Old Electronics
This page documents the old versions of the Mechanic job, variously called Electrician and Electrical Engineer in its older days. It draws from the archived Electrician/Electrical Engineer page from the days when Goonstation was hosted on ss13.donglabs.com and the previous iterations of the current Mechanic page.
The Old Way
Like today, to scan an item of interest, you would hit it with the analyzer. However, unlike today, the analyzer could hold only one scan at a time. To scan more complex apparatuses with multiple machines, like the cloner, you often had to carry multiple analyzers.
Next, you'd hit the ruckingenur kit with the analyzer to load the scan into the machine. Then, you'd click on the ruckingenur and tell it to "research" the scanned item, which took about two minutes. After that, you'd use the ruckingenur kit to create a data module 
, formerly called a data disk, and frame 
of the item.
Now here's the horrible part. You had to complete the frame by manually filling with it electronic components, like capacitors, fuses, and other actual circuit parts, from a special vending machine called the ElecTek Vendomaticotron. Complex machines needed tens or even hundreds of parts, component requirements were randomly generated, and if you made a mistake, you had to click on the frame in-hand to individually remove it. Thankfully, later on, you could add multiple parts in one go with click-drag.
- To check your work, you'd add the data module to your analyzer to load a "schematic" of the item and scan the frame, after which it'd helpfully tell you how many parts where left remaining. Sensibly, the analyzer could hold multiple modules/"schematics" at a time.
File:Solderingiron.png Following that ordeal, you'd click on the frame with the soldering iron to secure it and use it in-hand. If you had satisfied the part requirements, you'd get a box frame and could then use the soldering iron on it again to finally deploy it. If you hadn't, you had to use the soldering iron on the frame again to unsecure it and add/remove components as needed.
The New Way
In early 2014, Goonstation coders I Said No, Keelin, and others replaced the system you see today. The Mechanic page has been updated since then, but the section describing the process is still called "R&D", an vestige of the days when the ruckingenur kit did in fact do research and development. Also, the current MechComp vendor has 30 of each component, just as the ElecTek Vendomaticotron did. Sign of something more or simply a byproduct of lazy copy and paste coding?
The old resistors, screens, batteries, and other circuit components, instantly recognizable by the phrase a "A [NAME] used in electronic projects." in their Examine text, still very much remain. Many of them drop from destroyed Syndicate drones and other robots, and you can still make boards through the general manufacturer. If you could get a hold of a frame, you would still be able to add these components to it, but you wouldn't be able to deploy it or anything.