23 Apr
2001
23 Apr
'01
9:29 p.m.
The only one of those that's even marginally hard
to find is the 5380.
AFAIK, the other 2 are either still being made, or at least there are
plenty of stocks of them (at least over here).
So if anyone actually ever wanted to use the boards the ICs could
be replaced.
And IMHO there are less rare machines to raid for the
5380 (I won't
mention any of them, to avoid flames, but, heck, it turns up on some PC
SCSI cards...)
In many cases
the only way to repair some classic systems is by
cannibalizing others.
Sure, for rare parts, or custom parts, or parts that simply aren't made
any more. When I found a few boards stuffed with AMD2900 series chips in
a surplus shop, you can bey I bought them and removed the chips (the
boards had already had the edge connector fingers cut off to recover the
gold from them, and anyway I have no idea what they came out of).
But for common, still-easy-to-get parts, I'd rather buy them new than
strip them out of a classic computer.