Walter
Your reply mostly details hardware and perhaps my post was not clear but when I mention 'shared resources' I mean purely in the virtual sense of software code. The ARS-6 may phyisically be stand alone but if it is accompanied with support software then that is I presume installed within the system cabinet. I would then imagine that it is not reliably 'standalone' if it makes any function or subroutine calls on any of the (virtual) system resources, it could even write a single line of code which might effectly re-configure a shared block of computer code. If you have ever experienced a computer virus then you can see what a single line of code can do.
T.
PS. I only just came across this and you might find it interesting;
CCSR:The Chinook Helicopter Disaster