It's brand new. How could it not be good?

This sysadmin pilot fish got his start dealing with issue-plagued hardware -- not in an IT department, but working his way through school at an electronics repair shop.

"A TV came in, and I diagnosed it as a bad high-voltage module," says fish. "I grabbed the only one we had in stock and replaced the bad module with it.

"The TV didn't work -- it had exactly the same problem."

Did I get the diagnosis wrong? fish wonders. But after troubleshooting for other problems, he can't find any.

So he orders a new module, plus a second one to keep in stock. When they arrive, he installs the new module in the TV. The TV still won't work. He tries the second module -- and the TV still won't work.

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