That "saw the bad crimp in 15 minutes" part hits home. I spent a whole afternoon once chasing a no-start on a generator and it turned out the battery terminal was just loose, felt pretty dumb after all that testing. Cheap tools that save you like that are worth every penny.

My buddy Pete swapped a compact flash card into his 80GB Classic last year with a $12 adapter off eBay, and it's still going strong. Parts being "impossible" usually just means you gotta look past the big repair shops.

Duct tape and a broom handle is peak engineering, just buy the $8 stick modules and swap them yourself instead of a whole new pad.