The art of a hardware surgeon

Have you ever watched a surgeon at work? The precision, the confidence, the beauty? The kind of scene that leaves you at awe.

Am not talking about an actual human surgeon by the way, am talking about a messy, gruffy hardware techie. Once you have been inducted into the hardware cult of the geek brotherhood, opening up stuff becomes ritualistic.

The steady hand that holds the solder gun, the smell of burning plastic/metal and rusting screws. They said that petrol was man’s perfume, I think they never met hardware engineers.

Opening up stuff is fun in a lot of ways. Yes, it makes my head hurt in a lot of ways but It has always fascinated me. Since that time I started with our poor radios, I never stopped.

But how does one become a hardware surgeon? I wouldn’t necessarily claim to be one, my skills on hardware are good but they are not without their shortcomings. One character returns true in regards to all these geniuses: Curiosity and practice.

A very huge guarantee that the first time you open up a device, you’ll screw something (pun intended :lol:). A few burnt areas on the hand before you can hold that solder gun right. But when it’s all done right, you have the best hardware porn ever.

Hardware surgery is about technique and beauty. It’s about engineering at it’s very best and architecture on a cosmic level. Figuring out what goes where, It’s the real life application of divide and conquer.

You see all devices (humans included) are made up of other tiny little devices. Some devices are core devices while others are peripherals. Some can only work when connected to the core backbone while others can also be independent little ninjas.

Hardware surgery is about getting to know these little buggers. Of course blessed by the smell of chlorine on PCBs and the orgasmic arrangement of tools (especially screws, they have my nuts going :lol: pun intended).

There is a beauty in opening all things up.

Originally published at Decode.