Part of it
Its amazed me that the more electronics has become a fabric of our culture, the less stores are commonly available. Maybe this goes hand in hand with the dumbing down in society, and the lack of desire to understand how things work.
Well, in most cases when you think you might be able to fix the device, armed with the level of knowledge you expect will be required, it will furiously resist being opened up, then, if you manage to overcome that, will even more furiously resist troubleshooting due to lack of documentation and adequate test gear, and finally, having found the problem component despite the hurdles posed by the previous steps, it will turn out it's a HXC42276 rev.2bc made by Yum Cha Super Victorious Enterprises, a 169-pin BGA chip. The only three references to this part found on the Internet are your own search for this item, and two 'component suppliers' who claim to be able to sell you the HXC42276 rev.2a (a 144-pin PGA), only in quantities of 1000+ and for an undisclosed price, but with a lead time of 48 hours which they similarly claim for all the parts they sell, which includes OC72 transistors and AZ3 rectifier tubes (all brand new, and again in quantities of 1000+ only).
In other words, the gigantic proliferation of special-purpose ICs has made it as good as impossible even for a decent brick-and-mortar store to stock the parts that could satisfy the requirements of repairing common household electronics. Unlike 30 or more years ago.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
