HP 9825 refurbishing

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- Van: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] Namens Dave Verzonden: maandag 13 september 2010 4:32 Aan: cctech at classiccmp.org Onderwerp: HP 9825 refurbishing Hello all, I bought one of the HP 9825's that Marvin recently posted here about (via VCM auction). It's a 9825T and seems to work perfectly, along with an HPIB interface I bought off Ebay. Of course the case needs cleaning and there is a penny-sized chip from the corner of the bezel, so I've got the whole thing disassembled, and am now in the process of rebuilding the chipped bezel corner with JB-weld. Next step is to repaint the case, then replace the at-risk PSU caps, refurbish the tape drive, clean the keyboard, etc. The unit is beautifully engineered, by the way. Some questions for the group: 1) Does anyone have a suggestion for the best paint to match the original color? If I can find a close match, I'll just tape over the legends on the bezel, and paint around them. If I can't get a good match, I still may do the same thing, or I'll just paint the whole thing, and then print out some decals on a color printer to match the original legends. Or, if anyone here has a better suggestion, I'd love to hear. Any suggestion for type of paint? I found a can of Rustoleum brand almond-color satin finish enamel spray-paint. Is that a good choice, other than wrong color? I also just bought an HP 87 on Ebay as well, so I'm hoping that whatever I learn here, I can apply to refurbishing the 87 as well. 2) While the unit is completely disassembled, are there any hacks, mods, upgrades, etc. that I may want to know about before I put everything back together? 3) I would like to use this in my home lab, so I was hoping to find a way to store programs without using the tape drive or a disc drive. Is anyone there moving data between the 9825 and a PC? Can some of the utilities on hp9845.net be used to interface with the 9825 as well? This would be icing on the cake, since it would be shame to let such a nice machine go unused. However, I do have the Prologix GPIB interface with PyVISA/Scipy/Numpy, Thanks for any input, Dave Dave, If you want to use the HPDrive util, you need the 9895A ROM and the IO ROM. The 9895A ROM is hard to find the IO-rom isn't with those rom's you can use HPDrive on a PC with a HP-IB card as Mass Storage Unit. Tape drives are easy to refurbish but most of the HP-tapes are bad they losing the magnetic layer. It's possible to convert the drives so they can use QIC40 tapes, I do have a short description and drawing of this mod. You can order new DC100A tapes by Athana at ~ $38,- a piece. It's also advisable to add a crowbar circuit to the psu the 723 regulator IC's and power transistors don't life forever. When they go you will be grateful for adding the crowbar circuitry. -Rik