Should you correct production mistakes?

On 08/25/2010 07:34 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: I have a different take on it. What is the breakage? If it's failure is intermittent and CANNOT result in damage I'd class that as minor and leave it. But document it! If the failure could do minor damage but easily repaired It would required evaluation and a decision. Document the problem and actions taken or not taken. It's a intermediate concern If the failure can result if significant damage or unrepairable damage or the possibly of severe damage. Repair or mitigation should be applied to prevent that. Document the mitigations/repairs and all the supporting decisions. This is a major concern as it can render the machine useless inert mass or possibly worse. The minor could be a gate with a transistor that has compromised characteristics. This has historical value. Intermediate could be a core driver that threatens to burn up a sense inhibit line making for a difficult and time consuming core repair. Major could be a power supply that fails and goes over-voltage enough to destroy whole sections. Or a situation like PDP-15 had where there was a fan failure that could result in un-contained fire. At the extreme this is a hazard to people and other artifacts. At best it will result in the population of working machines to very few or zero. A great loss. I have not specified how the modification or repair is done only the process leading to it. Something rare and hard to find spares for repair should have all efforts made to do so in a reasonable way. Safety should never be compromised. Allison