You just gotta love products with articial weights in them, because they would “feel cheap” otherwise.

https://movq.de/v/c5dcc25bc9/weight.jpg

Also, that red stuff on those connectors might be glue? To make it harder to disconnect them?

https://movq.de/v/79dbd850ea/maybe-glue.jpg

(#qigsnba) @movq@www.uninformativ.de Where the heck did you find that? What is that thing? Yeah, totally looks like an attempt to make some garbage feel more solid. Unless this steel plate is actually used for attaching bolts from the other side or something like that. Which I highly doubt, given that there are muuuuuch cheaper options to install various types of nuts in plastic.

Yeah, this goo makes it just harder to disconnect. I bet it doesn’t add water protection to the connections at all.

(#qigsnba) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That’s from a radio / CD-player thingy that someone in my family gave me so that I can try to repair it. (Indeed, some capacitors have blown up. But if that doesn’t fix it, I don’t know what to do. 😅)

There’s nothing on the other side. This really is just a block of metal that acts as a weight.

(#qigsnba) @movq@www.uninformativ.de Ah! Maybe, but just maybe, this weight helps to keep the device from wandering around if a CD is spinning inside. CDs should be pretty well balanced, though.

Good luck with the replacement of the capacitors and reviving this player! :-)

(#qigsnba) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Hm, that might actually be (partially) true. Some external CD drives (without such a weight) start to spin/wiggle when the drive spins up and down … Although I guess that’s not really the case for Audio CDs as they are run at a fixed low RPM value, I think. 🤔

(#qigsnba) Fuck me sideways, trying to repair stuff that isn’t meant to be repaired is such a pain. So many pointless obstacles.

(#qigsnba) Just FTR, in case this wasn’t obvious, the “right to repair” (if there ever is one) needs to be more than just “you’re legally allowed to repair stuff”.

I just fixed this thing by replacing two capacitors. Great, but this was an absolute shitshow and it took several days. So many obstacles, everything’s tiny, connectors glued together, … It worked in the end, but I was so close to giving up.

Being legally allowed to do something is basically worthless if it’s not feasible to actually do it.