Old school timer vs digital, I'll take the analog one every time

Been swapping out a lot of these smart appliance boards lately and honestly, the old mechanical timers were easier to diagnose. Last Tuesday I had a dryer in Columbus that kept stopping mid-cycle, took me 20 minutes with a multimeter to trace it back to a bad relay on the digital board. With the old timer setup I could watch the contacts close and hear the click, done in 5 minutes flat. Anyone else feel like the new stuff is just harder to fix without a laptop and a service manual?

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veraramirez4d ago

That Columbus dryer job sounds like the exact kinda headache that makes me want to throw the whole board out the window. But here's my question for you, and I'm genuinely curious not trying to be difficult, what happens when that old mechanical timer finally wears out and you can't get a replacement part anymore? I've got a 1987 Whirlpool washer in my basement that still runs like a champ, but I had to hunt for three months just to find a new timer knob for it. Meanwhile the digital boards are everywhere, just not worth fixing half the time. So are we really better off with the old stuff, or are we just lucky the ones we've got haven't totally died yet? I feel like we're all just holding onto these relics until the parts dry up completely, and then what's the plan?