Peter via Dng said on 15 Feb 2026 08:26:07 -0700

>Troubleshooting isn't nicely deterministic. More a question of
>persistence until a problem is solved or abandoned.

The preceding two sentences are not necessarily true. If all of the
following are true:

1. You have a glancible and accurate Mental Model of the system on
repair, the system under repair is modular,

2. You have access to most of the test points,

3. And the symptom is reproducible rather than intermittent

Then troubleshooting is more a recipe than a desert wandering, to the
point that you can pretty much estimate the time to repair.

This is why I'm so insistent about modularity, thin interfaces, and
building for repairability, in machines, hardware and software.

See among other resources see
https://troubleshooters.com/tuni.htm#_The_10_step_Universal_Troubleshooting

I've got 42 years experience documenting the mindset and process of
troubleshooting. Even in the case of intermittents, there are methods
to find the solution quicker than pure trial and error.

SteveT

Steve Litt

http://444domains.com