Does anyone remember the recent PC911 thread dealing with the way Dell assembles PC's now? There was a link in there that pointed to a graphic detailing production time and method differences between their "old" way and their current methods. One of the points made was that current PC assembly takes about 2-1/2 minutes, and another was that there were but 4 screws used.
Today I got a Dell Optiplex GX1 in here with some hard disk drive problems. First one of these I've seen -- with the new case design. Guess how many screws secure the power supply? The mainboard? The riser card?
This thing is actually scary -- and now I can see how they made the "4 screws and 2-1/2 minutes" claim!
The power supply mounts to a hinged bracket with one screw -- but probably comes down the line pre-assembled to the bracket -- installs to the case with no screws.
The mainboard is secured to the case only by the four mounting screws and two posts for the Slot1 HSF bracket -- standard mainboard for this case -- most likely also pre-installed prior to system assembly. Mainboard grounds are made through use of slots with spring clips around them fitting over "blades" sticking up from case lower pan.
Case fan -- doubles as CPU fan -- ducted to the Slot1 CPU heatsink assembles to the case with no screws -- snaps in. Duct snaps in, too.
Riser card (expansion slots) -- pre-assembled to a bracket -- mounts to case with a plastic lever lock assembly. This assembly carries all expansion cards as well -- but standard mainboard includes LAN, video, and sound -- typical PC only needs one expansion card -- the modem -- one screw.
5.25" drives (CD-ROM, etc.) preassembled to individual slide-in trays -- no screws for installation to case.
Floppy drive -- pre-assembled to a mounting tray -- one screw to secure it to the case.
Hard disk drive(s) pre-installed to a standard cage for this case -- secures to case with one screw.
All case trim and final cover are screwless type -- plastic with spring catches.
So -- count the screws used in final assembly:
modem-to-riser card -- 1
hard drive tray-to-case -- 1
floppy drive pan-to-case -- 1
Assuming they're using the pre-assembly techniques above, the drone doing the final assembly typically has but three screws to install during final assembly of the unit!
As to the assembly time -- taking the case pan with the mainboard installed, but all other items out as sub-assemblies, it took less then 3 minutes for me to put it all back together. First try was closer to five minutes, but after only 3 tries, I had it down to 2 minutes and 47 seconds. Imagine the possible speed of someone doing these all day long, with everything readily at hand...
As to the problem the unit came in for -- it was built with a non-branded Maxtor 91536U3 15.3GB drive. Clearly a Maxtor drive -- even has all of the standard Maxtor labels in place -- but has absolutely no Maxtor ID -- or any maker's ID on the labels. Only name ID of any kind is the Maxtor name screened on the drive's PCB. Even all of the standard copyright and patent information is missing from this label. Drive does ID as a Maxtor with MicroScope, so the firmware still carries the maker ID.
The drive developed a large number of bad sectors -- almost 10% of the drive. Dell allegedly denied warranty coverage to the customer, which is why the unit came to me. As it turned out, the portion of the drive that was hosed is where the Windows and Windows\System folders were located.
