An article on the farmer's right to repair his own tractor appeared today.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-19/right-to-repair-tractors-taken-up-by-the-accc/12156196

About time someone took some action on this.

Unfortunately, for a long time now, the world has just been letting companies of all sorts crap all over us.

The guarantees of fast, efficient and inexpensive after-sales service from all companies is not worth wiping one's backside on. These promises are made by sales managers. Service managers then explain the facts of life. "We can't come today because so-and-so is sick." Or "we can't come today because your spares are still on a boat coming from China", etc.

I get this all the time at work. And when I have the hide to ask why spare parts are not on the shelf and ready to go when customers need them I just get the usual, "ohhh golly gosh no, no-one does that anymore".

And then, there is a myriad of proprietary operating systems and client software packages out there - each tailored to specific industries, equipment and tasks. Usually, each company only employs a few people who know the complete ins and outs of these systems, with your standard field technician not quite kept up to speed on a lot of the quirks associated with unusual breakdowns. Those who own a building with a Simplex fire indicator panel will probably know what I mean. More often than not, the knowledgeable people will reside in a different state and be busy when you need them too.

Those who own a building with a Simplex fire indicator panel will probably know what I mean.

Try owning one with a Cooper panel in it. All knowledge and support originates from the UK where it's made, but thanks to a local buy out some years ago it's no longer sold or supported here -- a case of the old buy out competitors and shut them down trick. We can still get some parts, after a wait, but the system knowledge is practically non-existent locally and it's too sophisticated for the average fire technician to nut out.

No software upgrade (i.e. bug fix) has been available for about 8 years.

There are days that I curse the fire systems engineer who recommended this thing to the developer.

Come time to replace it, the shortlist will comprise only those brands which have dominated the local market for years, have numerous parts suppliers and are known by every Tom, Dick and Harry technician in the game.

The rule of thumb with fire indicator panels is replace after they pass their 20th birthday. The unfortunate part of this is that if the current system is no longer made, the detectors and DGPs (if any) will also need replacing and if the building is over a certain area the new panel will need to be fully addressable. There is no small cost to such an exercise.

The best fire indicator panels available now come from Notifier Inertia in my opinion. They can be operated almost blindfolded and everything is on one board instead of having a cabinet with a motherboard and a million daughter boards.

I share your pain.
I have been trying to get a schematic diagram for the 1974 Mercedes 280SE ECU. I have had nothing but crap from Mercedes. The fuel injection system on these is completely different from modern technology. You could not remanufacture these. They are based on germanium transistor technology. They are a bunch of pigs to deal with.

The best fire indicator panels available now come from Notifier Inertia in my opinion

Notifier and Ampac are two names that techs rattle off as being easy to use, fix and get parts for, but they say each brand has its quirks. The roughly 9 year old Cooper FIP is analogue addressable and uses it own proprietary comms protocol, thus requiring use of Cooper-made devices.

Whenever I raised this matter with the Owner Committee members, their eyes tended to glaze over, so I used to characterise the problem like this: What he have now is a temperamental Ferrari. Next time around we need to get a Holden or a Falcon -- there are thousands of them on the road, practically any mechanic can fix them and a range of parts are available any day of the week from Repco.

Now that Holden and Falcon are history here, I have to say Toyota or Mazda.

Back on the subject of right to repair, the proliferation of embedded computers in just about every machine and appliance is the big worry. Quite apart from manufacturers restricting access to the firmware, if they are unscrupulous they can very easily program a timer/counter into the CPU to shut down the component or initiate a fault mode requiring a service call or even complete replacement.

The trick is that the makers of the detectors aren't always the same as the makers of fire panels, though some brands make both. Popular brands of detector such as Hochiki look the same in every installation, but will contain different firmware depending on the panel they are connected to. This applies to both addressable and non-addressable types.