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Hi Robert:

I do the same thing! It's criminal what people throw into landfills. There was a time, now mostly 
passed, when people were "upgrading" their PC's every couple of years. I had access to an empty 
office in the building, so I would collect up anything put out for bulk pickup that looked of any 
reasonably recent vintage. I could usually get parts from 3 or 4 boxes and make one work. I'd then 
donate that one to any of the many local schools or libraries who were happy to have them. Sometime 
in this century, the federal government started pouring money down the pipe for schools and 
libraries to get the very latest computers (whether they needed them or not), so it got to where no 
one wanted them anymore.

I won't even get into CRT televisions, I just cringe when I think of all the lead and mercury 
needlessly dumped into landfills just because someone thought they needed to have a mega-TV to watch 
hundreds of channels of nothing. Well, the credit card companies are very happy any time anyone 
wastes money, so I guess it's good for commerce.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "robert wasserman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 2:48 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] boom box


Back in the day, most analog TV's and audio equipment I would find on the curb could be brought back 
to life, at least for awhile, by going in and changing out the soldered in fuse. Obviously sometimes 
the fuse blew because of internal problems, but often was caused only by AC surges from the outside. 
But yes, many times the transformer was blown and went back to the curb, labelled with the problems 
I found for the next curb shopper.

> Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:42:52 -0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] boom box
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Hi, Frank,
>
> As I understand consumer safety regulations, if you provide an
> externally accessible fuse holder you still must have an internal,
> soldered-in fuse that is not user changeable. I believe it may be of
> higher value than what is in the user-accessible holder, but it still
> must provide protection against the unit burning up. In the past that
> was sometimes taken care of by installing a fusible link in the power
> transformer that would render the transformer inoperative and you'd have
> to replace the entire transformer. There have been different variations
> of this over time, and different scenarios are probably acceptable, but
> having a user-replaceable fuse as the only protection is not considered
> protection at all. Even if the codes did not require it, I would suspect
> the manufacturer's risk analyst/attorney would...unless the attorney was
> an outside one looking for more defence work <smile>.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
> On 2012-01-31 10:15 AM, Frank Strauss wrote:
> > I discovered that the fuse was
> > soldered in.  It's toward the back left.  It indeed was blown.  I cut it
> > out and put in a fuse holder/fuse from Radio Shack. The radio has worked
> > well since then. I am puzzled why they would solder the fuse in.  I guess
> > they want you to send it back for repair.
>
> -- 
> Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada           (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.