Re: (The trade)Golden years.?
I'm going to say 80s as well - for the most part electronics were still made with widely available discrete human - handleable devices and standard building-block ICs and even microprocessor systems were mostly still made with separate processor / EPROM / RAM / I/O ICs. ICs of course were all DIP and often fitted in sockets, so it only took a moment to verify a suspected faulty IC.
In addition to this, availability of service information / circuit diagrams / service manuals, many excellent with really detailed circuit descriptions, was still widespread and normal and the high initial price of things like video recorders made them worth getting fixed if they went wrong, which was good for those in the business of repairing them.
For another generation (including a great many here) the valve era - relatively simple circuits made with man sized components, valves which could easily be changed, and again wide availability of parts and information must be their golden age, but I did not live through that era. I remember valve based equipment in our home but by the time I became interested in electronics myself, transistors, Germanium at first, were the leading edge in consumer and hobby electronics.
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