@codewiz If you're going to throw the component anyway, you can trim it off on both sides before trying to remove the leg, that normally makes it easier to desolder. Have you got a pointer to the cheap pump iron? The ones I've seen are silly money.
@inthehands Sounds like chip design/CAD software. I remember in a startup my boss installing a new Cadence component and hitting a problem with it, and getting the response from support that they hadn't had anyone get that far before.
@cks You can do crash dumps on Linux; they set up a kexec into a small setup held in reserved RAM and it does the dump; you then use 'crash' to poke at the dump file later. The RHEL etc set normally do that by default. (But I'll agree filesystems panicing is generally bad)
A while ago, I think it was @mos_8502 that mentioned diode matrixes as old ROMs, I think with a picture of an old computer board. The thing with Diode matrixes is you could make them yourself - here's one my dad made probably in the late 70's, holding morse code for his callsign and common phrases (probably a CQ etc) - I've not decoded it yet.
I've just watched the film Darkstar for the first time; very odd film... It's got to be partially inspiration for lots of things; the trope of interacting with the computer in the computer room , the trope of starting with a communication from Earth that explains everything. etc (This was desperation of using my free trial month of Prime...)
@dick_turpin It's pretty fucked up; Southport is relatively nice compared to it's neighbouring seaside town of Blackpool; not quite just pensioner level, but not a *complete* shit hole; or at least it wasn't.
@dick_turpin Yeh it's a while since I've been, I'm thinking 2010ish, but it was still reasonable; they did lose their amusement park to a shitty more basic one, but still it has that nice town centre and gardens and stuff.
I've posted my dad's tower on eBay; please spread it to any amateur radio/comms/lighting/etc people you might know in the UK who might have the means to collect it!