frantone
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Had to look....
🕑 Added 2018-10-16 15:38:58 +0000 UTC I got this Dieter Rams clock from Germany as a broken/as-is item and had to open it up when it arrived yesterday. I had thought that with these late 70's direct drive VLD clocks that repairing and converting it to US 120v/60hz would be doable, but interestingly this clock uses the TI TMS1070NL 4-bit microprocessor, so simply getting another chip would do nothing without the embedded code. Plus changing the sync rate would not be so easy as just jumping a pin like most of the dedicated clock chips would. It makes sense that they wanted to use this programmable TI chip due to the number of output control pins to drive this dual display. Warum ist es kaputt? Seems a classic case of water on the brain. The Dieter Rams design looks good, but having controls that mount directly to the board on the top side of a bedside clock with the mains transformer leads right there is a recipe for disaster. The pleasing slope of the design made it so that a glass of water splashed on top of the clock entered around the Snooze bar, creating two rivulets of water off the snooze bar contacts that ran straight back to the perfectly aligned solder tabs for the mains input, creating a nice short circuit with the snooze bar as a convenient low value power resistor, and arcs away! The solder on the mains connection melted and the snooze bar became a spot welder. Reparable? Meeeeehhh....
Comments
Fran Blanche
I'm going to have a try at repairing it.
Completely off topic, however, another culture difference: I had dealing with some manufacturers based in Hong Kong, some years ago - they were commenting on the introduction of machines in production. They thought we went about it the wrong way: English - introduce a machine to replace 10 people and make the 10 people redundant : In Hong Kong: Introduce a machine to replace 10 people - use the 10 people to help increase product output . . . As the saying goes: Simples!
Christopher Leech
I was always one of those that read the news paper I was supposed to be packing with :)
Toby
A great observation. Long live repair culture and repairers!
Emily Meyerding
Our engineers from India say that "This is ho Americans are: they see it, they judge it to be broken. They are done. Whereas in India, we see that yes it is broken, but hat can I do with it?" I think you are like my partner who sees it is broken and says, well it won't be any more broken after I take it all apart and maybe I can make it better.
Nice pair of displays though, and maybe a transformer and other useful bits ?
