[Wendymott]

In the last couple of days, I have been dismantling one of the "poorly" 290's. And its quite a job. Who or whom ever designed the main pcb, must have had some sleepless nights..It is literally jammed with components.. not a spare mm2. To strip the pcb it is impossible without a heat gun. The PTH pads especially the ground pads really suck up the heat, and no matter what you use. All the leaded components are "hairpin" formed thus allowing such a compact assembly. This is where it gets virtually impossible to fault find. If you are working on one without another, to locate the actual component, it is near impossible, as I have not found any pcb component ident data, except for the alignment pages. showing the key adjustments..
Another discovery was...the amount of "interconnect" wires..... NO wire Links.. just pvc coated wires everywhere. This is where I have been going wrong... my pcb designs are based on T/C links to get power from A to B.....thus the pcb's are larger than need to be...neater yes...but space wasting. Lesson learnt.