Quote Originally Posted by aditya View Post
.............Do these photos help to determine if the common rivets are part of the current path (ground) and whether or not it is therefore advisable to connect the rivets with wire?.............

No it is not necessary. The lugs are not at all connected to the circuit path in any manner. You can see that the green area is actually the blank area of the circuit-board. The copper colour-ed areas are the real tracks (electrical). This style of connecting things are different from the 19's which was point-to-point wiring type, and hence will benefit from shorting all of them with common jumpers. No such thing is needed here, except changing ageing components may be.

Aditya
Looks like I was way off in guessing that the green areas might be the ground.......