DEC troubleshooting - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

5 Nov 1998

At 04:48 PM 11/5/98 -0500, you wrote:
...
 > Sure.  Tell the customer he/she will be down an
extra hour while
> you extend the board to find the fault, desolder the chip
> and replace the 10 cent bus driver.  Nope.  Swapping was reality in the field
...
   when I was
there.  
I must agree here. Doing component level debugging just makes no sense in
the field.
    It may not make sense time wise but it does when you consider the cost
of sparing circuit boards instead of component parts.  I worked in field
service for Burroughs Corp and a private company that supported TI and IBM
mainframes and we ALWAYS did component level repair. We didn't even have
spare boards.

...
   Board level
(early 80's DEC) was (unfortunately) 
 replaced with shotgunning and option swap out by many in the late 80's. 
Did the boards not go back to DEC for rework?  
   I later worked as an electronics technician for a company that had been
sending industrial controller boards back for repair. The flat rate cost
was $800 per board. I was hired to repair the boards and they saved the
cost of my yearly salarly in the first month.

   Joe
...

William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net