On Sat, Apr 30, 2022 at 4:50 PM Crawford Griffith via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
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
I was glad to give Glitch permission to do a S-100 clinic due to the shortage of kits this year. It only made sense to do something in addition to the kits this year as they would sell out quickly and something cool needed to be in that area. It appears to have been a wonderful experience for everyone.
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.
I will be taking care of that idiot next year to prevent them interfering with not only that area, but all areas of the show.
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.
Very cool!
* 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.
Always good to have new people!
* 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)
Good to talk up CDL as well as VCF!
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!
Glitch always does wonderful things in the Glitchworks workshop during VCF East!
-Crawford