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WalterBright 4 days ago

I had a job wire-wrapping circuit boards in college.

I expended effort to lay out the wires so they formed a neat pattern. Why spend time doing that? It made it easy to check for errors in wiring, as then the pattern would be disrupted. The end result was I almost never made a wirewrap mistake, and the work was appreciated.

I also soldered components on, and also took care to orient the resisters all the same way, and align everything neatly. I'd use needle nose pliers to bend the leads just so, too. It also made visual error checking fast and easy. Again, no errors.

bigyabai 4 days ago | parent [-]

Which would all be very useful if Apple actually did board-level repairs and not logic board swaps. But they don't, so it is all just for show.

cmsj 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I dunno man, Apple's PCB designs are incredibly space efficient. Compare the sandwich PCB of a modern iPhone against the main board of something like a Samsung Galaxy. Apple is sweating out every cubic millimetre it can, while Samsung is perfectly fine with a load of empty green PCB all over the place.

bigyabai 4 days ago | parent [-]

Does discrete circuit density correlate with engineering quality somehow? Are we back around to the parable of Master Foo and the Hardware Designer in the year of our lord and savior 2025?

cmsj 4 days ago | parent [-]

It correlates with how much stuff you can pack into a small device.

giantrobot 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Apple definitely refurbs boards. They just don't do it in the back of an Apple Store. It's far more economical for them to do full logic board swaps (or other components) than spend the time and effort doing component level repairs in the back of a retail store.

Hatrix 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I have seen some Apple ][ motherboards with jumper wire(s) hidden on the back side.