPod, albeit with bigger disk and new battery), but hamstrung by the impracticability of doing so. We've got loads of computers at work where there's a simple fault but it just isn't economic to buy replacement parts (for example).
7. Stuart Fawcett
Sounds like the time I built my 1st computer (8085) from chips - it was all fine except for the screwdriver needed on the crystal leg to kick it into oscillation.
Its a shame that the analogue TV band isn't yet available for all this needed local comms.
8. anonymous
Surprised you didn't just use CAT5 sockets for your phones too, gives a bit more flexibility and possibly reliability?
9. Peter Cochrane
Simon = If everything lasted and worked forever then society and our species would soon stagnate....eg The Roman Empire et al. The big question is; how long should things last? And the answer; depends what it is! But for most consumer goods 5 - 7 years seems to be a useful number. Peter
10. Peter Cochrane
Anonymous = The problem with using CAT5 for phones is that it involves the concatenation of another two connectors!
And I always try and minimise connectors as thaey constitute a major releiability weakness.
There aint much simpler than a simple phone socket....I just assumed that they would be OK!
Peter