Show us your ugly repair

[setq]

Ah yes, landscaping 

This CA3046 from a Tektronix 7603 had one bad transistor (C-E short).
With no spare at hand initially, and to avoid blowing another anyway, here's an ugly hack to continue troubleshooting.
It survived, and through an accidental deep search of the parts bin, a replacement has since turned up ...

I actually really like that one. I did something similar with a CA3096 in my function generator's DC offset amplifier. The thing had an open transistor in it, fortunately only Q3 which was is as the tail resistor in a diff amp so I snipped the legs off the IC and wedged a 2n3904 over the top of the IC and into the socket. Worked fine and still does to this day.

[TheBay]

Who remembers the sampo firmware hacks, this caused the specific line of EEPROM prices to spike during those years. Fortunately I found a nice alt at a fraction of the price but required an "adapter" (It was also slower but aside from menus loading a tad slower, it DVD player had little problem with it.)

(this was from 2002) I have a grainy pic of it installed somewhere.

Wow thanks for jogging my memory, I'm certain I used to repair Sampo and Sampo rebadges in a place I worked once, my memory is very vague but forgot all about these.
They were everywhere in the UK as you could make them region free and were quite cheap too.

Nice hack with the adapter!

[sidspop]

No pictures unfortunately.
A chap brought me a Kenwood TS50 ham radio years ago with an intermittant problem.
Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't, but a smack on the top made it function.
It transpired it was a bad connection somewhere on the main board, and by pushing it down by all of half a millimetre it would function perfectly.
After messing with it for an hour or so, we came to the conclusion that some CAB was needed. Cardboard Aided Bodgery.
A small bit of card, taken from a cigarette paper box, folded up and positioned, and the covers replaced. To this day the radio still works, about 20 years later.

[EPTech]

Hi there,

A family member asked me to look at his Iphone 6. His screen had been replaced and U2301 had been chipped of in the process, including 3 pads. He already ordered a replacement part, a 4 pin BGA of about 1x1mm. In the picture (sorry about the poor quality) you can see how I flipped it upside down, soldered 4 0.05mm wires to it, and attached those to other connections in the circuit. I painted the entire thing over with rework lacquer so the IC and the wires are fixated. It was a nice experience.

Greetings.