I certainly don't live on this site, but I certainly try to keep tabs as best I can, and bend over backwards whenever I can to help someone. I happen to be out town dropping my daughter off at college for her freshmen year, and have not been online for a couple of days. Considering how much Barry and I are on the site, and how quick we jump in to help someone, nights, weekends, etc. I find this and other similar comments made in this thread to be offensive and uncalled for.
At this point I don't know the whole story, but I can say a few things . . .
I believe this is the first time an owner has had this type of a complaint with our service and support, and look at how many people were so quick to jump into this thread. Amazing how many strong and definitive opinions people have who don't know the facts, but are ready to make huge declarations as we'll as seeing so many posts from folks who have never shown any previous interest in AP or Houdini and seem to know very little about us, but are happy to join the frenzy. Shows how some members of this community are all about tearing things down, which is always easier then building things up. People wonder why manufactures aren't more active on pinside, I give you exhibit A.
Joe Newhart is a great guy and is clearly going above and beyond and I as a member of the community I appreciate him doing that. As Joe indicated it is a slippery slope. We have a lot of great distributors and I am happy to have Joe among them, and he knows that.
I can say with confidence the code update issue he was experiencing had nothing to do with the board issue. As the OP indicated, we gave him a ton of support working through that issue. In fact, I was emailing with him at the same time I was loading up the SUV and getting ready to hit the road.
FETs on the driver board, as Gerry has indicated, are through hole and are not difficult to replace, but at the point I don't know exactly what the issue with the board is. Not like we have dealt with a ton of board issues.
Sorry if I am coming off as a jerk in these comments, but, those who have been following us and see how we go about doing things, understand my frustration and anger at seeing a thread like this.