At the end of the day, the safest way is to pick up the phone and ask people you trust. The supply of information may be more limited, but at least you know the source !

The bottom line, then, seems to be - what a load of bolus!

... beyond that, in fact! Perhaps the only way to have something like this is to have a new website that is open to subscribers only (that in itself should sort the wheat from the chaff, I should imagine). Something for me to do, perhaps … ? I’ll give it some thought if anyone else considers it worthwhile. There are many such sites for other technologies, but I don’t hear much about non-technical types “having a go” with the information published on them (how many people really want to discuss things like DOS USB drivers, for example? Only extreme techies, I would have thought). However, I must concede that our game is a bit different, in that it can result in direct (sometimes dire) consequences to patients, so I must conclude that a restricted access site is the only responsible answer.

Geoff,
Do you mean only technicians who have proved themselves good enough to reach a certain standard can read the forum and post on it?
I wonder if this good idea should be put to the Government, they could start a register of such technicians. It would, as you say, sort the wheat from the chaff.
Robert

I would say a strong no to this. Especially access codes.
If an incident occurs, items are quarantined and the history downloaded. It would be too easy for a person to use this type of access to cover their tracks if a mistake was made.

Little ‘books of knowledge’ do not get updated and are not always based on 'best practice'.

Seems that I’m being misunderstood (again?). Personally, like Steven Levy, I believe that not only should access to computers should be unlimited and total, but all information should be freely available to anyone and everyone. I am strongly against any form of censorship, and an absolute advocate of free speech (the debate about which, of course, has been very much in the news recently). By the way, why not check out Steve here ?

So, I’m not talking about this (ie, the ebme) website, as it’s already been decided (?) that free interchange of technical information about our sort of work would be “dangerous” – see the above posts!

I don’t understand your point, Col. Who is talking about “incidents” here? All I was getting at was sharing of technical knowledge, especially in regard to recurring (or stock) faults. I thought I explained it well enough, but obviously not! Once again, this link gives the idea. I would disagree about “Little Books of Knowledge” too, the web is updated constantly (as this very forum proves), and I would say too, that this forum is as good an indicator of de facto “best practice” as any other freely available source. Am I wrong about this?

Geoff,

My prime concern would be the posting of access codes and access to service menu items on a public forum, or even on a closed forum where the reader may not be experienced enough to know the consequences of accessing the service mode and making a change.

This leads on from comments from Dave H and Richard. I have gone off your original topic and I apologise for this.

I give up!

Sorry about the repeat posts, Huw (kindly delete as necessary). For some strange reason the system seems very slow to react this morning. So that's me off now!

Meanwhile, in the spirit of keeping good old kit “on the road”, so to speak, here's a site that I discovered by accident which I thought other "hands-on" types might find interesting. Anybody had a go with this approach?