I guess i just found it a little offensive that you called eveyone besides thesteve a hack. I have proffessional training in the EE field (an assosiates degree) that qualifies me as an electronics technician and I assume that some of the other modders on here do also, although i do not know this for a fact. I dont offer repair services though and never will. TBH I work in the semiconductor industry and dont really use circuit level troubleshooting on a day to day basis so i have lost a lot of that knowlegde.
I do agree that sending something complicated to thesteve is your best bet though.
My point about the engineer thing was that normally how it works is that engineers design things and technicians repair then.
Well, that's why I added the polite qualifier to it. I didn't have a more polite term to think of, but the point stands. A % of them don't have pro EE credentials and you need to be aware of their background. And that is why I don't promote them, not at the top of the list anyway. I tell people who the best of the best here is, which is what I would want to know if I was in need of repairing my system, and that is Steve.
Now, the other modders are free to promote themselves and make their qualifications known themselves. They do.
Since you don't offer repair services, there's nothing really directed at you. You just think the others who do have pro EE training ? And you wanna positively generalize the majority of them as having that training and ignore that you got a % of fans who just learned as they go ?
I provide the info as I would want it. A % of modders/repairers learned soldering skills outside of their normal day jobs and are good for cap replacement, pot tuning, and some times CD laser replacement. But if a cap replacement job doesn't restore a unit to working order and you have chip/IC damage, they're no good to you, and that unit is gonna have to go thru another round of shipping to a real EE. More shipping around equals more potential damage as well.
So, I'm not gonna positively generalize modders/repairers as having EE training out of some sense of niceness or politeness and what not. That is something the public needs to be aware of when looking for someone to fix their console one way or another. Check if they are or not!
As far as PCEFX, when people come here and need repairs done, who I'm gonna promote at the top of the list is Steve. If his plate is full however, I'm gonna tell ya to try turbokon, 2nd place. If both of them are backed up, I'll cautiously tell ya to try Keith Courage. But, as I said, if it was a serious IC/chip issue, something that requires electronics debugging, etc. it's gonna make its way around to Steve and I'm not aware of any other repairer that has that standing in our forum, the goto guy when nobody can fix it, which is him.
If you know of somebody else with such credentials, feel free to promote them. But don't just assume the others have professional electronics training when they don't. It is something to check first.
