Here's a funny note about the VCAs. The Bell Telephone techs were NOT trained to install or option the VCAs. I actually provided the Bell Techs a cheat sheet for them to option the cards correctly. After a dozen or so installs, the Bell techs just left the VCA cabinet and cards on site and never installed them. Like you, they were fed up with trouble calls because those cards were so badly made. If you carried around a fist full of 120 ohm 1 watt resistors, you could fix most of them in about 5 minutes.
Rcaman
