Artist's commentary
Hang in There, Kogasa-san 3870
It was actually a major struggle.
I located and replaced broken components, but it wouldn't work, so I located and replaced other broken components, but it still wouldn't work, so I replaced quite a lot. Ultimately, an IC that I thought was okay was also broken, and once I replaced that, the machine worked.
This part of the story was just the same thing going on and on, which I figured wouldn't be funny even if I drew it in the comic strips, so I omitted it.
After a year, I was saved by asking Bing AI, "Isn't there a data sheet for this IC?" about the IC from a few strips back, and it was able to show me a different IC with the same pin layout. Thank you, Bing AI!
Chat GPT just gave me some vague answers and left me confused, by the way! :-)