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Welcome to the
Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ

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Welcome to the Sci.Electronics.Repair Frequently Asked Question(s) (or S.E.R FAQ for short) Home Page. This site features Samuel M. Goldwasser's latest and greatest "Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of..." series of comprehensive repair guides for consumer electronics equipment and other household devices. There is also a great deal of other information of interest to the electronics hobbyist, experimenter, technician, engineer, and possibly even the dentist and poet. Included are the now quite comprehensive and massive "Sam's Laser FAQ", many new schematics, and links to over 1,000 technology related sites. In addition, there are a variety of documents from other sources on electronics troubleshooting, repair, and other related topics.

If you know of something that is incorrect or missing from this site or simply have comments, friendly complaints, requests, or additions, please make use of the absolutely and positively fabulous or see the Email Page to identify the most appropriate recipient. Thanks!

Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ Sites

There are two S.E.R FAQ sites that are kept up to date in near-real-time:

These *should* have the same content so there is no real benefit of one over the other. Various other "mirror" sites exist around the Planet but those are generally not maintained and some may no longer exist. Check the Home and Mirror Site Locations if curious.

The link below takes you directly to the collection of formatted documents at this site. This is probably what you want:

Sam's Laser FAQ

A major portion of the Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ is the document: "LASERS: Safety, Info, Links, Parts, Types, Drive, Construction" which has a great deal of information on a variety of laser related topics including a comprehensive treatment of diode, helium-neon, argon/krypton ion, and CO2 lasers as well as amateur laser construction including numerous examples of truly home-built lasers. Much of this is not available anywhere else either on-line or in print! Yes, I know what you are thinking: "I hadn't noticed that any of my multitude of lasers were broken...", but so be it. :-) This document is also available at many sites worldwide. As above, check the Home and Mirror Site Locations page to identify the best site for your needs.

Silicon Sam's Technology Resource (SSTR)

The SSTR documents are where my contributions to the S.E.R FAQ start out but the large repair guides of the "Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of...." series may not be as nicely formatted (i.e., once Filip gets through indexing and cross-referencing them). In general, additions to SSTR are minor. Therefore, the solutions to your problems are likely to be accessible via the S.E.R FAQ pages - and in a much more user-friendly form! However, if you long for the thrill of dealing with raw ASCII (not even brain-dead HTML) or are desperate for bits that are hot off my computer's hard drive, check out:

This collection is also available at many sites worldwide. As above, check the Home and Mirror Site Locations page to identify the best site for your needs.

Please Read at Least Once

A word about the philosophy of this site: These pages are declared to be a fluff-free zone! There will be no unnecessary, superfluous, or useless graphics of any kind - including but not limited to: dancing, gyrating, or other animated icons, colored textured backgrounds that are impossible to read through, or forced downloading of bit intense pictures that may be of no interest to you. Nor, will I ever expect you to use a particular brand of Web browser to be able to effectively access these pages. There are and never will be any advertisements, cookies, or other impositions on your time and space. In the time that it may take wading through a single monstrosity of the professional Web page designers at other sites, you will be able to find out what you want to know, when you want to know it! What a concept. :-) (Note, however, that your browser needs to be configured properly to make sense of the many ASCII diagrams, schematics, and tables. See the document: Suggested Browser Settings for font and other related information.)

In return for this gold mine of information, please make a serious effort to find the answers to your questions before contacting me. It may take just a wee bit of effort and could stress a few neurons in the process, but there is an excellent chance that what you seek is covered at these sites. Should you be really stuck, I will respond to email in a timely manner. However, if your question indicates that you haven't even gotten past the Main Menu, AND I am in a good mood, you will get a somewhat polite reply to read the #$%& FAQs. On the other hand, if it is a bad day, and you are really really lucky, you will probably be ignored. In any case, I expect to be able to hit the reply key for my mail program and not get bounced email. I will not attempt to unjumble any anti-SPAM email addresses! I have posted over 20,000 articles to the USENET newsgroups using my true email address. (And, you won't pick up SPAM via private email anyhow.) Yes, SPAM is a pain but I tolerate the small amount I get so others will not be inconvenienced.

Note: I NEVER send email attachments. If you receive a message supposedly from one of my addresses with any sort of attachment, it is bogus and possibly a virus. Someone's address book includes my address and their computer is infected. Send me the complete headers and I'll attempt to check it out, or just delete it.

Where you have a model specific repair question, it will probably be more expedient to post a complete but concise description of your problem including manufacturer, model, symptoms, and what you have already tried, directly to the USENET newsgroup: sci.electronics.repair. I really don't have access to that much model specific service information - and that is probably what I will tell you to do anyway! See the document: Troubleshooting and Repair of Consumer Electronic Equipment for more information. Or, consult a Tech-Tips database to see if your specific problem has already been solved a million times. See the document: On-Line Tech-Tips Databases.

If you know of something that is incorrect or missing from this site or simply have comments, friendly complaints, requests, or additions, please make use of the absolutely and positively fabulous