Technology – Doesn't Fit In

October 23, 2014

Thoughts About GT Advanced Technologies

In November of 2013 azcentral.com reported “Apple to buy vacant Mesa building, bring 2,000 jobs to Valley“

The deal, which was announced by GT in a regulatory filing Monday afternoon, is seen as a coup for Arizona, drawing excitement and praise from Gov. Jan Brewer, Mesa Mayor Scott Smith and a variety of economic-development officials.

Not even a year later the whole thing has fallen apart with GT Advanced Technologies filing for bankruptcy and laying off 727 people from the plant. I can’t help think about those people and how excited they must have been when the plant first opened and how shitty they feel today. I wonder if Tim Cook and the other managers at Apple are also thinking about these people loosing their jobs.

GT called it’s contract with Apple “oppressive and burdensome”. It makes me think that Apple is used to making whatever demands they want of Chinese companies and the Chinese companies get as much slave labor as needed to get done what ever Apple requests. GT was unable to respond like a Chinese company.. This could be bad for American manufacturing. Apple should be making their parts in America, but will they even try to work with another American company? Will another American company want to work with Apple? Will anyone learn anything from this?

I interviewed to work at GT in February of this year. I was not offered a job because I was unable pick up and move to Arizona immediately. I suspect I would have been offered a job as I think I was well qualified. I guess I could say that I was lucky I didn’t get laid off twice in one year. I don’t feel lucky, I just feel bad about the whole situation and everyone that is loosing their job.

March 1, 2011May 1, 2016

How To Fix The Sony “for use with compatible battery only” Error

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I bought 4 extra batteries for my Sony DSC-HX5. After a while when I would power on the camera with of the batteries the camera would give me an error “for use with compatible battery only” and then the camera would shut down. I didn’t think this was a problem with the camera since 4 of the 5 batteries (including the one that came with the battery) would work without error.

I did a google search for the error “for use with compatible battery only” and found lots of people with the problem but not very many solutions. It took some searching through the pages and I found that if the center pin is shorted by the other two pins it would reset the battery.

for use with compatible battery only

First I fully charged the battery. Then pressed a piece of aluminum foil over all three contacts at the same time to short the center contact. It took a few tries but I knew the reset took when I put the battery into the camera and it wouldn’t start up. I put the battery back into the charger. The camera charged for about 5 minutes, I then put the battery back into the camera and it started up without error.

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May 31, 2008May 1, 2016

Resolving The 6X Red Blinking Light Of Death On My Sony TV (with pictures)

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The following is meant for informational purposes only and not meant to be an instructional guide. This information is meant to give a basic concepts on how the thermal fuse is replaced, It doesn’t cover everything thing and can vary on other TVs. If you decide to replace your own thermal fuse based on this information you do so at your OWN RISK.

For information on the Sony Wega flat CRTs with a similar problem (in this case a model KV34HS420), visit Lee Devlin website and view his posting titled “Fixing a Sony Wega with a 6 or 7 blink code“.

A few weeks ago I was watching my Sony 60 inch rear projection TV (model KDF-E60A20) when the screen turned blank and the normally green power-on indicator started blinking red. I thought, this has to be a bad thing. My first assumption was the bulb died.

The bulb did not die, there is a whole other indicator light for a dead bulb. What was actually happening is the power-on indicator light was blinking 6 times. Some googling on this subject indicated that the thermal fuse had blown and it needed to be replaced.

Sony apparently has a service bulletin (E29102171) that covers the replacement. In order to access this information you have to be some sort of authorized service personnel. I did find a website where you could obtain the service bulletin but they wanted $12 to join the site first. Let me go on for a moment and say why I think this is a total scam. It seems the damaged thermal fuse situation is a design flaw and Sony’s replacement part is totally different from the original. This website is profiting off the situation by providing information was created by Sony. I won’t link to the site here, but if you search google for this issue you will surely find the site in question.

This is something that Sony should be fixing for free. I’m reading people are paying around $400 to get this issue repaired. I repaired mine for $17.91. The part itself was only $4.80. I ordered part 191002393 from Sony’s service site (It’s available from Amazon.com for $5.95). Here’s how I replaced mine.

First, the thermal fuse is simply a small electronics part on the end of two wires that connects to the harness in the TV. The wire comes wrapped up in a small package about the size of two dimes. Shipping costs $11.95 to ship it in a giant box full of bubble wrap. Thanks Sony for wasting resources getting this to me.

The thermal fuse is located under the lamp housing in my TV (and can be seen using the procedures for replacing the lamp in the manual). It’s a dime sized device mounted to the bottom of the TV with two wires coming out of it. It took me a while to figure out that this monstrosity is the thermal fuse considering how tiny the replacement is.

Unfortunately In order to get to the wiring harness I had to remove the rear panel of the TV. There’s about 10 screws that hold that on. Then I removed the fan housing to gain access to the original thermal fuse. I followed the wires back up to where they connected to the wiring harness. I unplugged the original fuse and plugged in the new one and ran the wires to where the original fuse is.

I did not remove the original fuse. It’s somewhat difficult to get to and doesn’t hurt to keep it on. I wrapped the new fuse wiring around the old one. There may be a actual place to mount the new fuse but i didn not see the service bulliten so I cannot say for sure. It’s important to point out here that the purpose of a thermal fuse is to shut off power in case of an over heat situation. If for some reason the lamp overheats you don’t want it to catch the TV on fire. Having the thermal fuse in close proximity to the lamp seem logical. If you happen to know exactly where the fuse should go, please leave a comment.

The preceding is meant for informational purposes only and not meant to be an instructional guide. This information is meant to give a basic concepts on how the thermal fuse is replaced, It doesn’t cover everything thing and can vary on other TVs. If you decide to replace your own thermal fuse based on this information you do so at your OWN RISK.

Find Sony TV Parts

If you found this usefull, you can support this site by purchasing something from Amazon. How about a new Sony LCD Lamp?