[vcf-midatlantic] Workshop this weekend - Thoughts?

[Jeffrey Brace]

Chris,

I was wondering the same thing. I would say from experience with repairing
Commodore 64s at the workshop, I would bring 5-10. Some you would use for
parts, but I would expect at least 5 can get fixed. But this workshop is
unusual because we got a lot of people that know their stuff coming to help
and lots of people working on fixing. If you want to bring 20, that is
great. I wouldn't expect all to get fixed, but there is a great possibility
that they can. For myself I will bring 5 working drives, and 10 non working
drives. Some of them I have labeled as to the dysfunction with a post-it
note. I don't have a lot of experience fixing them, I have tried cleaning
some and they remained unfixed. My gut tells me that a smaller percentage
can be fixed with cleaning them 10%, a bigger percentage could have chip
issues like 25%, maybe 50% have component issues (capacitor, resister
etc.), another 15 percent are disk head or speed issues. What does everyone
else think?

Jeff



On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 12:15 PM, Chris Fala via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

> I have been really looking forward to an opportunity to get some
> experienced assistance repairing 1541 drives. I acquired several on eBay
> and other sources over the last couple years. Some were functional, some
> worked after the heads were cleaned, and some are still malfunctioning for
> unknown reasons. I haven't had the time to dig deeper and diagnose the
> problems on these. I hope that I can learn more about these this weekend
> and get at least some of this last category working.
>
> Practically speaking, how many drives should I bring this weekend? Is 20
> too many or is it possible to actually work on that many in a day? Are
> there common problems that can be addressed quickly, or is it more likely
> that each drive will require unique troubleshooting?
>