> How do you figure out "by simple trial and error" which piece failed, why it failed, what the original piece was supposed to look like, and finally repair it,

> How do you figure out "by simple trial and error" which piece failed, why it failed, what the original piece was supposed to look like, and finally repair it, without expert knowledge and precision tools? Agreed. Restoration of an already usable typewriter might be that simple, but if any of the 2000 parts is damaged or missing good luck finding or fabricating a replacement. (Also good luck finding a service manual!) I love typewriters, I use and collect them, and I've taken a few of them apart for maintenance or repair, and in my experience the mechanisms are too complex to suffer much trial and error without risking further damage. While reading I couldn't help but notice that the ForeverComputer sounds a lot like a TRS-80 (or indeed many personal computers of the late 70s-early 80s). A TRS-80 CoCo could, with some clever extensions and stretching of the rules, fulfill most of the listed requirements. Plus it's already 42 years old, so it only has 8 more to go!