Where to buy a Selectric? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

5 Jan 2006

Hello folks,

hopefully all of you enjoyed your holidays and festivities.

...
  > One of the problems with old Selectrics is
eventually the neoprene 
 > drive belt deteriorates and breaks.  I'm no Selectric repairman, but
 > a peek inside a nice wide-carriage Selectric III that I've got 
 > stashed away looks like replacement of said belt is a major 
 > operation and probably not worth the trouble. 
Woohoo - good news, that (<<Irony). I've got about five of those IBM
typeball critters in my vicinity, all gifts from grammar school and 
University; I don't know if the term "Selectric" applies to those 
(none of them says so on the outside), but for the record, there are:

Qty.   Model   top shell   base pan    Keys
--------------------------------------------
 1     50      pwd. blue   black       black
 2     82c     brick red   brick red   grey
 1     82c     greenish    greenish    grey
 1     196c    brick red   black       black

I "hope" one of the red 82s is a bit smaller than the other (and the
green) one (else I wouldn't see much of a point in keeping both), but 
I haven't compared them side-by-side yet. I think they're all strictly
electro-mechanical except for the Model 50, which has a circuit board 
in the base pan, a code key and some kind of lever switch to the left 
of the keyboard, and unfortunately at the moment a broken belt inside.
In my case it's not the one from the motor to the drive shaft, but the
one driving the carriage spindle from the reversing clutch.

Also, how interchangeable are type balls among those machines? The blue
one was the only one to come without a ball, the 196c has one with 
yellow top lettering and each of the others one with white, and I've
got spares/other fonts of both kinds.

Tony Duell wrote:
...
  I have never seen inside a Selectric, but I've
heard that to change one 
 of the belts you have to remove the main shaft, which is a major 
 operation.  
It certainly looks like a lot of work in mine; I also fear there might be
adjustments involved but I haven't tried to obtain a service manual yet.

...
  I was told that if you do this, slip 2 belts over the
shaft and tape
 one to the side of the chassis out of the way. Next time it breaks, 
 work that spare one onto the pulleys. 
That sounds like a perfectly sane approach, provided there's enough space
in there so I can keep the belt out of the way. Thanks for suggesting this
before I attack the problem.

Yours sincerely,

-- 
Arno Kletzander
Stud. Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen
www.iser.uni-erlangen.de

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