VT101 8085 CPU Fault

[Tothwolf]

On Mon, 23 Feb 2015, Noel Chiappa wrote:

>    > From: Tothwolf
>
>    > I've seen pushback from some people in the vintage computing community
>    > to wholesale replacement of aluminum electrolytics which are long past
>    > their life expectancy and I just don't get it.
>
> Well, notice you didn't cause a big debate on the topic to break out 
> here, as we often get on some of these things (e.g. crimping versus 
> soldering, etc).
>
> My _guess_ is that vintage computer people aren't very 'religious' about 
> it, and to the extent that they _don't_ do it, it's as much because they 
> don't have the parts on hand (or the ability to find them easily), plus 
> the work involved, as anything else.

You've missed many past debates. Some would put a typical Emacs vs vi 
discussion to shame ;)

> For those of us who are basically software people (or even pure 
> digital), this stuff can be a little daunting - not necessarily because 
> it's actually hard, it's just out of our comfort zone. I myself am 
> certainly daunted by the concept of replacing every electrolytic in all 
> the power supplies of all the vintage -11's I've got... (And I don't 
> want to even think about all the filter caps on all the boards! :-)
>
> Maybe you (or someone) should offer a service... I'd sign up! :-)

I don't think taking on additional projects would be a very good idea for 
me anytime in the near future. The hard part however, really is cross 
referencing older parts to modern replacements. I can help find part 
numbers for modern parts using my notes from past projects though. With 
aluminum electrolytics, I've kept my notes each time I've sourced 
replacements in recent years and have quite a lot of information on hand 
(although not in an easily parsable format).