AlphaStation 200 NVRAM Problem

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Tue, 26 Apr 2016, Swift Griggs wrote:

> Also, I still deal with a lot of business clients running alphas and 
> Tru64. There is a guy in Thornton, Colorado who I get quite a few dead, 
> spare, and orphaned alphas from. It's an electronics supply type business. 
> I'll see him this weekend and I can ask him if he's got any spares or dead 
> mobos he could fork over.

 Does he get any mechanical parts as well by any chance?

 I've been looking for a... screw, DEC P/N 12-32249-01.  Of course my DEC 
3000 can live without a screw, however some are still around I suppose, 
perhaps in unusable remains heading for the scrapper, so why not save one 
and have my box fully fixed instead?

 This is not an ordinary one of course, being a 6-32 x 5/8" (or maybe 
9/16") Phillips dome head rib neck carriage screw, used as an insert for 
captive thumb fasteners in DEC 3000 AXP model 400/600/700 boxes, 5 per 
enclosure.  I've put photos of the broken part for a reference here: 
<ftp://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/linux/mips/people/macro/axp/>.  They must 
have been purpose made.

 The screw and the front bezel have suffered in transit as a result of 
inadequate packaging, obviously from the parcel having been dropped.  The 
bezel might be recoverable with some glue and I'll try to get it together 
over the weekend, now that I've decided this box a go; the screw is 
obviously beyond repair however.

 These mechanical parts seem tougher to get then the electronics -- I 
guess they are thrown away first and/or nobody even bothers offering them, 
expecting no interest.

  Maciej