A few days ago it got down to about 15C in the house and the Dana 5100 DC offset was a bit drifty. As good a time as any to fix the broken thermal bond on the reference.
I used Gorilla glue and a factory supplied clamp. Dual transistor Q5 has a Dana part number on the can 'MPS 200201'. Next step is to coat the assembly in a layer of thermal epoxy. I don't want the washer to come apart....
Afterwards, the meter failed in an entirely new way. There are two distinct fail modes. Power cycle will select one. In one there is no decimal point and the meter refuses to range, even on manual. In the other it hunts.
I double checked Q3 to make sure I didn't short the leads to case. - nope.
I'll have to work through the various subassembly tests, starting with the power supply and main board.
*per earlier discussion - I'm an American expat in the UK. My computer is set to UK English and I use an ISO-DE keyboard. I ignore the red underlines and despise autocorrect. Catalog Katalog catalogue.