In the early Nineties when I arrived at STOIC, the studio was kitted out with old BBC amplifiers. These were tempremental devices but cheap. There was usually swearing over the DA during productions and the defective amps were swapped out with ones which had been repaired. I am not sure if it is known why it worked but kicking the DA rack usually made more of the DAs work, it at least reduced stress in the control room. The DAs created a lot of heat which was good in the winter but not as fun in the summer.
When the studio was redeveloped the DAs were rebuilt to a design produced (and bodged) by Bryan at great cost to the Publication board budget.
The first appearance of the DAs in a film was a humorous piece created by Carl Fairhurst using clips from Terminator 2. This contains one of the few occurances of the word "bodge" in the STOIC archives.
The DAs also stared in an animated film made using a portable UMATIC recorder
A bunch of DAs were recently see in a car boot sale in Bletchley for 50p per rack.