Reading this is a bit like a good horror story to me - scares me to think about all the stuff involved but engrossing and I keep reading to the end.
I only owned EMs up to fairly recently. Then I got a Nugent (thanks Greg EB) which was problem free. It got my confidence up to buy a pretty damaged Flash thinking I might be able to learn how to work on SS machines by getting Flash up and running. I bit off more than I could chew and thank heavens for Ken! I would love to know how to do the magic with driver boards, MPUs, diodes, etc.