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Comment by lorenzsell | Hacker News Reader

Recently I almost threw away our stove because one of the burners melted. I was about 2 seconds away from submitting an order online for a new stove when my wife asked how we were going to dispose of the current one. Suddenly, I realized how tragic it is to throw something so massive. I got my screw driver out and tinkered behind the stove for 20 minutes, ordered a couple parts, soldered a little here and there, and had the whole thing 100% operational with a total output of about 2 hours. I honestly could hardly believe it myself. I did the same thing with a broken chainsaw too. And it’s so rewarding to actually fix something.

If you’re even remotely handy it’s remarkable how easy it is to fix things that you might otherwise just throw away and replace.

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Even if you can't fix it, there is value in tinkering with it. Over the years I've gotten to the point where I understand my limits, when I might be able to stretch those limits, and when to call in the professionals or just chuck it and buy a new one. Even when I can't fix it myself, I have a general idea of what's wrong so I can be much more confident in my decision to replace it; and if I end up calling in a professional, I can be confident I won't be getting ripped off.

The internet has also helped a lot. Specifically, a lot of howto videos show common gotchas, which in the past are the things that have usually caused me to either give up or to turn a $10 repair into a $500 replacement by making things worse...

Youtube is a fantastic resource for any repairs, even if I'm comfortable with doing something I'll often watch a couple of videos first to spot common gotchas.

Lemme second this comment. Everything you say is good.

One thing to keep in mind is that you need to understand when things can be dangerous. Like old tube-based equipment.

I still have a screwdriver that has divots scarred into it from discharging a couple of 500V can capacitors in an old (solid-state) stereo. Now, that's a great lesson... discharge caps if you're not sure about them, and I am glad I learned it.

I'm also quite glad that I did that on purpose with a screwdriver and not on accident with my finger.

I'm even more glad that I did some basic research to know that giant caps ougtta at least be thought about if you're gonna peek around in that kind of stuff.

Completely agree. You need to be careful about capacitors. Generally, a YouTube video will warn you about a part/product you need to look out for. I replaced the run capacitor on my central air unit for $10 and saved hundreds of dollars in repair costs. It's been years and the thing is still running. Just had to watch instructions on how to properly discharge the capacitor.

Having been shocked enough to have a mini PTSD episode when seeing a flyback transformer, did anyone actually die from a normal cap discharge? Unless it's a large subwoofer capacitor, the stored energy is not enough to do deadly damage, even if it's in the thousands of volts, in my experience...

I think that in most cases the electricity run across the finger or the arm and not through the heart.

Apparently the charge in computer power supplies can kill :/

https://www.cnet.com/news/teen-electrocuted-while-working-on...

I agree with this sentiment.

One thing that has been a godsend for me was a scan tool for my car. Not a lot goes wrong with my car, even though it's 10 years old, but being able to ask the car what's wrong when the check engine light comes on is a good way to save some money.

The first time the check engine light came on the car was still under warranty, so I let the dealer take care of it. I didn't own a scan tool at this time.

The second time it happened, many years later, my scan tool told me that it was an oxygen sensor. I know that is beyond my skill level, so off it goes to a mechanic. Since the scan tool told me what was wrong, I knew what to expect and could tell if they were trying to screw me over.

The third time it happened my scan tool told me that the battery voltage was low. That made a lot of sense for a 10 year old car, that had been sitting outside in -27C weather for a while, that still had the factory battery. Fixing that involved a trip to Costco and 15 minutes tinkering in the driveway. I'm sure a mechanic would have marked up the battery and charged an hour of labour, so the scan tool probably paid for itself with this one use.

In 2001 I was living with a bunch of people in a rundown old house. We did not have a washer and dryer but we did have the hook-ups for them. But we are all poor and coming up with the cash to buy a set wasn't happening. We just used the laundromat. And yes, I know that it is cheaper to use your own. But a few bucks here and there at the laundromat was easier to deal with.

We had a casual relationship with our neighbors and one day they they were having a garage sale. They had a washer and dryer set for sale. They wanted a hundred for the set and I jokingly said I would give them ten. They said if I manned the garage sale for them for a few hours while they got lunch I could have the set. Bingo!

They worked great for about a year and then one of the wheels that holds the tub in the dryer had a bearing blow out. There was about a two inch gap in the bottom of the tub and it was swallowing bras. Apparently this had gone on for a while and nobody noticed. So I pull the back off the dryer to take a look and see what had happened.

I figured I was screwed since the dryer was older than I was. But I called Sears and they had the part. They actually had a repair kit for our dryer. For 25 bucks we got three rollers, belt, and new heating element. It took about a hour to install all the new stuff and I still have the dryer and it works great.

And really, we were so lucky, it had sucked in a lot of clothes. They were piled up around the heating element. Could have easily caught fire.

So that's where all the socks go...

"It's already broken, you can't break it any more" are words to live by.

Not necessarily. Think of someone not familiar with computers having some persisting issue and thinking - well it's already broken - this website just popped up saying I have a virus, so might as well try following their solution.

Or of someone misdiagnosing a trivial problem like a blown fuse and breaking parts while disassembling an appliance which is completely fine.

This staggers me. My entire career can be traced back to fixing computer problems in much the way you describe. Is that not a very common experience? People tinker with things, sometimes those things are destroyed in the process. That's how people learn.

I feel like kid playing with old appliance (or PC) in the garage is a cliche hacker origin story. I know it is mine.

Maybe the lack of easy communication and scams made it easier? You could still install bonsai buddy and stuff, but there wasn't a chance to get ransomware...

Also people didn't depend that much on computers. How much would you really destroy at the time by wiping everything? How much damage would that do on a family computer these days?

I think a lot of people actually depend on the contents of their hard drive a lot less these days than, say, ten years ago, because so much is stored in the cloud - photos in particular.

lovely story! i think there are two factors at play that dont get mentioned enough:

youtube and the internet at large has made diagnosing and fixing lots of problems much simpler and quicker.

amazon, ebay, and 3d printing and other cheap ways of making things have created lots of cheap, decent replacement parts that can arrive at your house in 2 days.

these two factors make repairing things yourself a couple orders of magnitude easier than 20 years ago, say. i cannot believe its only now really coming to the fore

Some home improvement stores in the US, like Home Depot and Lowe's, will gladly take your old equipment upon delivery of new one, as long as it's of the same type. At least this has been my experience.

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