There's nothing wrong with taking two broken boxes
and making one good
one out of them if that's possible.
Sure there is ... if there's a good possibility that you could have
taken one broken box and made a good one, or better yet, taken two
broken boxes and made two good ones!
There's nothing wrong with swapping parts etc. to diagnose and get
the first one running, however unless the components you need are
unobtainium, why not get the second working as well - Especially
with something like an Apple /// which is not all that common.
(And having a working one as a reference, the second should be
pretty easy to diagnose).
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools:
www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html