As I have mentioned before, when we get machines in we check first to see if they work; if they do we merely reformat them, and put them on a special shelf we call the "shipping department", waiting for us to identify a school, church, or other non-profit organization that needs them. If you know of such a need, let me know, because we have several checked out 286 and 386 machines (and perhaps a 486 or two) that are ready for a good home.

If the machine does not work, we then try to identify the problem, substituting parts we have already checked out on our testbed, and when the unit is operational, it is processed and placed in the "shipping department".

If we cannot get a unit to ever work, it becomes a "donor machine" and is stripped down into its constituent parts, which are placed in boxes to be tested on the testbed (an operational computer with nothing screwed down, and will all parts just sitting on a sheet of foam, so that it is very easy to substitute parts).

Periodically we will schedule someone to work the testbed, running one disk controller after another, or one floppy drive after another, or one mouse after another, through the operational testbed system to make sure that it still works with that new device in place, and if it does, an "OK" sticker is placed on the device, and it goes into the box to be used as replacement parts to try to fix machines that don't work when they are first received.

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