First I'm popping my head above the parapet for the first time in a while; ancient computer ventures *have* been proceeding at the Corestore, but less so in the past due to pressures of other activities. Hopefully I'll be much more active again starting now or soon! I had a great time exhibiting the 'live restoration' of one of my pdp-15s at VCFeast; put some names to faces and had a good time all round. We got from a machine in bits which hadn't been powered on in 15 years, to an operational 11/05 front-end, and a -15 CPU which passed smoke-test and had a working console. We failed to make the most optimistic scenario of toggling in short programs due to a dodgy memory box power supply. Not bad for a few hours work. Next time I'll reserve more space, I won't arrive late, and I'll put up barriers and a 'do not feed the hacker' sign! Couple of questions occurred to me as a result of this exercise. If something is just a bit mucky from years of service/storage, I'll give it a good clean but otherwise keep it as original as possible, with a patina of age. But if something is really ratty, especially with evidence of corrosion, I like to refurbish it completely to as near as-new shiny condition as possible, in every part and detail. With that in mind: 1. I have a good number of ratty old H960s with flaking paint & rust, mostly just in the bases. My projected 'refurbish' technique would involve drilling out the rivets holding the verticals to the bases and tops, shot-blasting/wire-brushing/otherwise-abrading all the old paint and rust back to smooth bare metal, and repainting them to give shiny like-new H960s. Does anyone know the exact size and spec of the rivets that hold an H960 together? Does anyone have any relatively shiny near-new H960s spare/for sale? (I know someone who might, I'm talking to him already!) 2. From time to time I've seen discussion of cleaning techniques for circuit boards here, specifically DEC modules, mostly the M-series flip-chip stuff. Was there ever any final conclusion as to the best way to cosmetically clean them? I've seen accounts of washing them in (?soapy?) water, rinsing, and leaving them in sun to dry. Is that really safe? Thoughts on other cleaning techniques? 3. When cosmetically refurbishing/repainting power supplies - H7420 etc. - does anyone have any good and valid suggestions for reproducing the DEC lettering and legends printed on the power supply? Photograph it and make some kind of transfer or sticker perhaps? How would one go about that? Thanks folks Mikehttp://www.corestore.org