a for-parts machine doesn't work

'I've tightened up all the loose screws including those crumbly grey ones'. Those being the ferrite cores, of course. Do that on certain old mdems (to keep this on-topic), and whoever gets to fix it will ahve a nice long day with 'scope and sig-gen ;-) While I would never claim that only 'authorised service personnel' should try to fix things (for obvious reasons...), I do prefer it if repairers are somewhat clueful. And I'd much rather have to repair a single 'natural' fault that assorted 'man made' ones... When I buy old UK telephones (another of my interests) I prefer ones that have not been converted to the 'modern' (1980) plug-in wiring system. For at least 3 reasons : They probably haven't been messed about in other ways; If they once had interersting extra facilities (swithces, etc), they will be intact, and most of the time I actually _want_ those; and since they can't just be pluged in and used, they tend to be a lot cheaper... -tony