Switches can short out? Really? What is it inside them that shorts out? They don't have any capacitors or anything, do they?

Ahhh, I hope what you said about 'what it would do to the rest of the machine' doesn't actually happen...I'll switch out the analog board with a known-working one (to be obtained at a later date) and then with the original one outside of the machine, I'll be able to examine it more closely.

-Apostrophe