Regale us with a story of the repair you're most proud of and/or surprised worked. I'll start.

Back in 1999ish we bought a (then) very expensive Sony Trinitron CRT television. It was widescreen, 32 inch, and so fucking heavy that we had to buy a special TV stand that was rated to 120 kg. I think the TV itself was "only" 80 kg.

It had component input (and a SCART input, remember those??) and you could operate it at up to 1080i, but the phosphor decay wasn't really good enough to pull off interlacing at 50 Hz, so we stuck with standard definition.

Anyway, about ten years later it started to intermittently fail to turn on, and then soon it would fail to turn on at all. A web search of TV repair forums suggested that there was a faulty flyback control IC, which if I lived in Japan would be covered under warranty, but lol, ask me sometime why I never buy Sony any more?

It was a very special IC, not something that you'd find at Jaycar or whoever was the Altronics equivalent back then. I think Radio Parts or its Sydney equivalent had it, so I ordered two, just in case.

I found a forum post by someone who'd read the service manual and done the repair, so I got out my soldering iron, and three of us hefted the TV onto the floor so I could pull the back off it. Desoldered the IC, messily, dislodged a SMT component in the process and bodged it back, then soldered an IC socket in its place (I'm not a fool). Reassembled the TV.

And the fucking thing worked first time. We were all too exhausted to lift the TV back onto its stand at the time so it sat on the floor, working flawlessly, for the next week.

When my father in law died in 2013 we inherited his 50 inch plasma TV, and we finally had no use for the Trinitron, which still worked perfectly. We dragged it out to the kerb in that year's hard rubbish. Several scavengers had a go at trying to lift it, but they all failed. The council took it away.

I still have the spare of that flyback IC that I didn't need. I doubt anyone would need it now, but if you do, just ask and I'll post it to you.