> A 2003 article in The Independent claimed that the cause of the faulty capacitors was due to a mis-copied formula. In 2001, a scientist working in the Rubycon Corporation in Japan stole a mis-copied formula for capacitors' electrolytes. He then took the faulty formula to the Luminous Town Electric company in China, where he had previously been employed. In the same year, the scientist's staff left China, stealing again the mis-copied formula and moving to Taiwan, where they created their own company, producing capacitors and propagating even more of this faulty formula of capacitor electrolytes.
> I understand the toxicity of lead, but I wonder if the hand could've been more targeted. Does lead in bearings really show up in the environment?
Part of the issue is in manufacturing. It might be hard to prevent exposure of employees to lead dust if they’re machining parts containing lead even if the final product isn’t too risky.
It's the flux / resin also found in the solder that causes that. At the typical soldering temperature of 400 °C, lead evaporates 10 million times slower than ice at -40 °C.
> The fix back then was to bake your GPU in the oven for a while
Oh that brings back bad memories! We were running a LAN centre, and our 7900GT graphics cards were failing left and right. We bought 23 8800GTS cards to replace/upgrade the lot. After a year or so they all started failing too. Reflowing, i.e. baking in a cheap little electric oven in the staff room, would give them an extra 6 months or so of life. After each subsequent baking, it would last less time than the previous. Having to replace so many graphics cards, after a much shorter that expected lifespan, was a lot of money for a tiny business. (Having said that, looking at how much it would cost now, I shouldn't complain.)
I read at the time that it was because of microscopic cracks in the solder, but hadn't realised before now that it was due to the removal of lead. We had no further problems after switching to AMD, but I never knew whether it was really an NVidia problem, or just those models, etc.
The GeForce FX 5900XTs, from the 2004 PCs (before the article's 2006 date of the start of the problem), were still working fine 10 years later, albeit in old PCs used for just web access and the occasional game of Bejeweled.
From the title I was expecting some hardware faults that were transmissible (as opposed to merely widespread), like the classic "hardware virus" story from The Daily WTF: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-hardware-virus
Yeah, the headline is using "epidemic" clickbaitly just to mean widespread, not transmissible.
The classic real example of actual transmissibility was the Zip drive click of death. A bad drive would damage disks, which would in turn damage another drive they were put in. The case was rarer than people thought but did happen. https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq4.htm
I got an electric shock plugging in a zip drive once. They used to arc when you plugged the mains cord into the back of the drive or the power brick, I forget which.
Yes, the definition of "epidemic" literally refers to something being widespread (etymology derived from "upon the people"). It's not wrong to refer to e.g. an obesity epidemic despite obesity not being contagious.
Apple replaced my 2015 MBP battery and my 2017 MBP butterfly keyboard for free, even though both machines were more than 5 years old. Impressive I think.
Lead-free solder was such a big deal when it first came out, have things improved significantly like the author mentions in passing? Similar arguments were made about leaded gasoline when it was banned and tech caught up and made it not needed.
Interesting, I love the field of infectious disease and of course software, so the intersection is always fascinating.
A related failure mode (which is closer to organ transplants I guess), is that when replacing a part with a faulty one, a defect in the new part can cause the other parts to bear more load. When a part fails abruptly you have a halted system and a lot of healthy parts, but when a part fails gradually, the whole system starts to degrade with it by sympathy.
And of course electrical networks are a classical example of faults expanding, there may be security devices to limit the failure to the device or even the local electrical network, but sometimes those failsafes fail, and that's what causes wide blackouts like the one in Spain recently.
I remember leadfree solder. I ordered an Nvidia 8800GT at that time and it was significantly delayed because of failures.
The fix back then was to bake your GPU in the oven for a while, essentially reflowing some of the cracked solder.
And I know of countless BMW M3s and M5s dying too soon because of early iterations of lead-free bearings.
I understand the toxicity of lead, but I wonder if the hand could've been more targeted. Does lead in bearings really show up in the environment?
The origin of the capacitor plague is so interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
> A 2003 article in The Independent claimed that the cause of the faulty capacitors was due to a mis-copied formula. In 2001, a scientist working in the Rubycon Corporation in Japan stole a mis-copied formula for capacitors' electrolytes. He then took the faulty formula to the Luminous Town Electric company in China, where he had previously been employed. In the same year, the scientist's staff left China, stealing again the mis-copied formula and moving to Taiwan, where they created their own company, producing capacitors and propagating even more of this faulty formula of capacitor electrolytes.
Stolen and stolen again.
> I understand the toxicity of lead, but I wonder if the hand could've been more targeted. Does lead in bearings really show up in the environment?
Part of the issue is in manufacturing. It might be hard to prevent exposure of employees to lead dust if they’re machining parts containing lead even if the final product isn’t too risky.
How relevant is this to solder? Typically soldering is done after machining, so machining dust should be a non issue.
As far as I am aware, the act of soldering does not produce any sort of lead vapor or particulate either.
> As far as I am aware, the act of soldering does not produce any sort of lead vapor or particulate either.
Er, no. Look up hazards of soldering fumes.
It's the flux / resin also found in the solder that causes that. At the typical soldering temperature of 400 °C, lead evaporates 10 million times slower than ice at -40 °C.
How does the solder get manufactured? Don't forget to account for the rest of the supply chain - the mines for example
> The fix back then was to bake your GPU in the oven for a while
Oh that brings back bad memories! We were running a LAN centre, and our 7900GT graphics cards were failing left and right. We bought 23 8800GTS cards to replace/upgrade the lot. After a year or so they all started failing too. Reflowing, i.e. baking in a cheap little electric oven in the staff room, would give them an extra 6 months or so of life. After each subsequent baking, it would last less time than the previous. Having to replace so many graphics cards, after a much shorter that expected lifespan, was a lot of money for a tiny business. (Having said that, looking at how much it would cost now, I shouldn't complain.)
I read at the time that it was because of microscopic cracks in the solder, but hadn't realised before now that it was due to the removal of lead. We had no further problems after switching to AMD, but I never knew whether it was really an NVidia problem, or just those models, etc.
The GeForce FX 5900XTs, from the 2004 PCs (before the article's 2006 date of the start of the problem), were still working fine 10 years later, albeit in old PCs used for just web access and the occasional game of Bejeweled.
I suppose the lead from bearings ends up in used engine oil. That's normally recycled afterwards though.
From the title I was expecting some hardware faults that were transmissible (as opposed to merely widespread), like the classic "hardware virus" story from The Daily WTF: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-hardware-virus
Yeah, the headline is using "epidemic" clickbaitly just to mean widespread, not transmissible.
The classic real example of actual transmissibility was the Zip drive click of death. A bad drive would damage disks, which would in turn damage another drive they were put in. The case was rarer than people thought but did happen. https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq4.htm
I got an electric shock plugging in a zip drive once. They used to arc when you plugged the mains cord into the back of the drive or the power brick, I forget which.
The word epidemic does not imply contagiousness, not in the medical context and therefore definitely not outside of it.
Yes, the definition of "epidemic" literally refers to something being widespread (etymology derived from "upon the people"). It's not wrong to refer to e.g. an obesity epidemic despite obesity not being contagious.
Or "Coding machines" https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/coding-machines/
Apple replaced my 2015 MBP battery and my 2017 MBP butterfly keyboard for free, even though both machines were more than 5 years old. Impressive I think.
Missing: those switches on newer Logitech mice that fail with intermittent no-click/double-clicking on single click after about 8 months.
Lead-free solder was such a big deal when it first came out, have things improved significantly like the author mentions in passing? Similar arguments were made about leaded gasoline when it was banned and tech caught up and made it not needed.
Interesting, I love the field of infectious disease and of course software, so the intersection is always fascinating.
A related failure mode (which is closer to organ transplants I guess), is that when replacing a part with a faulty one, a defect in the new part can cause the other parts to bear more load. When a part fails abruptly you have a halted system and a lot of healthy parts, but when a part fails gradually, the whole system starts to degrade with it by sympathy.
And of course electrical networks are a classical example of faults expanding, there may be security devices to limit the failure to the device or even the local electrical network, but sometimes those failsafes fail, and that's what causes wide blackouts like the one in Spain recently.
This is called "cascading failure".
And powergrid failures have little to no relation to any of this