Then I decided that I ought to test the backup mixer CPU / power supply that I bought some years ago as a spare and never opened. All I had to do was get it out of the box that it came in and take it into the studio.
And then open it up and replace the battery. And then wire it up to the d8b.
Except that I couldn't disentangle the cables that connected the working CPU to the d8b so that I could use them to connect to the spare CPU for testing. They were trapped in the tangle of cables under the console.
So I unplugged everything. This didn't help much.
So then I took out the patch bays and unwired them. Still not much help.
Then I removed a mass of rack mount gear. Well, now I could see what I was doing.
In the meantime, I covered up the pool table and moved the old d8b out of the studio and onto the pool table. At this point, I realized something that I should have remembered.
There is no shelf under the mixer. And I was planning to put things on that non-existent shelf.
Oops.
So in the near future, I will be heading out to Home Depot and picking up a piece of half-inch oak plywood to fill the hole.
After I finish untangling the cables...