On Fri, 10 Oct 2008, Roy J. Tellason wrote: I'd like to get a hold of these images as well. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

On Sat, 11 Oct 2008, Doc Shipley wrote: I have no idea. I'm hoping that Al will have something good to say about using a Catweasel to do it. Have you tried dd under some sort of modern Unix? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Roy J. Tellason wrote: yes. It is an interesting box. Not quite what I expected.... looking for software for it... and a WD2010 chip (which would allow me to exceed 1024 cylinders on the hard drive). If I can find someone to burn a PAL for me... I can also add support for the 4th head select line... upping the max heads from 8 to 16. I may not change these things... but if I can easily enough I will to give greatest drive flexibility. I had it all apart (it is difficult to take this thing apart !) There was a small 'sliver' of plastic cracked away at the front in front of the keyboard... I glued that. The larger crack in the back doesn't want to close well (even with a clamp), so I doubt superglue would work very well... so since it is not very apparant, I'll probably fill the crack with epoxy to strengthen it and that should do. The metal that was bent was straightened... but a metal tab where the back metal screws onto the side metal was a casualty... it broke off while trying to straighten it.... but not a big deal, as it is held on by 3 other screws.... assembled you'd never even know. I must say this thing is really difficult to take apart and put together.... it has pretty good build quality though. The toughest part is that the rear case binds on the floppy drive power connector.... if I had followed the 3B1 FAQ recommended disassembly procedure I probably would have broken the floppy drive PCB. I took the monitor off the top, that allowed me to see what I was doing... there was just enough room to use long needle nose pliers to disconnect the floppy drive power connector. reassembly will be fun.... Let me know when the laptop arrives. -- Curt -- Curt

I haev never had much success with isocyano acryllic hydro copolymerising adhesives... If you can find a solvent for the plastic (and for quite a few thermoplastics dichloromethane (methylene choride) -- sold by good model shops unde the name 'Plastic Weld' -- works well), you can weld the plastic by pushing the edges together and then running a brush dipped in the solvent along the cracks. To make the joint even stronger, cut a piece of cotton fabric to fit over the back of the damaged area, put it in place, and 'paint' it with the solvent. Then push the fibres into the softenend plastic. If I have a plastic that I can't weld like this, or that needs to be as stong as possible, I cut a piece of metal or fibreglass (PCB material with the copper etched or sanded off) to fint over the breaks and then fix it in plasce with small nuts and bolts. It may not look neat, but it'll keep the case together. Can you make an angle pracket to replace the damaged part here? On at least one amchine I've worked on, one of the drives has the power connector desoldered from the PCB and replaced by a cable-mounted connector (think of the male end of a PC drive power extension lead) with wires soldered to the original holes in the PCB. This meant the power connector didn't get in the way of another bit of the machine. If you try to make this modification, make sure, and check again, that you've not swapped the +5V and +12V wires round! -tony