On 10/09/2005, at 10:31 AM, Tony Duell wrote: Nah - there's only one board to replace (or go wrong) :-) I used to maintain 780s, 8650s and 8800s so I know where Tony's coming from here although I was more of a diagnose then board swap kind of guy whereas I know Tony fixes at the IC level. Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"

Realistically 11/780's are now of an age that contact reliability for all those cards is the biggest issue. 4000-60's aren't spring chickens either but they have a lot fewer components and way way fewer sockets/contacts. I've done component-level repair on both 11/780 systems and 4000-60 systems but it was always at the line-driver/memory chip level, i.e. parts that are very easy to isolate and diagnose often through the very process of swapping out stuff at the board-level. VAX6000 systems are probably the ultimate in over-engineering for reliability and although they've got a lot fewer boards than a 11/780 they still have some BI-bus contact reliability issues despite a much slicker edge connector and less age. Tim.