According to the internet, nobody else has ever had a problem with an Apple II+ rear RF shield being stuck and preventing removal of the cover, but that's fine.

Also nobody needs to disassemble one, the instructions I found were wrong and I found three disassembly videos that magically skipped the disassembly part.

Is the internet literally getting less useful or is it just me?

It's full of expansion cards and it looks like one of them is a video card but some **** cut the cable off at the edge of the case, of course.

I'm just trying to clean it out so another black widow doesn't crawl out of it in the middle of the night. Never easy.

Huh.

I thought that might have been an HD video cable, but from the card I'm guessing it's some kind of custom disk or tape interface, though the system had an Apple dual disk controller as well. Could be almost anything, it's labeled "Creative Computers c.1982 003L" and "AV-I-1182". It almost looks handmade, the traces might be hand-drawn, the edge connector is one-sided... it's just a bunch of logic gates. The external connector is 12 pins and it has a ribbon cable, it basically intercepts the keyboard. Oh, it's probably a keyboard controller, it suddenly occurs to me. They made a number of external keyboards for special purposes. 12 pins seems like a lot, though.

The power supply is quite clean inside, surprisingly. I think it's clear of bugs, gonna pull the keyboard and check/clean and then be done for the night. Will get some more pictures later. Will probably not have time to function test tomorrow. Maybe.

Oh just wow. Look at those curvy traces. I like cards like that just for the looks. Definitely a keeper in my book.

liqmat wrote:

Oh just wow. Look at those curvy traces. I like cards like that just for the looks. Definitely a keeper in my book.

The trick will be figuring out what it is (a half hour online produced nothing) and what the appropriate pinout for the severed cable is (not to mention the connector).

It did have a video card, BTW, an Applied Engineering Viewmaster 80. I already replaced a damaged RCA cable.

Has a broken key stalk, of course, and a missing key. Otherwise the keyboard cleaned up okay.

Trying to run the board from the Wyse 50 terminal. I only have a motherboard, nothing else.

I used the ATX power supply and MCE2VGA video converter. But the picture is very strange. Apparently the board itself is broken. One of many 74S374 around video-controller is very hot, i will try to replace it.

I mixed up the video and intensity signals. I fixed this and i get stable picture with blinking cursor on Wyse WY-50 motherboard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZe_JXxF7a8

Upgraded my ThinkPad with a T7400 CPU. CCFL backlight is still dying, and haven't been able to find a new panel for an appropriate price 🙁

Posted from my IBM ThinkPad R60e

Spent way too much money on an old - yet recently maintenanced - reel 2 reel recorder.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Upgraded my ThinkPad with a T7400 CPU. CCFL backlight is still dying, and haven't been able to find a new panel for an appropriate price 🙁

Posted from my IBM ThinkPad R60e

Apparently people convert these to LED backlights:

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/thinkpad/led-kit.shtml

Decided to dig a few particular things out of storage in my loft. No easy task, as both items were absolutely buried as deep as possible amongst a bunch of tech junk but thankfully they were intact.

Filthy pictures ahead, prior to the cleanup I intend to do tomorrow:

Despite the dust & dirt, they're still both working. Took a bit of coaxing to get them both to read game cartridges at first, but that was just down to filthy contacts. As I said, I'll clean them both properly tomorrow, inside & outside.

The Master System needs slightly more TLC, as it's Pause & Reset buttons are not making contact. Probably just dirt underneath.

I'll have to get back into my loft tomorrow also, to dig out the rest of my Master System & Mega Drive games. Could only find a couple of games stashed nearby to the consoles, the rest are buried in a separate pile over the other side of the loft... sods law. I hope my Master System Converter for the Mega Drive is buried in the same pile!

Still no sign of my Master System Lightgun however. Always the thing you want to find the most that vanishes!

PTherapist wrote:

4 http://i.imgur.com/UTzpIEih.jpg […]
Show full quote

4

Despite the dust & dirt, they're still both working. Took a bit of coaxing to get them both to read game cartridges at first, but that was just down to filthy contacts. As I said, I'll clean them both properly tomorrow, inside & outside.

The Master System needs slightly more TLC, as it's Pause & Reset buttons are not making contact. Probably just dirt underneath.

I'll have to get back into my loft tomorrow also, to dig out the rest of my Master System & Mega Drive games. Could only find a couple of games stashed nearby to the consoles, the rest are buried in a separate pile over the other side of the loft... sods law. I hope my Master System Converter for the Mega Drive is buried in the same pile!

Still no sign of my Master System Lightgun however. Always the thing you want to find the most that vanishes!

Man, best thing i ever did to my sega was to mod it to use Svideo. It is amazing how much better svideo looks than using the standard RF.
Now i just got a new crt that accepts RGB, so gonna have to get a new cable for that.

Been playing around a bit with the system I put together yesterday.
I finally got a nice AOpen HX45 case for my AOpen AP53 motherboard based Pentium mmx system.
This system turned out annoying nice. It covers a larger time period than my 486, which means that if I am totally honest with myself, it is probably more usable for my retro needs than said 486... Which annoys me, because I have much more nostalgic feelings about 486s than Pentiums.

90skidJohnny wrote:

Man, best thing i ever did to my sega was to mod it to use Svideo. It is amazing how much better svideo looks than using the standard RF.
Now i just got a new crt that accepts RGB, so gonna have to get a new cable for that.

I'm going to get an RGB Scart cable for them both later this month for that very reason, RF does look horrible.

The only thing that's going to take some getting used to for me though, is being in PAL land and running at 50Hz. I've been playing emulators for years now at 60Hz. 🤣

I'm still doing stuff with Thinkpads. This time with a 600X I picked up that's otherwise in great working condition except for the fact that all of the rubber coated surfaces (top of the lid, all of the sides and most of the bottom) has all become ridiculously sticky to touch. Most of these older Thinkpads with the rubber coating get this problem eventually, but this is definitely one of the worst cases of it that I've personally seen. Basically could not touch it anywhere without wearing gloves if I didn't want black goo over my fingers. Yuck.

I'm using a method I saw mentioned over on the thinkpads.com forums where you just scrape it off with an old credit card or something similar. It's a bit slow going in my case, but I'm getting there. The last time I tried cleaning off this sticky rubber crap on a Thinkpad with a magic eraser and I felt like it didn't do as great a job as this seems to be doing so far.

It's taking 3.5 forevers, but I'm still collecting images and brief descriptions of desktop systems for a Desktop Case thread to go alongside the Tower Case thread, because I think it's a good idea to have a case identification collection, since people often look for a particular case or try to identify one here. And because I always liked desktops more than towers, at least for retro rigs.

Kind of spent too much time on the pre-PC era, but I love that stuff too, so the thread will have a post about that as well.

Gered wrote:

I'm still doing stuff with Thinkpads. This time with a 600X I picked up that's otherwise in great working condition except for the fact that all of the rubber coated surfaces (top of the lid, all of the sides and most of the bottom) has all become ridiculously sticky to touch. Most of these older Thinkpads with the rubber coating get this problem eventually, but this is definitely one of the worst cases of it that I've personally seen. Basically could not touch it anywhere without wearing gloves if I didn't want black goo over my fingers. Yuck.

I'm using a method I saw mentioned over on the thinkpads.com forums where you just scrape it off with an old credit card or something similar. It's a bit slow going in my case, but I'm getting there. The last time I tried cleaning off this sticky rubber crap on a Thinkpad with a magic eraser and I felt like it didn't do as great a job as this seems to be doing so far.

Try a magic eraser. Works wonders. Clean the surfaces first with rubbing/isopropyl alcohol.

oeuvre wrote:

Try a magic eraser. Works wonders. Clean the surfaces first with rubbing/isopropyl alcohol.

Magic erasers are, well, magic... but watch use on a textured surface, because they're abrasive magic. You can end up with smooth stripes on a textured surface.

I mention this because a lot of Thinkpads have textured surfaces.

oeuvre wrote:

Try a magic eraser. Works wonders. Clean the surfaces first with rubbing/isopropyl alcohol.

i'm going to have to chime in, and agree with merivign.

They shouldn't be used on textured surfaces. I almost ruined a nice mac plus with one.

PTherapist wrote:

Decided to dig a few particular things out of storage in my loft. No easy task, as both items were absolutely buried as deep as […]
Show full quote

Decided to dig a few particular things out of storage in my loft. No easy task, as both items were absolutely buried as deep as possible amongst a bunch of tech junk but thankfully they were intact.

Filthy pictures ahead, prior to the cleanup I intend to do tomorrow:

Despite the dust & dirt, they're still both working. Took a bit of coaxing to get them both to read game cartridges at first, but that was just down to filthy contacts. As I said, I'll clean them both properly tomorrow, inside & outside.

The Master System needs slightly more TLC, as it's Pause & Reset buttons are not making contact. Probably just dirt underneath.

I'll have to get back into my loft tomorrow also, to dig out the rest of my Master System & Mega Drive games. Could only find a couple of games stashed nearby to the consoles, the rest are buried in a separate pile over the other side of the loft... sods law. I hope my Master System Converter for the Mega Drive is buried in the same pile!

Still no sign of my Master System Lightgun however. Always the thing you want to find the most that vanishes!

I have two light guns, neither are working right now. One not at all, the other intermittent. I need to figure out why. And I have two Sega Master Systems, I fixed the second one by replacing the voltage regulator. 😁

Sadly, neither of my Sega Genesis are fully working. Need to find time to try and fix them. :\

BTW, they're selling officially branded Sega Genesis controllers from Retrobit. I picked one up. I use it on my SMS and it works great -- at least for the games that are OK with it.

I own two Tulip AT Compact 3 systems. Both have problems, one has a good looking motherboard, but the on-board FDD and IDE controller is not functioning, and the other has a horrible battery leak (but is/was working fine). I decided to combine the two systems into one good one.

I have to repair the acid leak damage first. The batteries are not on the motherboard but mounted above it, this one had leaked for years while in storage (I think). I ordered new sockets in China, will desolder the ones affected and see what it all looks like underneath. I can move RAM IC's from the other board.

Looks like protomolecule.

Swapped the guts of my IWILL ZMAXdp power supply (300w) with a new FSP 400w Flex-ATX power supply and new fans. Perfect fit, and the power supply works fine. However, the old power supply blowing appears to have taken the motherboard with it. 😒 I'll have to check all the mosfets and surrounding circuitry. The computer turns on, but I get no post. I also tried a different video card and new RAM, both I know that work. No dice.. just a black screen, not even any beeps. 😠 I also have two new Opteron 250's on the way (less than $10 spent) to confirm the CPU's didn't get taken out, since I've seen similar situations before with fried CPU's.