Care and feeding of some Lisp machines (TI Explorer and Xerox Star)

[David Gesswein]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 03:35:50PM +0200, Michael Engel wrote:
> 
> Before I start to disassemble and test the machines, I would be interested
> to hear about specific problems you might have experienced bringing up one
> of these two machines, preferably those on the unexpected side.
> 
I recently worked on getting a Xerox Star running.
https://lists.vcfed.org/pipermail/vcf-midatlantic/2020-August/018468.html
Others finished getting it running last weekend.

If it has a Quantum Q2040 the heads will likely be glued in place by
a deteriorating rubber stop. The page above has link to how I delt with it
to recover the drive contents. Some also have dry bearings.  We decided to 
use a drive emulator for now using the Darkstar Viewpoint disk image.

Also check the voltage drop on the +5.2 under load discussed in the page
linked to.

> Another thing that is also missing is the mouse pad for the three button
> optical Xerox mouse. Is it possible that an optical mouse pad for Sun/SGI
> machines is compatible?
> 
You can print one
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/devices/xerox-mousepad/index.html