Even less so nowadays -- people can't stand to have their systems down for a minute let alone 15 or so... Yes, they did, with red tags on them supposedly describing the fault to help someone diagnose and fix the boards. But many of them simply ended up in salvage, which many of us used to visit each week to find stuff for our home systems. At that time (more than a decade ago), scrap and salvage at digital was a way for employees to get hardware, usually at the board or FRU level... I remember finding lots of boards which basically said that they were dead, and I found that they had been misconfigured (some options had 1=off and 0=on for switch settings). When I configured them correctly, they worked just fine. Then there was the core memory option for my 11/10... it simply said 'bad' on the red tag... I examined the board and found a transistor hanging on by only one lead... I found a replacement, soldered it in and the board worked fine... I miss salvage... Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com | | Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+