I've got an older friend that I help with electronics repairs. He's been doing this stuff since the 1950s, but he's got cognitive issues now, so I've become his

I've got an older friend that I help with electronics repairs. He's been doing this stuff since the 1950s, but he's got cognitive issues now, so I've become his apprentice. (I'm 61) He was taught by TV repair men, who emphasized getting things fixed quickly and effectively. We recently repaired a TV he acquired from 1948.... we eventually got it working, albeit with a very dim display, as the CRT was older than most of us here on HN. All was well, but there was an intermittent... I eventually traced it down to a single wire... that looked like it was connected, but measured as an open circuit. It hadn't been soldered correctly in 1948, and percussive maintenance would make it contact well enough to then arc and stay connected (it was in a high voltage focus line) We had a Kilowatt RF Power Amplifier that just wasn't working correctly, no gain, a "grounded grid" design. It turned out that after much grief, the grid wasn't grounded... the bolt grounding the grid looked like it was well connected, but measured as an open circuit! In software, it's amazing how many times = and == get confused, one of the many reasons I prefer Pascal, with = vs := Of course the ultimate story is the "magic/more magic" story from MIT.[1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250713004447/http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20250713004447/http://catb.org/j...