Comment on 'boardswapping' as part of the computer culture.

[Jules Richardson]

Tony Duell wrote:
> As regards what's more successful, _every_ time I've tried 
> board-swapping, I've had more problems than I started with. When I find 
> the fault using test gear, I put it right, and the machine stays working. 
> Quite likely board-swapping will get the machine to do _something_ again 
> in a shorter time than finding the fault properly, but doing the latter 
> will get the machine doing the _right_ thing, and will make sure it keeps 
> on doing that.

You know, that always surprises me - I'd expect board swapping to rarely 
cause problems for reasonably modular systems (I can believe it with 
such as DEC hardware though, where you so much as cough near it and 
something breaks ;)

Depends on the nature of the fault I suppose. For field faults on 
current hardware I would expect board swapping to hardly ever make 
things worse (my annoyance there would be if failed boards were just 
tossed rather than being fixed back at base). For restoring classic 
machines that may have been kept in bad conditions or not powered up in 
years, it's likely a different story!

cheers

Jules