A general approach to hardware recognition is proposed for VLSI/WSI fault-tolerant processor arrays. The technique, called full use of suitable spares (FUSS), uses an indicator vector, the surplus vector, to guide the replacement of faulty processors within an array. Analytical study of the general FUSS algorithm shows that there is a linear relationship between the array size and the area of interconnect required for reconfiguration to be 100% successful. In an instance of FUSS, called simple FUSS, reconfiguration is done by shifting up to or down the surplus vector's entries. The surplus vector is progressively updated after each column is reconfigured. The reconfiguration is successful when the surplus vector becomes null. Simple FUSS is discussed in detail and evaluated. Simulations show that when the number of faulty processors is equal to that of space processors, simple FUSS can achieve a probability of survival as high as 99%.>