22 Feb
1998
22 Feb
'98
7:45 p.m.
I apologize for any weird layout, but this IS Lynx...(as always for me)
Once
again, I wouldn't bother with such minor details when I run
Windows 95. My Fan howls when I boot, then stops after a few minutes.
I read an article once on how to replace a PSU fan with a silent
external one.
> Missed my point; I prefer to buy quality one if I
can find one and
> that floppy example is what I'm driving at.
If I had money...
> Mitsumi and Epson floppy drives are junk. I had
too many of those
> fail before year is up and use was not that heavy. Panasonic and few
> Teac is just o. k. but not on my esteemed list. Also those cheapo
I had a
drive problem once. It was intermittent, and I never could
understand what was wrong. Eventually, I swapped the cable and the
drive, and it works now. The only FDD I've bought was a 3.5" TEAC
for $70 at the world's worst store- CompUSA. It actually has a metal
frame!
The one advantage of Teac drives is that you can get
the service/repair
manual. I have it for several versions of the FD55 (5.25" drive) and
the
FD235 (3.5" drive). It means you can be _sure_
your drive is correctly
aligned.
I wouldn't bother if I had to.
What floppy drives would you recomend?
Punched
card, IBM ,circa 1928.
more noisy.
PSU have cheap parts inside and fan will fail inside. I
do have bunch of PSU's with failed fans and all of them are sleeve
bearing type, very doubtful of finding one with ball bearing fans
The worst PC-clone part I own is a keyboard. One day
when using it, the
manual for my 'scope slipped off the top of a PDP8e that's alongside my
PC
and landed on the keyboard. The result was that many
keys on the
keyboard
failed to work. I spent the next _3 hours_ removing
bits of broken SRBP
circuit board and soldering wires all over the place. Amazingly there
was
a schematic printed on the box that the keyboard came
in (which I'd cut
out and filed), but (I guess) not too suprisingly it was incorrect!.
I keep bumping
into kb's that have plastic film instead of PCBs.
The problem is that sometimes, the film will bend down, and not detect
the key, so I have to bash it. (Which I do enough anyway, given my OS)
And don't get me started on monitors. Is it too much to ask for a
monitor
Well, now that we have LCDs, it should get better, though LCD can be
crap too. Don't have to worry about focus, transformers, etc. But I'm
sure that they'll figure out something to screw up.
worse than the 17 year old Barco I happen to have...
Out of ten new Performas, about half have darker monitors. We don't
know why. It seems that the monitor is the second least reliable part
of the computer, after the rest of it :)
In old machines, everything was hackable anyway, so that any bugs
in hardware or software could be easily fixed by the likes of us.
In modern machines, its too complicated to fix anyway, and one would
never have the time to fix all of the bugs, and for me, hardware is a
minor problem (since it never breaks for me anyway, even when I try)
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22 Feb
22 Feb
5:04 p.m.
I apologize for any weird layout, but this IS
Lynx...(as always
for me)
This seems to come out fine. :)
I had a drive problem once. It was intermittent, and I
never could
understand what was wrong. Eventually, I swapped the cable and the
drive, and it works now. The only FDD I've bought was a 3.5" TEAC
for $70 at the world's worst store- CompUSA. It actually has a metal
frame!
Ok, these Mitsumi 3.5" and some junky 5.25" drives I had and
experienced were between '90 and '94 of their design before they took
quality seriously recently but their cd roms these days have gone
downhill.
>The one advantage of Teac drives is that you can
get the service/repair
>manual. I have it for several versions of the FD55 (5.25" drive) and
snip!
Punched card, IBM ,circa 1928.
Heheeeehehehe..
that would be great if we still used punched tapes
with super dense holes in 16bit format across...dreaming on...
snip!
My Fan howls when I boot, then stops after a few
minutes.
I read an article once on how to replace a PSU fan with a silent
external one.
Oh, I forgot to add: ATX PSU fan blowing in, blowing hot air on
CPU. How silly! I always tell my friends to flip their ATX PSU fan
around to blowing outside.
Snip!
circuit board
and soldering wires all over the place. Amazingly there
was
>a schematic printed on the box that the keyboard came in (which I'd cut
>out and filed), but (I guess) not too suprisingly it was incorrect!. I keep bumping into kb's that have plastic film
instead of PCBs.
The problem is that sometimes, the film will bend down, and not detect
the key, so I have to bash it. (Which I do enough anyway, given my OS)
This is sign
of dirt (wear maybe) but IBM keyboards from '87 onwards
use plastic film without problems. Only problem was when liquid
spills.
And don't
get me started on monitors. Is it too much to ask for a
monitor Well, now that we have LCDs, it should get better,
though LCD can be
crap too. Don't have to worry about focus, transformers, etc. But I'm
sure that they'll figure out something to screw up.
True but much have done
already to the LCD, there is not much to
improve upon. I think. The only one stil good is TFT and color
plamsa technolgies.
worse than the
17 year old Barco I happen to have...
Out of ten new Performas, about half have
darker monitors. We don't
know why. It seems that the monitor is the second least reliable part
of the computer, after the rest of it :) In old machines, everything was hackable anyway, so
that any bugs
in hardware or software could be easily fixed by the likes of us.
In modern machines, its too complicated to fix anyway, and one would
never have the time to fix all of the bugs, and for me, hardware is a
minor problem (since it never breaks for me anyway, even when I try)
I wished I
could do that on the stuff but these modern stuff is hard
enough to fix thanks to the advancements besides the oldies stuff
we're collecting.
Jason D.
email: jpero(a)cgo.wave.ca
Pero, Jason D.
23 Feb
23 Feb
1:33 p.m.
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1:58 p.m.
drive, and it
works now. The only FDD I've bought was a 3.5" TEAC
for $70 at the world's worst store- CompUSA. It actually has a metal
frame!
You mean some drives have a plastic chassis these days? No wonder people
experience data loss... Well, while it may not make much sense to repair a
drive when you can
easily buy a replacement (although I'm darn glad I've got some 8" drive
repair manuals - you can't buy replacements for those), I _always_ check
the alignment of every new drive I get. I've had some brand-new drives
that are marginal (checked on a know-good alignment disk), and, quite
simply, my data is worth the time taken to make sure that the disk can be
read back - on that, or on any other drive.
Great idea but how I afford a alignment
disk? Very rare use and
expensive.
What floppy drives would you recomend?
Punched
card, IBM ,circa 1928. Actually, the true-blue IBM keyboard I'm typing on
at the moment is one
of those plastic membrane ones. It's never given me any trouble, though...
Correct.
LK201's (DEC VT220 etc keyboards) are another
story. I must have
dismantled and rebuilt a few dozen of those - even to the extent of
trimming back the moulded-over studs and dismantling the keys and the
membrane 'sandwich'. What a pain!
That one! That is horrible keyboard,
nearly impossible to repair!
crap too.
Don't have to worry about focus, transformers, etc. But I'm
sure that they'll figure out something to screw up.
No, there are obscure surface-mount drivers (or worse, direct-on-board
chips, or even on the glass itself) to fail. And zebra strips to go
intermittant on the smaller units. And backlights to fail in expensive
ways... I'll stick to the CRT, thank you. I can understand
those, I can see the
components, and I can bodge a repair somehow...
I once jokingly said that there are 2 types of mono monitor CRT - ones
with a thick neck, B8H base and 6.3V heater and ones with a thin neck,
B7G base and 12V heater. Having done a number of swaps in my life, I'm
not sure it was so much of a joke...
Well, the user manual for my Barco explains how to set it up (it's a real
user manual, with schematics and parts lists and waveforms...). The list
of equipment needed, and the time taken to do it properly are both quite
long. You can bet that a lot of no-name monitors have never seen a colour
analyser or a geometry test slide.
Hear hear!! My friend have a RCA CTC130x I
have not able to find
the "x" part to be certain so I could order or recover the
convergence assembly because this one has a preset split bead tied
shut by a nylon tie at time of manufacture! By the way I have the
picture of the tv in gif format if someone wants a viewing.
worse than
the 17 year old Barco I happen to have...
Out of ten new Performas, about half have
darker monitors. We don't
know why. It seems that the monitor is the second least reliable part That's one reason I stick to that old PC I
mentioned in a previous
message. I have schematics to _everything_ apart from the hard disk, and
most of it is standard chips anyway. I have the source to the BIOS ROM
(It's an IBM - the source is in the techref) and the source to the OS and
untilities (it's Linux). So there's not a lot I can't hack or fix.
True, but I would do that if I had great teachers and great loads of
cheap docs then I would qualify as hacker like you do, but I lack
very specific tools like oscilloscope etc and my past histories
did'nt made everything else happen like this so I have to start
somewhere and start hacking away when I have resources once again.
-tony
Jason D.
email: jpero(a)cgo.wave.ca
Pero, Jason D.
7:31 p.m.
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