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

[Dean Notarnicola]

I worked on my TI Peripheral Expansion Bay and floppy drive. With the
generous and expert help of Doug, Ian, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff and others it was
checked out, cleaned, running and fixed.



On Sunday, January 31, 2016, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

> 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!
>