>I must agree here. Doing component level debugging just makes no sense in
>the field.
Even less so nowadays -- people can't stand to have their systems
down for a minute let alone 15 or so...
>Did the boards not go back to DEC for rework?
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 '_at_' 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 |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
Received on Thu Nov 05 1998 - 20:57:49 GMT