Silicon Sam's Technology Resource

Including:

Electronics (and more) Repair Guides
and
Laser and Other Information


Welcome to Samuel M. Goldwasser's latest and most fabulous "Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of..." series of comprehensive repair guides for consumer electronic equipment and other household devices. Detailed diagnostic and repair procedures are provided for: small electrical appliances, audio equipment, TVs, VCRs, CD players, computer monitors, microwave ovens, even lawn mowers - and much much more! There are also articles on the testing of various types of electronic components without fancy test equipment, 100 complete repair briefs including diagnostic procedures - not just solutions, repair related stories, pinouts for common chips and hybrids, and the list goes on and on.

Basic information includes essential safety guidelines when working on high voltage and/or AC line powered devices as well as a complete document on getting started in electronics troubleshooting. Some of its topics are: diagnostic tips and rules-of-thumb; recommended tools, supplies, and parts inventory, test and ancillary equipment; schematics for some easy to build incredibly handy widgets(tm); soldering and desoldering; sources of information in print and on-line; parts sources; and how to perfect diagnostic and repair skills.

In addition, there is a great deal of other information on a variety of areas of technology.

Sam's Laser FAQ has a great deal of information on a variety of laser and optics 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!

Also included are documents on video conversion, use of fixed frequency monitors on PCs, international power, fluorescent and discahrge lamps, many new schematics, salvaging useful parts, links to over 1,000 technology related sites - and much much more.

This resource was developed specifically for the Do-It-Yourselfer, electronics experimenter, hobbyist, technician, engineer, and possibly even including the dentist and poet! To the best of my knowledge, it represents by far the largest most in depth collection of on-line information of its type - anywhere.

Silicon Sam's Technology Resource Sites

The links below take you directly to the documents at this site:

The documents at Sam's Home (RepairFAQ.org) will normally be the latest and greatest. However, the large FAQs of the "Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of..." series located at the various Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ sites under the "S.E.R FAQ Main Table of Contents" pages may be more nicely formatted with complete tables of contents, cross-linking, and feedback forms for comments as well as complements, corrections, or complaints. The most popular of these are also available in convenienct small segments or as a single file. There is also a lot of additional information and links beyond what I have written. For all of these documents, please 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 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.