<I've tried using a heat gun to unsolder things, and I can't get it to =
<work. Either the solder doesn't melt, or the board gets too hot an bad =
I use that trick to get parts off board where I don't care about the board.
Sometimes I apply a propane torch. I get good parts but the boards a mess.
If I want to lift parts and keep the board I have a tin container filled
with about a 1/2 inch of solder (used for wave soldering). heated over a
gas stove (coleman) I can float a board and pick off components with
tweezers. takes a little care to keep the heat reasonable.
Allison
<The biggest thing you mention is CACHE. Try it on a 386 without cache.
<I'm amazed how much cache improves the performance of a 486 or Pentium.
<I ran a Cyrix 586/133 without internal and external cache and it ran
<Unix slower than a 386SX/25.
Cache, is a big plus on any system where main memory is slower than the cpu
memory cycle. Even teh fasest machine without cache is going slow terribly
as it has to wait for ram and even fast parts are sub 40mhz under most
cases.
The old -11s benefitted as the Ram(semi) or Core was very slow, typically
0.400 to 1.8uS so that was always a limit.
Allison
Yes, I maintain the InnfoGraphics warehouse. Jim Willing has been a good
customer and a valued source of advise. He has bought many systems over the
years, several SOL-20s, SWTP S-50, IMSAI, NS Advantage, his Vax750 and more. I
only wish he had told me of this list years ago.
I am closing out the warehouse very soon, hopefully January. I am getting
ready for a large auction to empty the space. So, if you are interested in
anything please contact me now. I have posted a couple of lists to the mailer.
I have a couple more that I will post over the holidays.
I have not had the warehouse open for sales for nearly a year. I have done all
of my sales through the Internet. I have sold lots of my collectable computers
through this list. Many thanks to the list provider and maintainer. Much of my
lab equipment I have sold through the LabX Auction. Highly recommended
http://www.labx.com/
I am open for private showings for a very short while. I can be reached at
whoagiii(a)aol.com, my regular mail address. Please contact me there. I am oft
out of town for meetings of a nonprofit I am involved with.
One of the latest discoveries is a Lilith Mouse in rough condition. The
original Lilith you can add to my top 10 sins.
Thanks for your interest.
Paxton Hoag
> you think -3C is bad... Come and try our -15C to -20C here in the great
> Minnesota...
Minus 15 C right now ? thats lower than in Sibira !
Thats around ZERO Farnheit (isn't it ?)
Brrrrr.
And he is in Minneapolis. I used to live near Duluth and remember a week
here and there of -30 F. That is before the wind chill factor. I
recall -85 and -90 wind chills. Now I am in North Carolina in the middle of
an ice / freezing rain storm. Just got power back after a tree dropped on
the line about 9:30 this morning.
Dan
In a message dated 12/10/98 5:49:29 PM Pacific Standard Time,
zmerch(a)30below.com writes:
>
> I like Tex stuff (that's what my o'scope is nicknamed...) as I worked with
> some early color printers from Tektronix when I worked for Electronic Data
> Systems (General Motors) back in '89 / '90.
>
Speaking of weight are you interested in a 4692 or 4693. I had two 4691s but
they got parted out, sorry.
I posted on another thread of the dimensions and weight on the Tek 8000s.
Much lighter are a set of emulator plugs for the 7D01 Logic analyzer. I have a
8080 and a 6800 plug in, a couple others and documentation that I am
interested in selling. I also have a few Tek calibration instruments left.
I also have a couple of 4315s, 4404 & 4405 systems. I also have a rare 4113,
4125s, 4115s, some upgrades to 4128 & 4129.
For Tek Terminals I have 4105s, a 4107, 4109s, 4111s, 4207. 4208s and a 4211.
I also have mice, pads and pucks.
And I am looking for a manual on a 4096 plotter but have not found one yet.
If interested please e-mail me directly at whoagiii(a)aol.com.
Paxton
you think -3C is bad... Come and try our -15C to -20C here in the great
Minnesota...
-----Original Message-----
From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Thursday, December 24, 1998 8:49 AM
Subject: Re: vaugue musings...
>
>> Merry Christmas All
>> It's after 7:30pm Xmas Eve, and it's 36C.
>> Seeya
>
>If it wasn't for Christmas, I'll hate you for teasing us
>with this ridicoulus temperatures while we have -3C :)
>
>Anyway, Fr?hliche Weihnacht to all of you.
>
>Servus
>Hans
>(Going for my mother to part in Christmas dinner, off until Monday)
>
>--
>Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
>HRK
>
Boy, Hans, you are a better man than I am !
I've tried using a heat gun to unsolder things, and I can't get it to work. Either the solder doesn't melt, or the board gets too hot an bad things happen (foils lift, board chars, etc.). It sounds good in principle, and obviously its a matter of controlling the heat, but I have never been able to get this to work satisfactorily.
I feel like I've been "unassembling" items back into the original kits.
I have recently acquired a variety of old S-100 stuff, very dirty and mostly not working. I spent a lot of time cleaning up an IMSAI, it was really dirty. I disassembled it completely, even removed the motherboard. Cleaned everything completely with flux remover and solvents, and reassembled. Did some troubleshooting and some parts replacement, and have obtained some additional boards from various other people. It now boots CP/M, but only in a very limited way (e.g. it?s a crude BIOS, single drive and console I/O only, minimal, but it works).
I took two Cromemco Z-80 CPU cards, neither working, and removed all of the IC sockets from the boards, then rebuilt the boards with all new sockets and all-new IC?s (I seriously considered soldering the IC?s, but in the end I decided to use new sockets).
The old sockets had a bunch of green corrosion crud inside the contacts (they were TI sockets, which can be removed by prying off the plastic, leaving individual pins soldered to the board, which can then be removed one at a time). Removing the IC sockets was VERY difficult and VERY time consuming, and I did some minor damage to the board traces and pads. I had access to a vacuum desoldering unit at work, but I figured I would remove the sockets and pins first, and then just use the vacuum tool to clear the holes. BIG MISTAKE. The vacuum device works wonders for removing IC?s and IC sockets, but it does NOT do a good job at clearing empty holes. If I?d used it properly, the work would have gone better, with less damage to the boards, and would have taken half the time (e.g. about ten hours instead of about twenty). I know this because when I scrapped a Shugart SA-860 drive for parts, I removed the non-standard IC?s from it?s PC board before pitching it, and that went so much better than the work on the CPU cards. The SA-860 was one of four, and now the other three all work.
However, all of that said, both Z-80 CPU boards are now working perfectly as far as I can tell. The system is booting and running at both 2MHz and 4 MHz, and even the front panel works at 4MHz.
I?ve built up an external dual-drive box with two 3.5" 1.44 Mb drives, and an adapter board that makes it connect to a 50-pin cable and look like two 8" drives. The next step will be to get this unit working, which will be quite a bit of work because of many, many software issues. Once I do, I want to transfer everything to 3.5" disks from 8" disks (I have about 500 8" disks full of sofware). This box has a connector on the back for 8" drives, so I can support 4 drives, two 3.5" and two 8".
I?m desperately looking for a Seattle Computer CPU support card, please let me know if you know of anyone who has one.
Barry Watzman
<> I agree. I've got a friend who tried their 386 with Windows 95... he
<> said it took him an hour and a half to open Word for Windows 95...
<> then he gave up... and it even had 15MB RAM!
I don't.
I ran w95 on a 386dx/40 with cache 16mb ram and a 1.2gig partitioned as
a pair of disks just last week and a backup for a croaked pentium board.
It was slow but not hours. It was also running office97 as that was on
the drive too. A 486DX2/50 was much better.
I did however do some major tuning tricks on the cmos and things like
windows swap drive. Some of those old boards if you take the cmos defaults
you get a very pokey system often 1/3 the performance or worse.
Allison
In a message dated 12/24/98 5:40:04 AM Pacific Standard Time,
tim(a)thereviewguide.com writes:
> > >my girlfriend runs Win95 on a 386/20 Dell laptop. a little slow, but
> > actually
> > >not that bad. oh, 4M of ram. the slowest thing is printing.
>
> I agree. I've got a friend who tried their 386 with Windows 95... he
> said it took him an hour and a half to open Word for Windows 95...
> then he gave up... and it even had 15MB RAM!
>
my girlfriend uses Excel mostly, but also Word. takes about 5-8 minutes to
come up. printing a 20 page document, now thats a hour long task.
kelly
