I believe that 2345As are already off of the list of equipment that HP will
provide support for.  Various other companies I am sure would provide support
for these units but I have recommended for a long time that companies NOT put
these units on support contracts.  The reasoning is that a) these DTCs are
extremely cheap and easy to get on the used market b) it's easy to setup a
spare/replacement and c) the hardest part about dealing with a failed DTC-48
is digging it out from behind the usual maze of cables and coordinating any
and all accompanying downtime.

I have seen a few interface boards go out in these things at a client's site.
 We simply swapped all the cables over to unused ports on other boards and
ignored the failed board.  That was miles easier than figuring out how to
pull the failed board out from behind hundreds of cables.

If you have a situation wherein you have a single DTC-48, then just acquiring
and configuring in a spare provides 100% redundancy using maybe $200 worth of
used hardware.  Far cheaper than any DTC support that I've seen in the past.

The same approach can be taken with other pieces of equipment.  I would
suggest doing this almost anywhere that you can setup redundant equipment.
Examples:

LaserJets - why be subject to the failure of one key printer? 5Si units are
ridiculously cheap right now.

Dot matrix line printers - same logic.

DDS tape drive - if you have one drive... add a second.  maybe in an external
cabinet so it's easy to get at...

Optical drives - does anybody even use these?  The jukeboxes are very
mechanical and as such should be more prone to failure.  Another thing that
is usually inexpensive on the used market.

Wayne Boyer
Cal-Logic

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