[Myrddin]

As a young married couple, our budget was stretched. No room for extravagance like a TV. My dad's old TV was built with discrete components. The shop said $250 to diagnose and replace the bad board. He handed me the TV for free and purchased a new replacement for himself. I had the schematics. I turned it on and the problem was obviously sync. The sync board had 9 transistors. I used my VOM to check the EB junctions and found a bad one. A trip to Radio Shack yielded a replacement for $1.59. A couple minutes with the soldering iron and the TV worked again. I kept it for another 3 years util the wafer switch contacts had such deep grooves that the tuner was unreliable.

[fireman15]

It is strange that with all of the electronics that we are now inundated with that fewer and fewer people seem to have a clue how to do anything with the hardware. I do have a couple of eprom programmers and various other equipment and tools, but I have to admit that all that I have ever done is repair stuff and build projects from kits and plans.

I am hoping my next project will be a CNC conversion on a small milling machine. I have a book with plans for building one up from scratch, but will probably get a kit to convert one of the X3 type mills Harbor Freight or Grizzly sells for a few hundred dollars. I always have admired people as creative as it sounds like you are.