KL-10B in DEC-20 [was RE: Who's rewired their house for this hobby?]

[Eric Smith]

On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 2:01 PM, Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at update.uu.se> wrote:
> However they were allowed to buy upgrades. So the ordered a 2060
> "upgrade" for their 2020 and pursuaded digital to make sure all
> paperwork only mentioned an upgrade. It was successful and when
> upgrade day came they rolled the 2020 out and the 2060 in.

In the telecom industry, that's known as a "forklift upgrade", and
it's become a major selling point of equipment if it is claimed to be
upgradeable without that. How well that really works is an open
question:

1) The non-forklift upgrade sometimes involves replacing everything
inside the box, so all that you're actually keeping is the chassis,
backplane, and power supplies. Sometimes not even the backplane, if it
can't support the necessary bandwidth for the upgrade. Sometimes not
even the power supplies.

2) Even when the non-forklift upgrade doesn't require wholesale
replacement of the guts of the box, sometimes the cost is still very
close to the full replacement.