[vcf-midatlantic] Sick Laser 128

[Hagstrom, Paul]

> 
>> and so it begins.
> 
> What's that supposed to mean?

My guess: Following temporally from the previous statement ("and"), in the manner exemplified by the utterance of the statement ("so"), a drawn out effort to keep vintage computing equipment in working order, along with discussions of said effort, and of the degree to which the effort was predictable and is worthwhile, accompanied by the provision of occasionally conflicting advice from various people ("it") starts ("begins").

Am I close?  :)

I don't have any experience with Laser 128s, but this sounds like a pretty general failure, like the ROM is no longer accessible or something.  If this were an Apple II, the fact that you have text at all would indicate to me that the processor is running and the video circuits work, but the processor maybe be just hanging trying to run garbage code.  ?  Or, perhaps RAM is needed in order to get through startup far enough to beep and something's wrong with the RAM (though I think you can probably make it to the startup beep on the Apple II without functional RAM -- never tried).  When I've seen a dead 6502 on an Apple II, it's usually not garbage text on the screen but just a kind of checkerboard, but I suppose that's another possibility (that the 6502 is not starting).