TNMOC restorations (was RE: Anyone off to VCF-UK?)

pre= I don't have the appropriate copy of Computer Resurection to hand, but hope I've kept the meaning) 'After basic electircal safety tests we applied power and the machine appeared to start up correctly' 'However one part proved unreliable, we replaced all the PCBs, but it was still unreliavly. In the end we discovered the power supply was faulty, so we replaced that' ... etc <<<< The article is online at http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/res/res48.htm#e It is worth rereading to correct your memories It shows that a great deal of care was taken in the process. There is, in any case, an important difference between attempting to restart equipment that had apparently been operational only a few months earlier before it was moved - in which case normal field-service procedures seem perfectly adequate* - and something that had been stored for years which might need treating as requiring the sort of investigation and testing that would be associated with rebuilding. * It is the experience, and thus training, of field-service organisations that a strip-down and rebuild procedure is more likely to introduce faults than to locate them with any reasonably modern equipment (and, in this context, PDP11/84s can be considered "reasonably modern"); This all changes, of course, if power-off time has been sufficient for power-supply faults to become likely. Andy