John, it's true. I've been downright immersed in AMS for the last 6 or 8 months. With Cary Altschuler's help I've turned a whole section of the shop into AMS-land, and we've serviced several dozen units. These are great boxes and practically no one in North America was working on them, so I took the plunge.
They're not easy to work on. Generally we pull all the boards, recap the power supply, add MOV's to the AC line (old AMS stuff hates AC line spikes), clean all the connectors, replace all the ribbon cables, then put the thing back together and see if all the boards work correctly. Usually a broken AMS will have 3 or 4 separate problems, at least one of them a toughie. We have about 150 spare boards in stock, working DMX and RMX units for testing suspect boards, and most of the weird IC's and parts they used. Without that stuff forget it, there would be no way to work on these things!
I'll soon be adding several nice AMS pages to my website.
Yes, we have a large amount of AMS service documentation. But I really can't share schematics with folks, so please don't ask. AMS was always very protective with their technical documents and I think I'd better respect that. I AM willing to help people with straight-ahead, specific questions about working on them, within reasonable limits. The web pages will include some basic service tips.
It's been an amazing experience getting to know these units. I won't claim that we know it all, but I think we've got at least 90% of it!
Yeah, I know, it's just plain mean, but...