WOW! You are adventurous and quite determined as I know from personal experience how difficult it is to open up the ACM without damaging the circuit board or components on it. Man, that looks pretty old, way different from any ACM I've seen (although the basic layout is recognizable). The key is what's on the other side!
On a side note I do believe the issue of bootloaders is relevant to the ops post. Rasheed is correct, every module has an associated chip which requires a bootloader, some have several. If any of those few but critical components fail you'll be SOL, period. And if the Ops modules are bootless he would want to know it (that module will never work) and focus his efforts accordingly. End of bootloader subject. However, that's doesn't mean that the thousands of other electrical and electronic components within the Alta can't fail and be subsequently repaired.