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Hot take: I miss having to actually trace out circuits by hand
Ngl, back in 2018 I used to sit there with a sharpie and notebook, tracing every single trace on a dead motherboard to find a short. Took me like 3 hours on a bad day. Now I just pull up a schematic PDF on my tablet and check the voltage points with my meter. It's faster for sure, but I swear I learned more about how boards actually work when I had to map them out myself. Anyone else feel like we lost something by having all the documentation handed to us?
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cora5184mo ago
Oh geez, nothing beats the thrill of chasing a trace through five layers of PCB like it's a tiny little escape artist. Now my tablet just shows me the answer and robs me of my dramatic "gotcha" moment.
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oliverhernandez4mo ago
lol right, I feel this. There's something about staring at a board for an hour straight, tracing a trace that goes under a capacitor and disappears into some via black hole, that really forces you to understand the layout. Now I just google "B450 vcore test point" and find a picture in like 2 seconds. It's definitely more efficient but I swear I've forgotten half the tricks I used to know because the schematic just spoonfeeds me the answer. Plus I miss the satisfaction of finally finding that short and being like "ha, gotcha you little cretin.
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jenny474mo ago
Buddy of mine spent three hours chasing a phantom short before realizing he'd been reading the multimeter wrong the whole time.
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