Just got done looking at Patrick's menu. Looks like a good substitute for Main Street... and looks rather easy to get to from Infoage. I see they have a cajun Bleu Cheese Burger, which is probably similar to the Black and Bleu Burger I regularly got at Main Street. I also see Patrrick's has flatbread pizzas, something I like to try out from time to time at various restaurants who serve them. My weekend at the Workshop started a little later than usual, as I arrived later than normal. I brought a set of TypeStore word processing devices which are designed to work with the IBM Wheelwriter or IBM Quietwriter to extend the functionality of those typewriters, through hardware, to a full screen CRT based interactive word processing system. I had three of them, which consisted of a main unit and an amber CRT. With a little poking around and Ian P's help, we were able to get them to power up. Normally they do not power up unless properly hooked up to the aforementioned IBM typewriters through their Feature Connector. Problem is, there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO documentation on the operation of these TypeStore devices, other than what I may have posted on my blog since I acquired them. Ian noticed that the Wheelwriter's connection probably causes a solid state relay to activate, thus switching on the system and monitor. When we bypassed that, the screen powered up and we were greeted with a "CODE 5 TO GO ONLINE" on the CRT. This means that you must press CODE+5 on the Wheelwriter to initiate the word processing system. We were unable to do that. The best that could be figured out is that the DB9 "DATA" connector on the TypeStore must contain the signal and bus lines fed from the feature connector of the Wheelwriter. But without documentation, we don't know which line goes where, and I had no pre-made cables for it. There are arduino projects out there that interface with a Wheelwriter feature connector for other uses, so if I can figure out the DB9 pinout, I may be able to use an Arduino to mimic Wheelwriter activity. Connor did me a favor and brought a Wheelwriter he had to the workshop, but unfortunately, it turned out to be a "Personal Wheelwriter", with an unknown feature connector status. After opening it up to look at the circuit board, it appeared to lack the electronics for the feature connector. This is probably why it was branded a "personal" Wheelwriter. It couldn't be connected to the TypeStore. Saturday, I helped a new member, Steve Lowrey, troubleshoot his recently acquired SX-64. Blank screen, solid disk drive light, and no blind command activity. Dead test carts didn't work, either. He had a breadbin C64 with all the main chips socketed, so we were able to test every main chip in the SX-64 to determine that they were all good, except for the PLA. After swapping PLAs from the breadbin, and also trying out my PLAnkton, we still couldn't get the SX-64 running. We exhausted all of the common checklist items for failure, and the next step is to replace the RAM and see what happens. Those parts are on order for the February Workshop. I then worked on the VTech Laser 310 I got at the Festivus swapmeet. It had a garbage screen and stuck keys when I first tested it. After a horrendous time of disassembling it and working through 15+ points of solder involving just the shielding wires and tabs, I finally got it down to the main board and the keyboard... which was still attached because they soldered BOTH ends of the ribbon cable to their respective boards. However, in its disassembled state, the computer powered up fine. I reassembled the entire kit and it still continued to work. Easy fix, I suppose. Oh... and I also brought special recipe booze that apparently was quite the attraction among the night owls of the Workshop. 😎 Jeff Salzman On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 3:00 PM CJ Reha via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
This was one of the better workshops in recent memory, I had a great time. As is typical I ended up working on a bunch of little things. I got in late Friday night as I'm pretty far out of town and fiddled around with a free Sony VCR which I eventually condemned due to impossible to repair cap corrosion damage on a ceramic hybrid module in the video path. I also brought an older Trinitron TV which I cleaned up, fixed and calibrated to give to Ian L as he needed a good looking set with composite. For the other Ian I brought a handful of boat anchor tube scopes and a Packard Bell color TV to downsize a little bit.
On Saturday I poked around a black and white Philco-Ford TV and was able to get it to produce a really crappy, inverted picture (after blowing up one of my clip leads when the main filter cap shorted). It uses a bunch of early and unreliable epoxy dome transistors in the IF and video path so my guess is one of them is bad, but I didn't end up having time to troubleshoot any further. Sunday I mostly helped Thomas out with museum stuff, I recapped the boardset out of the Philips CD-ROM drive and got a list of caps to buy for the Personal Iris power supply. It has a fair bit of cap corrosion damage as is typical in those systems but I think it will be repairable, I just need to get the parts and spend some stripping & cleaning it down the road. I also fixed one of the CDL's power strips which may or may not have blown up due to some shenanigans involving plugging caps into the wall outlet...but that's neither here nor there ;)
+1 for going back to Patrick's Grill, the food was great and very reasonably priced as far as the 2023 economy is going. Although I personally thought it was hilarious watching the Sunday Night Football crowd go nuts I think it might be for the best if we reschedule to some other time though!
CJ
On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 8:43 PM Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Seems like everyone had fun this past weekend with the repair workshop. The usual suspects were there. Lots of interesting stuff getting fixed.
David Gesswein repaired the VCF Museum's Xerox as well as the Sol-20. Thanks so much Dave!
One lady came who needed picture files recovered from her early 2000's Macintosh. Dan helped her to recover and transfer most of them.
Bill Dromgoole worked on the Univac a bit.
Thomas worked on the Iris Personal as well as The Philips CD-ROM. Supposedly this is the first CD-ROM drive ever made. Very cool.
For dinner Saturday night we split into two groups half went to Brick House Tap & Tavern, the other half went to MJs. Both were good. Sunday night we tried a new place Patrick's Grill and the 8 of us really liked it. So I will make reservations next month for this place.
Anyone else want to chime in on what they worked on?
========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/> jeffrey@vcfed.org