Re: general purpose circuit board repair

purple_stars wrote:
hi folks,

quick question. what, in general, would you say are the components you
should carry along for general purpose repairs of electronic circuit
boards ? i know that's very vague, but i am curious what you think. i
have on occasion hooked things up backwards to power and fried diodes,
i did it just today with a mixer that is part of my radio setup. the
power connector i had made had gone bad and i replaced it with one of
those power tips you can get at radio shack that you just plug into a
generic cable and use. only thing is, those things can go on with
either + at the tip, or - at the tip, and i did it backwards and then
my mixer wouldn't work even when i changed it to what it should have
been. i opened it up and found that it has a 1N4007 rectifier in it
which i assume is what i burned up and is what i am going to replace.

the question is, is there sort of a stock set of parts like 1N4007's
that i should get to handle minor electrical emergencies like these ?
i use that mixer to change the relative levels of various radios so
that i can focus in on whatever i want to listen to, it's all piped
through an amplifier. and though i may not use the same setup on a
boat, i might ... and that little mixer going out would have caused me
a little bit of annoyance, making it impossible for me to send
everything through the same amplifier & speaker setup. point being
that all it is probably going to take to fix the mixer is a little
0.05$us part from radio shack and a few minutes of my time ... i'd like
to make sure i have all the right 0.05$us parts when i'm actually out
on the water!

what other components should i carry to fix these minor problems ?


I think most of the electronic gear we use is more reliable today than the mechanical things on board. Hand in hand with that reliability are large scale integration, custom chips, and microprocessor circuits that are basically undecipherable without factory software and hardware interfaces.

Where I would recommend spares is in the connector and cable category. I.e., anything mechanical that comes into contact with humans or their implements. That would include things like microphones, especially those with built-in control heads that are supposed to be waterproof and sit in an open cockpit!

If it can fail and you can't fix it or replace it with a spare at sea, be prepared to live without it. Think about what you'll do if your only GPS fails, or your only vhf, or your only SSB, not to mention your computer, ipod, etc.

But don't kid yourself into thinking you can repair modern electronics at sea. I agree with Glenn's observations.

Chuck
.

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