pet peeve

My dry old web personals ad used to mention "electronics that break" as a pet peeve of mine. With no moving parts, why should an electronic component ever break? Well, there are moving parts at a microscopic level. The expanding and contracting that a part goes through as heat builds up and leaves a part that is energized technically qualifies as movement... on a molecular level.

That doesn't change my peeve though as my nearly $3000 television reduced itself to 52 inches of widescreen paperweight this past weekend; all for the want of a thimble-full of transistors and resistors.

I found them. Charred. Melted. Looking really sad amongst a small collection of arguably some of the worst looking solder joints I've ever seen. Probing with my $3 GE multimeter, they offered no resistance. Or rather they offered nothing but resistance since they now represent open circuits. They were buried in the front left corner of the innards of the tv attached to a circuit board I deduced was the power controller for the master lightbulb. (Itself a $200 glorified flashlight that burned out last Friday starting this whole adventure.)

I've learned it is the "lamp power ballast" and my archaelogical dig through the tv paid off in the form of a part number. Google and its infinitely powerful ability to provide me with shopping links and product reviews instead of assembly diagrams or service procedures snarfed up the part number and actually provided several retail sources. This helped me determine what I should expect to pay from a retailer close enough to actually put the part in my hand instead of a box and some brown truck. Said truck would have doubtlessly visited my home three working days in a row leaving me small stickers to throw away instead of the part I need.

Eh, that's a whole other peeve. Two actually.

Instead of ten pounds of parts screwed to a metal tray, all known as the "light engine" and costing $570 to replace (best price I found), I've been able to isolate the problem to eight ounces of circuit board costing $48. That's probably still too high a price, but it is the price of getting caught up on a week's worth of my favprite shows.