I know the feeling. And frankly, I'm sure there's plenty of stuff that can't be fixed without propietary diagrams, etc.
But I can never forget my a/c transformer breaking down in Spain a couple of years ago (and not due to over-voltage, as the thing was 220v-compatible). My friends took me to a back alley where this elder man from the Far East who hardly spoke any Spanish took out a multimeter and started measuring at various points.
He fixed a part which in the U.S. is a standard throw away and replace. Not saying the Kessy situation is exactly the same, as a Kessy is many orders of magnitude more complex than a simple power adapter, but goes to show in someplaces some people still fix stuff which over here is automatically thrown away without blinking twice.
