I own a house built in 1974 with a Murray split-bus fuse panel. It had pullout fuses for the range (50 amps), the dryer (30 amps), the AC (30 amps), and the feed to the edison base part of it (60 amps).
The edison base part of it had held 12 fuses and 11 of them were used.
The only problems with it grounding-wise were that it only had one ground connection to a nearby waterpipe. A ground rod was driven and a new ground wire run to where the waterpump comes out of the foundation.
I ended up replacing it with a Square D QO panel because the fuseholders were in pretty poor condition, and finding replacements proved to be impossible.
I think the builder must have gotten a deal on these fuse panels (which were used all over the development, as far as I know), since the 1975 NEC prohibited their use in residential applications.
[This message has been edited by brianl703 (edited 12-18-2006).]
