Yes! That was me the list owner replying to the entire list on a personal mail. Sorry. (cc'd to Sam since the msg was for him ;) While I'm blabbing... Does anyone else (other than Marvin) want to try to get together to check out a big scrapyard near Santa Margarita/Atascadero (CA)? I will be there on a weekday during the 2nd week of September. Bill On Thu, 28 Aug 1997, Bill Whitson wrote:

On Mon, 18 Aug 1997, Marvin wrote: Bill is probably still woozy from the pain killers 8-) http://haliotis.bothell.washington.edu/classiccmp Is the correct? active URL. BC

If the TV has an isolated chassis (even some modern ones have the chassis connected to the AC line!), then you can feed composite video in after the video detector. A service manual for the TV and/or data sheets on the chips in it will indicate a likely point for this. On the other hand, very few home computers use need the bandwidth, so it's easier to use a UHF modulator if you're feeding a TV from a composite source or a tuner board (ripped from an old VCR) if you want to drive a composite monitor from a home computer TV output. Of course you can nearly always find signals inside the home computer that are either composite video or that can be trivially combined to make composite video. Some people like to keep their classics in factory condition, but I personally don't mind simple reversably modifications if it makes the machine more useful. Given the alignment disk and a good 'scope it's a lot easier. You are not looking for points either side of the right alignment - you adjust the head position until the waveform looks right and clamp it up. That's exactly the point. I'd not forget the nth harmonic tuning caps if I had the chassis in front of me, but I might well do so in a How-to. Ditto things like checking for shorts on the LV lines produced from the flyback (which often feed half the stages in the monitor) Anybody know a UK source for this. I do a lot of SMPS and monitor repairs (both classic computers and modern ones), and it would be useful. There's always ARD's quick test for large capacitors, which I hesitate to mention, but which I used to sort out my 11/44 PSU when it was failing. It goes like this : 1) Charge up the cap from a 9V battery, observing polarity. Connect it for a few seconds then disconnect it. 2) Wait about 5 seconds 3) Short the capacitor terminals with a screwdriver. Anything over about 1000uF should make quite a spark. If it doesn't, it's either leaky or has high ESR and should be replaced. I had a 5000uF capacitor in the 11/44 that tested on my meter (using the 'balistic method' - connect it on to an analogue ohmmeter and see how large the charging 'kick' is, compare to other capacitors) as about 4700uF, but which had a very high ESR. It's not that bad. You only need 4 disks total - one of each size. They're no more expensive than the other test gear you really should have. If somebody could find a UK source of 8" alignment disks then I'd buy one _now!_ I was lucky in a way. A place where I was working was decomissioning a lot of PDP11 stuff, and of course I went (with a number of other people) to rescue it all. The nice thing was that they'd done all their own repairs, and they were also giving away the extender boards, test cables, _and_ alignment disks (RK05) and skewmaster 9-track alignment tapes. Needless to say I grabbed all that stuff. I was _given_ a Dysan 5.25" alignment disk a few months back :-). I was planning on removing the pin altogether and letting the head carriage move freely over the leadscrew. Then fit a micrometer head and a spring to pull the head assy agains the end of the micrometer. I should be able to get about 1" of calibrated head movement. The service manual for my 3.5" drive (Teac FD235-something) specifies lubrication instructions. I thought I was the only person to follow them... -tony