Thanks to all of you.

I can see getting ICs and even semiconductors from Mouser and Digikey,
but where do you look up the generic equivalents to order? Are there
books published, or do you have to do it online?


Try www.nteinc.com, they have a good online cross reference. What sort of
generic equivilants are you looking for? If it's something like a resistor,
potentiometer, capacitor, etc you can get that stuff anywhere. If it's a
special form factor (size, shape, etc) you might be forced to get it from
the manufacture of the equipment or modify something to make a generic part
fit. Transistors, diodes, and other simple semiconductors you can often
substitute something similar if you have specs for it. I'm not aware of any
books, they'd be obsolete before they hit the shelves, there are catalogs
from all the various companies but these days I just use the online catalogs
since they're always up to date. Nobody local sells most of the stuff and if
they do it's more expensive than placing an order online for a bunch of
parts.

For a lot of parts, I just punch the number into Google and see what comes
up, for example when I needed an STK-4277 convergence IC, Google found a
whole slew of places offering it. For consumer electronic repair specific
places there's Electronix Online, MCM, MAT Electronics, Parts Express, and a
few others I've used occasionally.