short story i was showing one of the builders my a1200, i was showing him the ide port when i saw that it was lose, on closer inspection i saw two of the pins broke off and are stuck in the ide wire, is there a way of fixing this and how 
It's not as big a disaster as it sounds. The broken IDE port can be desoldered (although mad soldering skills are probably requiered due to the age of the solder can make it tricky to remove), a new pinstrip shouldn't be hard to get hold of and solder into place.
