21 Aug
2004
21 Aug
'04
10:01 a.m.
comany that has produced and PUBLICLY sold as many
service and parts
manuals as IBM has for the PC AND ALL OF IT'S ACCESSORIES AND
PERIPHERALS.
IBM service manuals (at least the Hardware
Maintenance and Service
manual i have for my PC/AT) are boardswapper guides. They're pretty
useless now, they are totally useless when there are no more boards to
swap.
The IBM PC/XT and PC/AT Technical Reference manuals include complete
schematics, and they include complete, commented source code listings for the BIOS. Similar documents exist for some of the
'clone' machines,
i.e. the Compaq Deskpro and the AT&T 6300.
This is sadly not the case for most of the modern (modern meaning
anything newer than the XT/AT generations) 'PeeCee' hardware, but it is
Hence my origianl comment that modern PCs are difficult to maintain.
the case with the earlier systems. It's
definitely the case with the
machines from the era of most of the other hardware you listed, i.e. the
Apple II, HP71B.
The suprise is the HP75C. There is a service manual for it, and AFAIK it
was available to anyone who wanted to order it. The supported repair
method is board-swapping (keyboard/top case, CPU board, memory board,
display IIRC). However, the manual includes full schsmatics and PCB
layouts and an _excellent_ theory-of-operation section.
The 75C ROM listing exists too, but it wasn't an official HP product. It
was sent to PPC (User group) under the NOMAS scheme (NOt MAnufacturer
Suported -- you could read/copy the listing, but you couldn't bother HP's
technical support about it). It is suprisingly hard to find now.
Times have changed, but times have changed all over.
Not round here they haven't :-)
-tony