Workshop February 11&12, 2017 Wrap-up
So we had a good turnout for this workshop. Some highlights: Evan worked on his Lego/Apple BASIC robot as he prepares for TCF. I worked on my Capsella C64 robot for TCF as well. Ian helped to repair the original Mac and the Commodore PET that are displayed in the museum. Bill Degnan also spent a great deal of time repairing the Commodore PET that is displayed in the museum. Todd George worked on his Commodore 4032 PET and diagnosed the problem to two ROMS. He used a diagnostic chip to test it. Bill Inderriden worked on getting the TR-20 up and running. I forget what others were working on exactly, so please chime in to explain to others what you were working on. -- Jeff Brace - ark72axow@gmail.com
I forget what others were working on exactly, so please chime in to
explain
to others what you were working on.
--
Ian worked on early Mac disk drives, taught me how to fix a stuck drive, replace gunked up grease. He also worked with Corey to repair a Sanyo tv. There was another guy, forget his name with an early Mac for repairs. I built one of Michael Hill's Pet Drive kits. Adds a SD card storage to a Pet, like a hard drive. Dean and Drew worked on a Tandy 2000 but the power supply was bad. Alex was there, he had a little MicroVAX-II and some other stuff not sure what exactly he was working on too. You ate 7 slices of pizza. Bill Degnan twitter: billdeg vintagecomputer.net
Bill Dudley dropped off various books and documentation On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 7:25 AM william degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
I forget what others were working on exactly, so please chime in to
explain
to others what you were working on.
--
Ian worked on early Mac disk drives, taught me how to fix a stuck drive, replace gunked up grease. He also worked with Corey to repair a Sanyo tv.
There was another guy, forget his name with an early Mac for repairs.
I built one of Michael Hill's Pet Drive kits. Adds a SD card storage to a Pet, like a hard drive.
Dean and Drew worked on a Tandy 2000 but the power supply was bad.
Alex was there, he had a little MicroVAX-II and some other stuff not sure what exactly he was working on too.
You ate 7 slices of pizza.
Bill Degnan twitter: billdeg vintagecomputer.net
Alex J. worked on the Commodore PC-III, and the Emerson 286, from the storage area. Both need batteries, and I took the Emerson with me, for modding of the Dallas chip. Jonathan S. worked on the VAXstation, and got it partially running. - Alex On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 8:02 AM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Bill Dudley dropped off various books and documentation
On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 7:25 AM william degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
I forget what others were working on exactly, so please chime in to
explain
to others what you were working on.
--
Ian worked on early Mac disk drives, taught me how to fix a stuck drive, replace gunked up grease. He also worked with Corey to repair a Sanyo tv.
There was another guy, forget his name with an early Mac for repairs.
I built one of Michael Hill's Pet Drive kits. Adds a SD card storage to a Pet, like a hard drive.
Dean and Drew worked on a Tandy 2000 but the power supply was bad.
Alex was there, he had a little MicroVAX-II and some other stuff not sure what exactly he was working on too.
You ate 7 slices of pizza.
Bill Degnan twitter: billdeg vintagecomputer.net
Ian worked on early Mac disk drives
Indeed! He got our 128K Mac drive working, but it was inconsistent so he swapped in an 800K drive from a Plus. He also swapped some of the guts from the monitor of a later PET 2001 (keyboard style) into our chicklet-style 2001 monitor -- I'll let him elaborate on what exactly those guts involved. Then he worked on the chicklet PET's cassette drive; he said the mechanical parts are good (needs a new belt) and he'll spend time on its electronics another day. Meanwhile he taught me how to fix the non-responsive orange buttons on an Apple // joystick (mostly just open the joystick, dip the buttons in alcohol, press them a zillion times).
There was another guy, forget his name with an early Mac for repairs.
Rob
You ate 7 slices of pizza.
That's not true. He ate 7 whole pizzas.
<snip>
He also swapped some of the guts from the monitor of a later PET 2001 (keyboard style) into our chicklet-style 2001 monitor -- I'll let him elaborate on what exactly those guts involved. Then he worked on the chicklet PET's cassette drive; he said the mechanical parts are good (needs a new belt) and he'll spend time on its electronics another day. Meanwhile he taught me how to fix the non-responsive orange buttons on an Apple // joystick (mostly just open the joystick, dip the buttons in alcohol, press them a zillion times).
I replaced a burned out resistor in the monitor circuit board. We wanted to figure out why it was being burned out but we could not locate a replacement for the TIP29 transistor that we suspected was bad/the cause pulling down the resistor. Makes sense to replace the entire monitor, but it'll be green not blue text. Next workshop someone may want to bring a TIP29 or equiv. to continue with the repairs. b
Evan worked on his Lego/Apple BASIC robot as he prepares for TCF.
The robot broke in my bag. I spent a couple of hours figuring out how to rebuild it. There were extra parts... Then I had to adapt the code for a different slot. I used slot 4 on my //e at home, but the Laser 128 uses slot 7. There are two places in the program where this is indicated. One place, in the Lego-provided initialization routine, is easy: it just says S=(#). The other place is a memory address that Dan R. determined and explained to me a few weeks ago. There's a very simple equation to change it for different slots, which I completely forgot to do until another hour went by. It dawned on me while I took a bathroom break. :) After that I started working on improving the robot code itself. Ian, Google, and (especially) Adam helped me a lot. I have to plow through some more BASIC glitches but I'll get it done sooner or later.
participants (5)
-
Dean Notarnicola -
Evan Koblentz -
J. Alexander Jacocks -
Jeffrey Brace -
william degnan