Engineer, Ron Hinton, decided to take on the task of repairing his historic Acer K385s laptop, despite it suffering a technical fault called ‘vinegar syndrome’ which is an issue with the LCD screen’s polarisers.
This syndrome meant the screen had discoloured and the image was fuzzy, so Ron set about repairing it.
He had to open up the screen to replace the polarisers, which required careful work as the screen was sealed with foil and glue to prevent users from repairing it themselves.
While Ron was successful in replacing the polarisers, he was unable to find a ‘phase correction layer’ which has been developed since the laptop’s manufacture and so the repair was not wholly successful.
The story is praised by the narrator as a good candidate for adventurous repair, and is contrasted with other examples ofAdaptations are a critical part of any successful technology, whether they involve tweaking an existing design or stripping something down to its components to attempt a wholly new approach.
