I have two "identical" 1.2GB Western Digital HDs and one has just died.
I've talked to one professional data recovery company and they quoted me
$1100-$1500 for the 1.2GB MS-DOS HD -- I think my data was valuable -- but I
also think that I've got most of the source code stored on it distributed
around a half-dozen other computers around here and at work so I'm going to
pass on that route.

I could possibly do a board transplant to see if the drive died because of
the electronics or not and if it did, I could recover the data.

I'm an aerospace engineer with EE & CS degrees with 30+ years experience so
electronics and repairing equipment is no real scary prospect, but I've
never done this kind of work before and I was looking for some guidance as
to whether it's
a) unscrew + unplug, then reverse the procedure
b) (a) + some minor unsoldering
c) You'd better have your own factory and clean room

TIA
Norm