May 2022 - vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

VCF East Clinic kudos
by Crawford Griffith 02 May '22

02 May '22

Folks, I have to give a public Shout Out / Thank You to Jonathan Chapman and Glitch Works for the VCF East 2022 workshop / S-100 Clinic. Jonathan worked tirelessly to get kits built, and S-100 systems fixed, while being incredibly patient even with newbies, tough customers, and some idiot who clogged his desolder station. Highlights were: * Simply seeing 3 IMSAI’s (mine included) in a row on the CDL workbench with one early Altair was a treat. Ryan, Dmitry, and I got to see what other configurations the IMSAI’s had, and swapped known-good parts between us for testing. * Seeing a young woman come in, never having soldered before and seeing her first do a learners kit, then a full-on Glitch project. There was also another young woman there later (Connor’s friend) also doing a kit. * Just seeing people walk in, and say “so, what is all this”? and talk a bit about the CDL, and what we were working on. (Tip for introverts, the end of the front workbench nearest the door make you spokesperson pro tem) Jonathan’s expertise is hard to overstate, and he got my IMSAI operational. Jonathan did all the troubleshooting, and brought up the IMSAI power supply slowly so the electrolytic caps didn’t get all explodey I swapped out some known-bad front-panel switches, then the fun began. I recall there being at least a few badly tarnished TTL chips, and a bad one-shot chip. At least two bad IC sockets, one of which was under front-panel switches - Jonathan showed how the socket could be removed without major surgery. Dmitry loaned a 3 voltage / current limited power supply so boards could be tested *before* plugging into the IMSAI bus. In the end, I had a basic operational system, which is fantastic. Jonathan identified some of my mystery s-100 boards, procured at Trenton ages ago. In fact Ryan had one of them also to test, a video terminal board. Ryan also loaned me his front panel as a swap test, and the extra pair of hands needed for lucite cover re-installation. So, thanks Jon/Glitch! I promise to never clog up your Hakko desolder station ever again! -Crawford

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S-100 linear power supplies
by Martin Flynn 02 May '22

02 May '22

CDL is planning to stock capacitors for linear S-100 power supplies. Looking for suggestions on the values for the 8 volt and +/- 16V rails Martin

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] VCF East Clinic kudos
by David Gesswein 02 May '22

02 May '22

On Sun, May 01, 2022 at 10:57:16AM +0000, Alexander Pierson via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > While the Nova wasn't 100% after that, it wasn't trying to self-destruct > any more. > Did you find out later what the problem was?

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