8 Jun
1998
8 Jun
'98
12:23 p.m.
Oh come on. Unless there's been a PSU failure or
something, we are
talking about replacing 1% or so of the componets.
So? To the people that like studying the construction of things at the
component level, every part is important.
It's easy to spot an IC that's been soldered
by hand on a board of
otherwise wave-soldered components. So if you see a board with a lot of
wave-soldered TI TTL chips and one hand-soldered National one of a
different date code the obvious conclusion is likely to be right.
I do not know about that. With a good setup, even replaced surface mount
parts can blend right in.
This is a different problem. The CPU is often
socketed, and users
sometimes swap CPUs to increase performance. It's then not clear which
CPU should be left in the machine - the one it came with from the factory
or the last one that the user installed.
In this case, I would venture to say that greater than 99 percent of all
PeeCees have their original CPUs. Only geeks change their chips, Mr. and
Mrs. Jones do not.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net