Fixing Things

As I previously noted, our television broke due to unknown but theorized problems. Regardless, replacing it would have cost almost a thousand dollars and getting it repaired would have been a couple hundred at least.

So my girlfriend did some research and pushed me to do some research as well. We found a nice website at shopjimmy.com which is all about providing hardware to fix televisions and you can just put in the information about your tv and see all the parts that it uses. After watching some videos, and determining that it was most likely the motherboard that needed replacing, I bought a new one and had it shipped. I unscrewed the back of the television, carefully unplugged the wires from the motherboard and unscrewed the board from the tv. I took the new one, screwed it in and plugged all the wires in. I screwed the back of the tv back on and WALA! It works, good as new or almost.

It's actually pretty cool, if you think about it. It was a learning experience. We tend to interact with all these technological gadgets without any idea of the way they work or what's even inside of them, like magical artifacts. Because they are complex and we don't know how they work, when they break, we think we have to get a whole new one, or hire specialists to fix it. But these products aren't that special, they aren't magical joojoo. They are bits and pieces made by humans that work together to make the machine function. Yeah I don't understand a tenth of what goes on in the insides of the television, but after opening it up, I know there's numerous circuit boards and their functions. The power supply board provides power to the motherboard and a secondary panel, the motherboard handles the inputs, the actual functioning of transmitting digital images...or something like that.

I don't know, and i won't ever know how everything works, but I know if there's a problem with one of the circuit boards, I can replace it. It's unhooking wires and using a screwdriver, and using a soldering gun if you're really serious. The point is there's ways to fix everything, whatever it is, and there's limitless information on the internet to assist and aid you in whatever repair job you are trying to do. Use that information. Use the collective conscious of all the internet users out there. Whatever the problem you are having is, there is undoubtably someone else who has had the same problem and has posted about it on the internet, and most likely there have been others who know how to fix shit answering questions and helping out.

I'm no engineer and I've never replaced a motherboard before, but I did it a week ago and it was fairly simple. It feels good to do something yourself, to learn about something, understand how it functions and then be able to fix it because of that understanding.

Obviously, there are things you simply can't fix but there are also many things you can. I'd never heard of someone replacing the motherboard of their television before this, but now I know it's possible. Now I know how to keep a tv working for much longer while spending less than a hundred bucks on parts. That's a useful thing to know!

And there's way more out there. The internet is full of how-to's and do-it-yourself repair jobs. There's thousands of people out there who know alot of cool shit and have put it out there for others to read, and learn and understand.

Let's face it, life's going to break your shit. Try to fix something yourself, it it's possible. It will feel good.