Love your stories guys, plaster falling from the cieling! :) ABC, Robocop was indeed one of the first if not the first film with the then new Dolby Stereo Spectral Recording maybe that's one of the reasons why you were impressed, I believe the latest R1 DVD include the original 4.0 mix but maybe you saw a french dub when I think about it.

I must ask a question regarding the Academy Mono track for Star Wars, what was the most common speaker configuration for that track in the cinema, was it played through only one single speaker or several ones? Also what is your prefered way when doing your own encode of the fan restored track, dual 2.0 mono or 1.0 mono? I'm curious.