3 days to fix a pocket calculator from 1983

Found my old TI-30 from 1983 in a box and wanted to see if it still worked. Display was dead but everything else seemed fine. Took me 3 whole days because the fix was just a loose ribbon cable pin 12 on the LCD connector. I must have reflowed 30 solder joints before I found it. Anyone else ever spend way too long on something that turned out to be a simple connection issue?

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fisher.diana2d ago

Oh man, that is so frustrating, right? I spent a whole weekend once trying to fix an old clock radio and it turned out to be a single cracked solder joint that I could have fixed in two minutes. I felt like such a dummy after all that work, but honestly, those loose connections can be sneaky. It's like the universe just wants you to practice your soldering skills before it lets you find the real problem. I've definitely been there with projects that should have taken an hour turning into a multi-day ordeal. At least you saved the calculator in the end, that's a win.