[vcf-midatlantic] Workshop Jan. 30/31 Report

[Jeffrey Brace]

So the workshop was great for all of us! Lots done, lots of fun! :)

16 showed up Saturday, 8 Sunday. 5 of us worked on Commodore 1541 drives
Saturday. Others worked on S100, PDP-8, Terminals, etc. The five working on
the 1541s mostly sorted through The Federation's 1541 drives and tested
which were good, medium or bad. Some were fixable with just using a q-tip
and alcohol to the drive head. Some attempts at re-seating chips and
voltage testing was done, but only for a small percentage of the drives.
Further repair and diagnostic wasn't possible due to running out of time.

I worked on my own personal 1541 drives myself was only able to tell which
were working or not without opening up, repairing or running diagnostics. I
spent a lot of time helping with The Federation drives and other Federation
business (running the workshop etc.) and had little time for my own stuff.
I did learn from Bill Degnan basic troubleshooting for 1541 drives. I hope
to work on them and apply what I learned next month and be able to actually
guarantee most of them 100% working.

We had a special visit on Sunday from Rob Clarke. He is a Commodore guru
who lives in Switzerland. He was in the Philadelphia area for some other
event and hung out with us on Sunday. Since I lost all my Commodore help
with the 1541 drives (they went home Saturday night), I decided to get
Computer Eyes up and running. After about 3 hours I was able to get it to
work! I captured a black and white image of myself and later a group photo.
I even printed them out.

Can others tell what they worked on and their progress?

Our next Workshop is Feb. 27/28. I hope to see many of you there!