Now let me add to the reasons to repair instead of replace. A 20th century appliance is built so simply that it's easy to repair, and there are repair people who still know how to repair it. If you were to replace it with a 2025 appliance, that appliance would go bad in 4 years and would cost the purchase price to fix. So I just made your case 🙂 Back in the 80s, I was a computer tech, maintaining systems from Data General, DEC, Collins & Prime. Back then, the equipment was very expensive and worth it to take the time to repair. In addition to board level repairs, on the Data General Eclipse systems, I'd get right down into the microcode, which was the "software" within the CPU. The Eclipse used 4 4 bit wide bit slice processors, ROM and a lot of logic
On 6/27/25 01:52, Steve Litt via Talk wrote: that occupied 2 15" square circuit boards. These days, a tech of my calibre couldn't even attempt to repair a CPU, because it's all in one big IC. I have done board level repairs since then, working with surface mount devices, but even at that skill level, I couldn't repair something, if I couldn't find a replacement part. BTW, back then I read about the new Intel 80386, which was supposed to be as powerful as the VAX 11/780 CPU. I realized then, my days as a computer tech were numbered.