Please Help find the cure for "Technician's Syndrome"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Please Help find the cure for “Technician’s Syndrome”

My fellow Forumites, I’m writing to inform you of an insidious malady affecting a percentage of the Human population, a horrible disease that has been allowed to run rampant and unchecked throughout society, the Technical fields are the most heavily infected, but this disease could infect anyone, you yourself could be a carrier and not even know it

I am of course, referring to the malady of “Dissaemblus Curiosita Skeptica”, a currently incurable disease, commonly known as “Technician’s Syndrome”…

“DCS” is a malady that affects higher brain functions, producing an abnormally high level of skepticism and inquisitiveness, sufferers of DCS have an innate NEED to know how things work, and a strong sense of skepticism about grandiose marketing claims…

How can you tell if you are a carrier of DCS?

Take this simple self-quiz…

When you purchase a new “toy”, do you have an immediate desire to disassemble it to see how it goes together or how it works, maybe perhaps to determine if it can be upgraded to higher performance? if so, you may be harboring a strain of DCS…

If you actually DO disassemble your new toy, often moments after unpacking it, you have a full-blown case of DCS and are highly infectious

Do you have an innate distrust of marketing claims and an innate need to disprove them (especially if it involves taking apart the item in question?)

Once again, that is a sign of dormant DCS, if you actually take steps to try to DISPROVE a marketing claim (many marketing claims are lies and fabrications, anyway, and must be disproved) you’ve got a clear case of DCS…

DCS isn’t actually a bad malady per-se, just annoying, sufferers of DCS must constantly fight their urge to take stuff apart to see how it works, and to sit quietly while the marketing drones spin their lies and disinformation about a product is aggravating, a product should be sold on it’s merits, not some trumped up lies by Marketing (Marketing/management is the natural enemy of the technical fields anyway…)

Here are just a few examples of my battles with DCS…

Spyderco produces a line of knives called the Salt series knives, made of a steel called “H-1”, H-1 is claimed to be completely rustproof," it will not rust, period" due to the use of Nitrogen instead of Carbon in the steel, carbon-based Stainless is just that, StainLESS, not StainPROOF, there’s no way H-1 is totally rustproof, is there?

Of course, I had to investigate, i’ve subjected H-1 based knives to a battery of tests, culminating in my ultimate test, an ultrasonic fogger in water hyper-saturated with rock-salt, a mixture that rusted a conventional “stainless” knife in an HOUR

…the Salt DID…NOT…RUST!, it withstood 2 weeks in the chamber, nary a speck of rust

Okay, so in this case, my DCS proved that Spyderco was telling the truth about H-1

We got some of the new Apple TV units and new AirPort Extreme base stations in at work, and every day, i’ve been resisting the urge to take them apart, to see how they go together, I may not be able to resist the urge for long, the 40 GB hard drive in the Apple TV is too small and could use an upgrade, but they won’t let me take apart either demo unit at work and my curiosity is killing me, I MUST know what’s on the inside and if they can be upgraded…

Must…resist…urge…to…dissasemble…

A couple days ago, I picked up a Casio G-Shock 7500 digital watch (a pretty neat idea, actually… :wink: ), and every day I have to resist the urge to see how tough the G-Shock REALLY is, how much effort would it take to get a G-Shock to fail, I wonder… they can handle being dropped, slammed against countertops, generally beaten and abused, …but, could I drive over it with my car and have it survive, could it survive getting whacked with a sledgehammer or shot with a 12-gauge? probably not, it’s tough, not indestructible, but how much abuse can it really take before failing?

Oh, and how is it able to withstand those shocks anyway, I know how a G-Shock works, from their website, but reading an exploded diagram on the Interweb is different than actually taking the watch apart and seeing for myself…

On another forum I frequent, “Candlepower forums”, a website for fans of high-performance flashlights and flashlight modding, one of the forum members, who has a Flashlight Review website was selling a bunch of “Mystery Boxes” of flashlights he’s built up over the years, I purchased one of the mystery boxes packed full of lights…

when the box arrived, I inspected EVERY light and tried to take them apart, to determine if they had the potential for being modded/upgraded, even before I put batteries in them I was taking them apart to see how they were put together and if they could be made better…

So, anyone else suffer from this malady, any fellow DCS/TS sufferers here as well?
:wink:

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I’m supposed to be studying for my end of year exams and completing a design project at the moment. DCS/TS manifests itself best when you’re procrastinating, right?

Today I took apart my wireless keyboard (that wasn’t too hard) and mouse (that was turbo-fiddly, microsoft wireless laser one) because ‘they needed cleaning’. The mouse does work much better now, so it wasn’t an entirely useless thing to do.

But I have also taken apart my electric shaver, my phone and my broken iPod today. I really should do some work…

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Why do you need a cure for this? Is it affecting you negatively in some way, perhaps your sex life?

Oh, well I see how it could.

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I don’t have a hardcore case, given that I rarely tear anything other than my own computer apart (which I am perfectly happy to do, mind you.) I do however enjoy looking at teardowns of devices I have or am interested in, so you might say I like to tear things apart by proxy.

If something dies and it’s something I think I might be able to fix, I’ll certainly tear it apart to see if I can find anything amiss. If nothing else it’s entertaining and mildly educational, even if it turns out I don’t know the first thing about it. I’m also not avers to modding things as long as the benefits of the mod outweigh the risk of me destroying it in the process.

It’s fun though. I love electronics project. In my (currently on hiatus) collecting of old video game consoles and games I would frequently come across units whose ports or jacks were fiddly. These were fun because I got to crack them open, break out the soldering gun and desoldering braid and resolder all the joints and restore them to like-new condition.

A cure? Why on earth would you want one? :slight_smile:

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They will not survive being hit by a bus. The crystal, and my wrist, cracked. They will survive being bounced off a wood floor, and caught, from about chest height. They will survive being used on a jackhammer, or while shooting rifles, shotguns, or pistols rapidly.
Oh, and they will survive being driven over by a car, provided the crystal is not on top of a pebble or something. But if it happens to be face up and you took it off to wash the car and someone backs it?

Yep.

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I’ll tell you later…

…right after i finish replacing the dead fan on my old GeForce4 Ti with a better fan…

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My credo.

If it works, take it apart and find out why.

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Really! Why try to cure it?

I’ve got DCS, and I tell you what- when a co-worker drops a nearly-new laptop to the concrete floor, and the display goes all wonky, and you’re able to take the laptop apart, suss out how it all those layered pieces of hardware are intertwined, find the ribbon cable that got knocked asunder, dis-asunder it, and have it all back together in 15 minutes so the co-worker can stop hyperventilating and have a working computer to take on their flight to Arizona tomorrow morning, and everyone’s so happy that they take you to lunch when they get back, well, it’s not a disease!

Years ago, when I had my first Wacom drawing tablet, I actully put something like “Do you have any pictures of what’s inside?” on the comment form as the thing was glued together, so attempting to disassemble it for a peek inside would be rather damaging. I’m now on my third tablet, and I’m still curious, but not enough to sacrifice the $200.

A related syndrome - are you **bored ** with today’s electronics? You’ve seen one green circuit board with tiny surface-mount parts, you’ve pretty well seen them all, and you pine for the days of things like TVs that were built with components stretched point to point from tube sockets and terminal strips. And days when you could look at the innards of the ailing TV, find the capacitor that’s oozing, get a replacement, snip out the old one, solder in the new one without needing a $500 soldering/rework station?

ETA: Oh, I still haven’t worked up the nerve to try your trick of using scavenged hard drive magnets to pop open the case of my iMac. That rascal was expensive, and as long as it’s working, I really don’t have a reason to look at its insides. Besides, they’ll just be boring green circuit boards with tiny surface-mount parts.

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To the DCS sufferer the 'no user serviceable parts inside" label is a slap in the face. It means the whole unit is entirely servicable and much easier to fix than the manufacturer would have you believe.

As for myself, I have refrained from buying new toys and have stopped accepting new toys as gifts. I will however accept any assortment of parts and try to figure out what it is supposed to be as I assemble it.

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As for the cure, you need to buy a tractor and find a place to drive it around in circles. Helped me some.

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It also assumes the user does not have his own oscilloscope, multimeter, cabinet of parts, soldering iron, books on circuit design and solid-state physics, etc, etc… :slight_smile:

(NOT a technician. A terchnologist!!! )

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Apparently, DCS runs in families. An early meme from my childhood “Really daddy, it just comed apart.”

Another sign of DCS - always carries a pocket screwdriver (Wiha 260/3.0x50), a small LED flashlight, Swiss Army knife and my latest acquisition, the Leatherman Squirt[sup]TM[/sup] E4 with a REAL wirestripper built in.

The G-Shock watch is another good sign. I have had one for years and now my BIL does too, ever since I demonstrated it by smashing it into a brick wall. Not a scratch on it.

And fnally, Dilbert’s discovery of his own DCS at an early age.

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I’m a Radiologic Technologist. Ever wonder how many parts an X-ray machine has?

:slight_smile:

When I was 8 years old my dad let me disassemble an old television. This was in, oh, 1961, I guess. Some of those tubes were pretty cool looking. I’ve been dismantling things ever since. Some of them actually worked when reassembled.

Anyway, regarding my job…the BioMed guys (the ones that really do take apart and fix X-ray machines) say that there’s nothing more dangerous than an RT with a screwdriver.

I have to admit, though, to a little trepidation re: X-ray machines. Some of those capacitors are in the 120,000-volt range. Oh, sure, couple that with only a handful of milliamps and it ain’t gonna kill ya, but you might hit E above high C for a moment.

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You ought to try fixing pinball machines in an arcade during holiday season. I’ve spent way too much time waiting for fuses to blow. :eek:

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I’ve got quite a strong case of it, but I keep the symptoms under control by taking large doses of STUPIDITY. This ensures I realise that if I take something apart, I won’t be able to reassemble it. The stupidity dosage needs to be accurately prescribed - too much stupidity and you still won’t be able to reassemble things, but you won’t realise it…

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In case you haven’t run across this already: hacking the Apple TV. Enjoy!

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As far as the “cure” goes, despite what I said in my OP, I have no desire to be “cured”, DCS is just too much fun and far too useful to cure…

my latest query…

“how does the Auto EL backlighting sensor in my G-Shock operate?”, i need to know…

At first I thought it might have been a current sensor hooked up to the solar panel on my G7300, but that makes no sense, as the battery powered 7500 also has Auto EL, then I thought it might be a magnetic reed switch, but waving a powerful Neodymium magnet around the watch does not trigger the sensor…

tiny Mercury Switch, gravity switch? a tiny Demon living inside the watch?, Magic Elves?, HOW does the Auto EL know the watch has been tilted 45 degrees from horizontal and to trigger the EL panel?

happily, many of the flashlights I recieved in the Mystery Box can be upgraded, in fact, my favorite light in the bunch (Pelican M3 LED) can be upgraded to the latest, hottest LED’s (Cree XR-E or Seoul Semiconductor P4) with a simple LED star swap, i should be able to increase lumen output from the stock 50ish lumens to around 130-150 lumens, if not more, and also gain increased runtime as well (Crees and SSC’s are at least twice as bright/twice as efficient at the same power input level as the Lumileds Luxeon emitter)

heck, i have a tiny single cell SureFire E1e Executive with a modified SureFire KL1 head on it (SSC P4 instead of a Luxeon3 and a 20mm reflector instead of a TIR optic) that’s pushing out anywhere between 90-130 lumens out the front, it’s a light that’s barely longer than the head of a D-cell Maglite, and it’s brighter than a 6 D-cell Maglite…

Now…to figure out a way to enhance the cooling of my home Mirror Door G4’s nVidia GeForce 4Ti vidcard, it’s choking a little under heavy rendering, a little overclocking and a more powerful GPU cooler should speed things up…

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I believe you’re mistaken. This disease is genetic, not contagious in the least.

I took apart my grandfather’s favorite pocket watch when I was about 8. He didn’t get mad at me, he just helped me put it back together right.

When I met my husband, one of the first things I did in his house was take apart his phone.

Maybe females have a slightly different type. I only take apart things that don’t work, to make them work again.

Failing that, make them into art. I don’t have an example at present, but I’ve taken broken watches apart and replaced the insides with cool stuff, like little pieces of colored glass. I think MrBusGuy has that one from a white elephant exchange.

[aside]MacTech, I need to adopt you. My son was my Mac genius. When he died, I stopped keeping up. Instead of fixing my old Macs, I just buy new ones. I need help.[/aside]

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a strong indicator…
remember that episode of ST-TNG where Data and his daughter (Lahl) were working furiously to save her… Did you break into tears? I did.

FML

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I only let myself take stuff apart if it’s malfunctioning, or if it’s being thrown away. That means I can remove screws without the feeling that an errant spring or broken tab will put an end to a previously useful machine. Also, if I can fix the item in question, then I get a free pressure washer or carpet cleaner or whatever it was someone was ditching. :slight_smile: