End of Surplus?

[Tony Duell]

>    OTOH separating it and spreading the parts out might allow SEVERAL Novas
> to be made operational again instead of just adding one more (non-working?)
> to the number of Novas out there.  AND before anybody spouts off that the

This is clearly directed at me...

> owners of the broken Novas should fix their problems at the component level
> and not use parts from another one, I'll point out that several of them
> have INCOMPLETE Novas and need the boards, PSU, cables etc to even attempt
> to fix their machines.

I have never had a problem with saving and/or collecting spare boards. I 
do it all the time. I/O boards in particular are desirable because you 
can add extra serial ports, disks, etc to an existing machine.

I have no problem with spare CPU boards either (I've got a complete set 
of spares for my P851 and P854 machines, they were given to me with the 
machines... for example). I don't even really object to swaping boards 
as maenas of _repair_ once the fault has been definitely located, 
although I rarely do that. What I do object to, and continue to object 
to, is swapping boards essentially at random as a method of 
fault-finding. It's caused me far too many problems...