All those resistors, capacitors, even solid state devices we use are slowly going away. The things we as builders and tinkerers need for our electronic creations, that are readily usable, and you hold in your hand without tweezers, and don't need a magnifier to see, are being replaced with surface mount devices on a bigger scale. Hopefully there will be a company or two tailored to prototypers we can get parts from if it really gets bad. There are solder station setups and techniques you can use for the SMD stuff, but on one repair job I did, and will never do again, I turned a soldering iron tip to a needle point on my lathe, and used it remove and install SMD diodes on a highly populated circuit board with a mix of component types, and through my magnifiers, it looked like I was trying to solder taxi cabs to the streets in Manhattan with an ICBM. I knew something might be up when Newark was selling the common value 1/2 watt resistors for less than one cent. Prices like $.003 were common, and I stocked up on all the values I run across in my work. A dollars worth would purchase a lifetime supply.
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(built if for Dad in 1968. Still works perfectly!!)
