Clueless Museums (was: Final Xerox Star demo)

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Mon Jun 8 19:23:26 1998

> Oh come on. Unless there's been a PSU failure or something, we are
> talking about replacing 1% or so of the componets.

So? To the people that like studying the construction of things at the
component level, every part is important.

> It's easy to spot an IC that's been soldered by hand on a board of
> otherwise wave-soldered components. So if you see a board with a lot of
> wave-soldered TI TTL chips and one hand-soldered National one of a
> different date code the obvious conclusion is likely to be right.

I do not know about that. With a good setup, even replaced surface mount
parts can blend right in.

> This is a different problem. The CPU is often socketed, and users
> sometimes swap CPUs to increase performance. It's then not clear which
> CPU should be left in the machine - the one it came with from the factory
> or the last one that the user installed.

In this case, I would venture to say that greater than 99 percent of all
PeeCees have their original CPUs. Only geeks change their chips, Mr. and
Mrs. Jones do not.

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Mon Jun 08 1998 - 19:23:26 BST