The person doing board repair this morning asked me if I'd like to look at a Logicflex board that he was ready to scrap. He'd spent about an hour on it and couldn't fix it. I did the usual checks and concluded that A15 was shorted to something but couldn't find where. I gave the board back to him, told him about A15 and said to go ahead and scrap the board.
He eyeballed the board for about 10 minutes and found a 0805 .1ufd capacitor that had gotten under the SMT DIP socket and had been reflowed/waved between A15 and A16.
The chip was completely covered by the socket and could only be seen at an oblique angle and only over a few degrees.
I've worked in electronics for over 30 years and this is the most perverse assembly error I've ever seen.