Asklemmy

51205 readers

819 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

126

What’s something you own that has truly paid for itself? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Davy_Jones@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

245 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I’m curious, what’s an item, tool, or purchase you own that you feel has completely justified its cost over time? Could be anything from a gadget to a piece of furniture or even software. What made it worth it for you?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

I got a hot air rework station with a soldering iron many years ago.

The things I've repaired with it are so numerous, I cannot even recount them all, but here are a few:

an assortment of gaming controllers
a ghetto blaster from the 1970's
a few gaming consoles (Xbox 360, PS3 "Fat Lady")
retro technology (at least two 3Dfx Voodoo's and a rare Abit motherboard)
a full-metal eBook Reader (Sony PRS-505) that will probably survive an atomic fallout
a Panasonic broadcasting camera from the 1990's (because it looked cool and I wanted it to work)
a few LCD monitors

Even though some of that work was just replacing old capacitors, I have saved so much money by buying "broken" stuff and fixing it up. No regrets. Over the years, I paired the station with a hotplate and a solder sucker and now I could probably open up an electronics repair shop. But I mostly do these repairs for fun. Fixing things calms my mind and soothes my soul.

[–] pishadoot@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Can you post a gear list? I got an iron a while ago and some crappy Amazon sucker tubes but I really think I'm missing some stuff because I'm either missing stuff or using crappy solder. I like to try and just take components off boards for practice but even that is a huge struggle. I've fixed a couple things but it's rough work for sure.

I know it's probably a skill issue, but I think some other tools might make certain things a bit easier as well, but without someone I know to ask questions I don't want to just buy some random stuff.

[–] MutilationWave@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 weeks ago

Heat the metal, heat the PCB a little bit, then solder. I'm terrible at soldering and my friend just taught me that trick.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (6 replies)