On 12/31/22 11:43, Steve Platz via cctalk wrote:
I recently got an Osborne 1a, which needed a lot of
cleaning and had probably been stored in a barn for some time. After getting the drive
parts to move freely again and removing a blown cap on the power supply, the machine will
start up and the screen is green, although it's just showing some random characters. I
understand from someone's advice that some RAM may have gone bad. At this point
I'm not sure if I should continue to try to get this going, or just resign it to
someone with better resources for diagnosing the issues. If anyone has some advice for
moving forward with this, I'd be interested to listen. Some context: this is my first
such restoration endeavor. Thanks - Steve
You're actually pretty far along, as opposed to having a brick.
Because of the storage conditions, do clean any sockets and contacts to
see if some of the problems can be resolved. Bad RAM on a system this
old isn't unusual. Schematics are on
Bitsavers.org.
Cheers,
Chuck