
Where Have All the Schematics Gone? - segfaultbuserr
https://groups.io/g/TekScopes/message/163878
======
ChuckMcM
This situation (lack of schematics) is powering the open source test
instrument surge.

Test instruments are an interesting space in the technology center mostly
because they are never "obsolete." If they are operating to their original
specifications and tolerances, they do the job just as well in 2020 as they
did in 1960. As a result, test equipment can really hold its value well.

I recently paid about $700 to have my HP Spectrum Analyzer from the early
90's[1] calibrated. I bought the instrument for $1,100 at auction, it's
working range is 9kHz to 12GHz. So for $1,800 I have an instrument that, if I
were to buy the current generation model, would cost me nearly $18,000 or 10x
that price. Even a "cheap" Rigol that only goes to 6.5GHz would cost $10,000.

So what to do when your sales are "one and done" ? It is a hard problem from a
business model perspective.

[1] EDIT: Turns out it is only 30+ years old, not 50+. Its an HP8596E
"portable" (weighs quite a bit :-).

~~~
robomartin
Here's where I have to chime-in with a reality that people have yet to
experience and most don't know about: The unintended negative consequences of
RoHS.

I have over a dozen instruments and several tools that are, in some cases,
over 30 years old. I think all of my scopes, signal generators, DVM's, logic
analyzers, DSO's, probes, lab power supplies, etc. are pre-RoHS and, in most
cases, significantly so.

The transition to RoHS, while, in principle, well-intentioned, is likely to
prove to have been a massive mistake.

Lead-free solder has one major problem: Tin whiskers.

One way to think about this is that all RoHS electronics has a stochastic
failure rate. I have devoted more time than I care to admit studying tin
whiskers in the context of my work in aerospace. I have, in that process,
consulted with NASA scientists who were are the forefront of long term
research on the subject. The most salient take-away was that we had no way to
predict or truly mitigate tin whiskers. The only mitigation in aerospace is
to, quite literally, send chips to services that remove all lead-free solder
from the pins (or remove balls from BGA's) and replace them with conventional
lead solder.

If this plays out as it could, landfills are going to be piled sky-high with
broken electronics. From phones to laptops, TV's, ovens, clocks...anything
really. And cars, yes, cars!

Lead-free RoHS solder is a ticking time bomb and, in my opinion, one of the
most misplaced decisions made in the name of protecting the environment.

I have HP-41 calculators I bought in the early '80's that still work as new
today. That's to say they are nearly 40 years old. There is no way a RoHS
compliant calculator will survive 40 years. That is nearly impossible. And so,
millions of them will end-up in landfills. Well done European Union, you
really helped the planet with that one!

For those not familiar with RoHS issues (a deep and wide topic), here's a
starting point:

[https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2006-Lei...](https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2006-Leidecker-
Tin-Whisker-Failures.pdf)

This is very real.

~~~
aij
I had heard about tin whiskers, but always in relation to NASA. I had assumed
it was only a problem in space, somehow related to lack of gravity and/or
atmosphere.

Apparently it's just that NASA cares about reliability more than most, and
hence takes the time to do more detailed failure analyses.

Thanks for linking those slides.

~~~
robomartin
NASA has done tons of research on this over decades. I have read most of the
papers they published and worked with a couple of their researchers. While the
context was aerospace, the effect happens on earth just as well. Pretty much
all of their tests are done on the ground.

------
zh3
Company A treats its customers with respect, lets them maximise the return on
their investment by giving them all the details and helping them keep the
instrument going as long as possible.

Company B releases a product that works pretty much as well as Company A's but
is cheaper (because it isn't investing in the aftersales support). Since
support is an expensive business, by cutting it Company B makes more profit.

In the long run, Company B wins. Quite a few companies are smart enough to see
how this works, and so morph from being an A type company to being a B.
Evolution in action, the fitter (most profitable) company survives (shame
about the prey..ah, "clients").

~~~
xg15
Indeed. I think this is a textbook example of market failure: Something where
the most profitable course of action very clearly does _not_ align with the
course of action overall best for society (which would be to maximize the
lifetime of those devices if possible - but in any way not deliberately
shorten it).

Hence this is a prime example where regulation would be needed.

~~~
wolfgke
> Indeed. I think this is a textbook example of market failure

No, it shows that markets work perfectly - they just optimize for what the
customer wants to buy, not for some noble goal that you desire.

~~~
xg15
The customer wants that you deny them schematics?

The customer wants machines that are more difficult to maintain and repair?

Is the customer a masochist?

~~~
wolfgke
As the market data shows, most customers value a very low price over anything
else. So the market delivers.

On the other hand, if the noble ethical goals that you list were more
important for the customer, he would prefer devices that satisfy these goals
(as much as possible) over low prices in his buying decision(s).

~~~
rixed
Have you considered for a moment that the customer knows very little about
what she is buying, especially nothing at all about the long term value of the
product? When the only thing you know about various alternatives is the price,
how are you supposed to choose what's best for you?

Information scarcity is a defining feature of modern market, let's not forget
that.

~~~
marshray
That's what makes this conversation interesting. People who are in the market
for a $20K piece of test equipment are likely to be experts who are well
equipped to evaluate the product's specifications.

~~~
pas
Probably they are just as susceptible to hyperbolic discounting as others. So
they undervalue the problem of maintenance in the future compared to saving
some money now, even if they are thinking about it.

------
killjoywashere
I remain amazed at how long some of these old products last. My last 2 phones
(Pixels) have died right around the 2 year mark. Meanwhile, I have a Tektronix
DMM 252 from the early 1990s (which I now realize is a rebranded APPA 105),
and a Fluke 8060A meter (labeled IBM) from the early 80s (1).

For the Fluke, you can, today, get the schematics online in the user manual
(2). For the Tek, not so much (3). Regardless, they have outlasted my phones
by 15-20x.

Oh, and while I'm on my old electronics worship soapbox, let's mention the HP
48G, one of the greatest calculators ever made, which runs Reverse Polish Lisp
(4) and still has an active community (5), 17 years after production _ended_
and 27 years after release, and emulator apps for iPhone (6) and Android (

(1)
[https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/fluke_digital_multimeter_8060a...](https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/fluke_digital_multimeter_8060a.html)

(2)
[http://assets.fluke.com/manuals/8060a_3vimeng0200.pdf](http://assets.fluke.com/manuals/8060a_3vimeng0200.pdf)

(3)
[https://www.arc.ro/userfiles/docs/APPA/multim%20digitale/APP...](https://www.arc.ro/userfiles/docs/APPA/multim%20digitale/APPA%20103N-105N-106%20-%20manual.pdf)

(4)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPL_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPL_\(programming_language\))

(5) [https://www.hpcalc.org/](https://www.hpcalc.org/)

(6)
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/i48/id329454950](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/i48/id329454950)

(7)
[https://www.androidmeta.com/keyword/hp48](https://www.androidmeta.com/keyword/hp48)

~~~
robomartin
> My last 2 phones (Pixels) have died right around the 2 year mark.

See my post on this thread about the "mutually assured destruction" (as I
sometimes call it) brought to us by those who pushed for a transition to lead-
free solder. This is a real and massive problem that might come home to roost
in a major way within the next ten to twenty years. Here's the link:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22220799](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22220799)

------
CamperBob2
Not the submitter, but just for context, this is a post by the admin for the
groups.io community for users of Tektronix oscilloscopes and related test
equipment, answering a query from a user looking for service documentation on
an instrument from the 1990s era, somewhat newer than most of those discussed
on the group.

Service manuals from Tektronix, like those from Hewlett-Packard, used to
include what amounted to a BSEE lab syllabus in their service manuals. They
would include full schematics and operational theory that often went well
beyond what was needed by a technician who was tasked with maintaining the
gear. Often the documentation was written by the design engineers themselves,
who were the Michael Jordans and Kobe Bryants of their field. The educational
value of this material was (and is) immense. Not only could you get your scope
up and running after spending some time with these manuals, you understood a
lot about how it worked and what motivated the underlying design decisions.

Dennis is right in that this wonderful literature went away well before its
time, but I think he undersells the other side of the argument, which is that
these manuals would inevitably become less useful over time as well. It was
true that management became less engineering-driven in the 1980s-1990s period,
which was both unfortunate and avoidable, but it's also true that over the
same timeframe he's referring to, companies like Tektronix and HP had to
migrate to custom ASICs and software-heavy architectures that were inherently
less user-serviceable.

These aren't like products from manufacturers like Apple, Tesla, or John Deere
whose overt market abuses have spawned the right-to-repair movement -- they're
the tools used by the people who design those products. The instrumentation
companies had to stay well ahead of the technology curve, just as they do now,
and increasing integration often has the unfortunate side effect of making the
inner workings of the product less accessible to the user. Personally, I'm not
sure things could have evolved much differently than they did, regardless of
the ratio of MBAs to EEs in management.

Bummer, too, because those manuals were AWESOME. One thing that _is_
indisputable is that both Tektronix and HP stopped publishing component-level
service manuals about 5-10 years before the technology justified it. Because
their technology had to stay ahead of the market, a lot of gear that is still
very useful in many applications today is now almost impossible to keep
running.

~~~
userbinator
_They would include full schematics and operational theory that often went
well beyond what was needed by a technician who was tasked with maintaining
the gear._

I see this trend with automotive manuals too; in particular, from the 40s to
60s when automatic transmissions were still a relatively new and complex part,
the service manuals contained a huge amount of information on their theory of
operation. Now, although they're even more complex (and computer-controlled),
the most you get is how to take it apart and put it back together.

~~~
fallous
This is one of the down sides of "software is eating the world." A 1960s Ford
C4 or Chevrolet TH350 is mechanical and applied physics, whereas a modern
automotive transmission is mechanical and applied physics combined with a
blackbox of software controlled electronics. While it's awfully hard to
obfuscate mechanisms it's nearly effortless to do so with software.

~~~
whatshisface
I wonder why they don't document and publish their code in the same way they
documented and published their mechanisms.

~~~
fallous
Because mechanisms instantiated are by their very nature "published," and any
repairs are documented because they require intervention by the mechanic... or
could be documented by anyone with enough knowledge and training to examine
the mechanism.

Patents and other intellectual property methods are the only barrier to a
competitor reproducing the mechanical product, but software allows additional
barriers to reproduction as well as a means to prevent modification of the
operation from the manufacturer's desired behaviors.

I'd also note that the era in which those mechanisms were created and
documented included an expectation that owners often did their own automotive
maintenance and repair and were far more mechanically-minded (it was an age
defined by mechanisms) than current owners of autos.

~~~
userbinator
Code also does not require the same type of service or is subject to wear, as
mechanisms do.

~~~
fallous
While the hardware it runs on may require servicing, well-designed and well-
implemented code should indeed be free of such a need.

Alas my experience in maintaining many codebases over the years suggest that
most code needs a lot more servicing, itself, than the hardware it ran on. ;)

------
bathtub365
This is equivalent to what Apple has done. For a while they had their own in-
house repair service through the Genius Bar, and it coexisted with independent
repair shops. Now they try to prevent this with software lockouts on repaired
equipment and designs that are increasingly difficult or impossible to repair.
It’s interesting to see similar patterns in other industries.

~~~
jimhefferon
This is one reason that I don't buy Apple, so it comes with at least some
consumer cost.

~~~
samatman
Only if there are more people like you than there are people who purchase
Apple products _because_ of the "Genius Bar".

Which seems unlikely to me, although I wouldn't be surprised either way.

~~~
Dylan16807
> because of the "Genius Bar"

The genius bar is not the problem. It's some things they have done more
recently.

------
userbinator
Of course, troubleshooting _without_ a schematic is also an important skill.
It is often done for laptops (which often don't have schematics, and the only
ones available are leaks) as well as other consumer electronics.

The idea that it somehow stops competitors from copying the product is very
weak; it's easy enough to reverse-engineer a design, and there are entire
companies whose existence is solely to provide such services.

~~~
nraynaud
Oscilloscopes are very different from laptops, they all have a unique front
end. Laptops are mostly a collection of reference implementations.

------
muser8
My how times have changed. I remember schematics for my first computer
[https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_64_Programmer%27s_Re...](https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_64_Programmer%27s_Reference_Guide)

------
anonsivalley652
Louis Rossmann (independent MacBook repair owner and Youtuber) has recently
been flying all over the US fighting for right-to-repair (r2r), from Maine to
New York to Washington state to possibly Hawaii now. He's even learning about
the plights of farmers unable to get their equipment fixed after they repair
it themselves at harvest time because a factory-authorized tech has to use a
factory magic box to flip a magic bit somewhere in the tractor to clear an
error, while 20 farmers also want their self-disabled tractors reenabled too.

------
fortran77
You used to open any consumer TV or Radio and there would be schematics
inside. When I bought an Apple ][ computer in 1978, the manual had full
schematics in it. And I used it to fix things.

Intel had schematics for all their motherboards. Unfortunately they've left
the motherboard business.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Intel had schematics for all their motherboards._

Interesting, I didn't know that. Was that true all the way up until they left
the business? What was the most recent generation of motherboards for which
they published the schematics?

------
johnr2
For many years my purchasing policy for test equipment was "no schematics, no
sale". I still try to stick with that as far as possible, but it means I don't
buy much new equipment.

------
basicplus2
I cannot count the number of circuit boards i have photocopied the backof
photographed the front from all angles and created my own schematics..

Gets pretty hard with multilayer boards and smd components

~~~
gmueckl
I don't remember where exactly I saw this, but some boards even stack
components, so that e.g. a tiny SMD part sits under a bigger component that
has some empty volume under it (e.g. an SMD resistor under a socket or
capacitor). Good luck finding that without taking the board apart completely.

To be honest, I think layouts like this are done for practical reasons like
space constraints rather than to annoy reverse engineers. If you are serious
and can disassemble a board, you will find these components immediately.

~~~
madengr
I stuck 01005 caps between BGA balls on a Spartan 3, but that was in attempt
to solve an EMI issue, rather than a specific design goal.

~~~
gmueckl
Interesting! Did you run into any manufacturing issues with that? I'd be
worried about that.

~~~
madengr
Yes. It took two attempts. The second attempt worked, electrically, but didn’t
have a measurable effect on the noise reduction, so did not end up doing it.

------
fsflover
By the way, Purism shared the schematics of their Librem 5 phone. The only
current phone with schematics I am aware of:

[https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Hardware_Reference/Chestnu...](https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Hardware_Reference/Chestnut.html#schematics)

------
purplezooey
I've wondered this in the past. If you buy something from the 1970s it seems
like everything had a schematic in the box. As if to imply many customers
could try to fix problems themselves. Now, people will bring their car to the
dealer to get windshield wipers changed.

------
JohnFen
It's not just TI. The lack of schematics for electronic equipment across the
board has been a serious problem for decades, and just gets worse over time.

------
joshspankit
I feel like this is a perfect encapsulation of one of the core arguments
around Right To Repair legislation.

------
intricatedetail
Schematics can't be copyrighted, so anyone could take it and make themselves
an instrument. I think schematics disappeared around the rise of China.
Companies didn't want their products copied. I think that is backwards. Only
thing you may lose is R&D time which there are ways to recoup. Let's make
schematics available again.

