I use an electronics "station" thing that has potentiometers, LED's, a breadboard, speakers, and lots of other things which i use for my probing. It's really easy to hook up IC's and other things on the breadboard which can open up experiments a lot, and as you've pointed out, can help the "point it and see" technique which we all use too
Thanks for the reply. I'll have to try discharging capacitors next time i break something.
But what i was really looking for was... There must be some sort of standard routine that electronics repair people go through to find simple problems when general consumers return their TV's, DVD players, those sorts of things. Obviously you'd look for any places where the wires/connections have broken, but then what? How would you check if power is getting sent to all the components? And if it is, then what would you check next..? If everything is grounded as it should be?
I opened up a Yamaha DX 27 I bought (in bad condition). It was working fine, and then i opened it to secure a power connection that was falling out. The power connection thing (where'd you plug in your adapter) had already been replaced/changed at least once, so I assume that is the problem again. But anyway, i resoldered a joint, put it back together... and it's never turned on since. I couldn't have fucked it up too bad- it's not like I was paticularly careless when opening it or probed *anything*... so....
I would guess that the problem would be easy to fix, as with lots of broken things. But i just don't know how to find that problem.