So I'll confess here.
I got a lecroy oscilloscope at surplus a bit ago. This was before I was getting into electronics again seriously, and it had no vertical sweep. I thought maybe I could fix it, so I opened it up and looked inside. While (I thought carefully) trying to pull the front off, I cracked the picture tube. So I took it apart because that's what I do... or did.
So recently I got the idea that maybe some of the parts I could sell on ebay. I had already thought it was the CRT driver board, so I scrapped that, and sold most of the rest of the parts. One of them being a rather beefy power supply (this was not the same model Dave tore down, but it was similar). I cleaned it up with a duster and thought "hey, this is pretty cool, maybe I can get a little of what I paid back".
Sent it to the guy, he sent back "I had to fix it, some of the caps were blown, and the electrolyte ate away at the sense trace". So I opened up a hi res picture I took from ebay, and sure enough, electrolyte everywhere.
I have no idea how, even in my rather green (even though I've been at it for years) state, I missed that. Thankfully he was just grateful to have the power supply and was able to fix it, but I have no friggin' clue how I missed that. Maybe if I'd noticed, I could have fixed the supply and the vertical would have started working. Maybe if I'd even looked in the first place.
I take a whole bunch of stuff from this experience, but the biggest one is.. man, I hate feeling stupid. I have many, many years at development and linux administration, and can run rings around even some experts, but here I feel like I'm this child who's just learning how to walk. Sigh.
Note to self - always inspect caps, and a bulging cap is not the only evidence of failure. *grimace*