cj_reha wrote:

Organized my bedroom/workshop. When you have a lot of stuff and limited space knowledge of how to cram stuff is essential. 😵

Nice collection of CRT tv's. I still have some (solid state ones) too, but I have sold all my tube and some earlier solid state tv's because the mechanical tuners were not in too good shape, some had weak CRT's and analog tv was switched off earlier this year. This was one of my latest projects (ca. 2 years ago), it's an Aristona (Philips) all tube b&w tv from ca. 1965, managed to get it working:

I copied the entire Redhill guide to my local machine, which I've been meaning to do for a while now. I refer to it every time I'm upgrading or building a new (old) machine, and now I can still refer to it after the apocalypse (when I assume internet connectivity will be patchy at best).

https://www.redhill.net.au/ig.html

At last managed to positively ID a large, old, obscure peripheral with frustratingly damaged, illegible label. It's a Xebec Sider (see here: http://apple2.org.za/gswv/USA2WUG/FOUNDING.ME … ES/EDHEL/sider/), an external SASI HDD (I believe mine's 20MB), or rather: a regular ST-506 HDD (looks suspiciously like a Seagate ST-225) with Xebec MFM controller and piggybacked onto that a SASI controller.

SASI is the prececessor of SCSI, and, as SCSI-1 is a superset of SASI, it should be possible to hook up a SASI device to a SCSI controller. Of course that brings me to the next challenge: physically hooking it up. This drive has a D-subminiature DC-37 (invariably, incorrectly referred to as "DB37") connector. Which no-one has used for anything SCSI-like for the past three decades. It comes with a cable, but that's DC-37 at both ends... I've found exactly one site offering "DB37" to SCSI-1 Centronics cables at a very acceptable price, but of course it's in the US and as usual no regular international shipping and then Americans wonder why China is stealing all their trade.... Fortunately they don't rule it out but encourage you to get in touch, so I will. Optimistic I can get this old beast working - at least at a controller level. Then we can see about the drive itself.

Because of the postal union and Chinese govt subsidizes. That's why.

Managed to repair the 3.5 inch drive that came with my HP vectra CS - PC 305,

This computer is an XT based system with a V30 processor, with 640kb ram, and internal RTC. My example came with 20meg MFM on an seemingly custom MFM controller card (no ROM on the card), a 360kb drive and a 1.44meg drive. The 20meg drive works pretty well, a few bad sectors, but not unexpected after so long. The 360kb drive worked fine after cleaning, but the 3.5inch 1.44meg drive didn't work.

I was previously using a different 1.44meg drive, but the floppy controller doesn't understand normal 1.44meg AT drives, and treats it as a 720kb drive.

After repairing a few other 1.44meg drives by replacing the old capacitors on them, I figured i'd give this one a crack, and what would you know, it was the capacitors all along.

I replaced the following capacitors
3 x 22uF 16V non-polarized electrolytic capacitors - changed to 3 x 22uF 50V non-Polaris
1 x 10uF 16V electrolytic capacitor - changed to 10uF 25V capacitor
1 x 4.7uF 25V electrolytic capacitor - changed to 10uF 25V capacitor

All the originals were surface mount miniature capacitors, and while they looked ok, they all measured bad using my ESR meter. I took a punt on the 4.7uF capacitor, just chucking in a larger cap and seeing how it went. The only problem is that the new 22uF caps poke out the bottom of the drive, but it really isn't a problem because it goes into a 5.25 inch bay and there is room for them to poke out.

So yeah, I now have an XT machine with a 1.44meg floppy disk drive 😀

luckybob wrote:

Because of the postal union and Chinese govt subsidizes. That's why.

That's just the cost side of it, which is only a minor factor. It's more "the world ends at the borders of the (CON)US" attitude.

If I want to order stuff anywhere else in the world, I just go to their webshop, get a quote on shipping and if I'm happy with it press the "Buy now"-button. Sometimes that figure is low (either close by or subsidised), sometimes it's high (far away and/or ridiculously bureaucratic), but regardless, it's just business as usual to do business with customers in different countries. Not so in the US, where a lot of businesses treat you as if you're from Mars as soon as they get their heads around the fact you don't have a two-letter state code. The amount of time, hassle and general bad vibes that generates is a very, very good reason why international customers, large and small, take their business elsewhere.

I might add that there are most definitely US companies who buck this trend and with whom I positively enjoy doing business, even if shipping & transit times are less than ideal. The first one to spring to mind is Unicomp. I'd happily pay a premium for them - in fact I do, as the one thing they aren't is cheap, particularly after shipping - although to be honest, you more than get what you pay for.

Had another defected CD Rom Lying around, so I placed another SD card adapter into modified CD Rom housing. I placed metal plate on the front to give it a little more industrial look, since it is in my test bench computer. Switching beetween multiple OS's will be a breeze.

Shipping companies in the US aren't subsidized by the government, as opposed to Chinese businesses. It costs a stupid amount of money now to send things to Canada, never mind Western Europe. Twenty years ago, I sent a box of random stuff (diskettes, VHS tapes, non-perishable snacks) to Australia for $14, but if I tried to do it now, it would cost closer to five times that. Also the risk of uninsurable loss increases dramatically when dealing with international shipping. Who wants to take on that burden unless there's a massive sale on the line?

On topic, made an icon for Planet X3, but it's really just the builder re-drawn. Not putting it online until I have four more icons done. ALL MUST BE DONE IN SETS OF EIGHT.

If you want cheaper rates to Europe from the U.S. I personally use Parcelmonkey.com and usually TrakPak wins within that service. It takes a bit longer, but if time is not a big deal it can be quite a savings. Shipping to Europe is always cheaper for me this way. Canada not so much with Parcelmonkey, but I will say that USPS may be a bit more than UPS or FedEx initially to Canada, but the Canadian receiver then gets the brokerage fee from UPS and FedEx which puts that amount much higher overall than USPS. This has been my experience anyway.

Mister Xiado wrote:

[...] Who wants to take on that burden unless there's a massive sale on the line?

The vendor who realizes that today's single cheap sale does the groundwork for that massive sale. Today I'm the geek looking for that one little part. Tomorrow I'm the engineer doing technical lead during vendor selection on contracts for hundreds of thousands of units per year. I don't forget, not the individual company and also not the country where their behaviour seems to be the norm. Once again, I'm happy to pay a premium for pro-active fuss-free service, in some cases even a quite significant premium. But if the perception is that the service is going to be actively worse than the cheaper alternative - no chance.

Also, uninsurable loss? Even privately I can recoup losses in international shipping (did so fairly recently after DHL managed to lose a motherboard somewhere between Frankfurt and Athens - damned shame about the rare board, but as a seller I was able to fully compensate the buyer at no loss to myself), and corporately we have someone at logistics whose whole day job is just that, tracking what didn't arrive or arrived damaged and getting someone to cough up for it. Once again, it's not the Wild West once parcels cross a border, and this reply pretty much proves my point of why I actively avoid doing business with US companies if I can help it...

But back on-topic:
Got some stuff from a gentleman whose computers keep dying who vocally complains about how they don't build 'em like they used to. Performed a little autopsy:

Yes, the CPU and motherboard were toast, quite literally - signs of overheating everywhere. And yes, this gentleman is a heavy smoker, he has cats and dogs and the PC lives on the floor. And no, he hardly ever cleans his house. But no, that can't possibly have anything to do with why his computers keep dying on him 😵

Note that this was a late-ish P4, so about 15 years old. I'm no fan of Netburst, but if surviving this abuse for 15 years isn't a sign of excellent build quality, I can't imagine what is.

Ooh, I bet you can weather proof a roof with that.

Just imagine what his lungs look like...

*eats a double bacon cheeseburger *

Nothing wrong with a cheeseburger, at least from the perspective of your lungs.

It's healthier than crystal meth!

Also i I got an IBM model 80 up and running: https://youtu.be/-GlhFRQpN4M

luckybob wrote:

It's healthier than crystal meth!

Also i I got an IBM model 80 up and running: https://youtu.be/-GlhFRQpN4M

I see TI 99/4A carts. Do you have a system?

yes, several, and a peb too.

dionb wrote:

The vendor who realizes that today's single cheap sale does the groundwork for that massive sale. Today I'm the geek looking for […]
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Mister Xiado wrote:

[...] Who wants to take on that burden unless there's a massive sale on the line?

The vendor who realizes that today's single cheap sale does the groundwork for that massive sale. Today I'm the geek looking for that one little part. Tomorrow I'm the engineer doing technical lead during vendor selection on contracts for hundreds of thousands of units per year. I don't forget, not the individual company and also not the country where their behaviour seems to be the norm. Once again, I'm happy to pay a premium for pro-active fuss-free service, in some cases even a quite significant premium. But if the perception is that the service is going to be actively worse than the cheaper alternative - no chance.

Also, uninsurable loss? Even privately I can recoup losses in international shipping (did so fairly recently after DHL managed to lose a motherboard somewhere between Frankfurt and Athens - damned shame about the rare board, but as a seller I was able to fully compensate the buyer at no loss to myself), and corporately we have someone at logistics whose whole day job is just that, tracking what didn't arrive or arrived damaged and getting someone to cough up for it. Once again, it's not the Wild West once parcels cross a border, and this reply pretty much proves my point of why I actively avoid doing business with US companies if I can help it...

But back on-topic:
Got some stuff from a gentleman whose computers keep dying who vocally complains about how they don't build 'em like they used to. Performed a little autopsy:

Yes, the CPU and motherboard were toast, quite literally - signs of overheating everywhere. And yes, this gentleman is a heavy smoker, he has cats and dogs and the PC lives on the floor. And no, he hardly ever cleans his house. But no, that can't possibly have anything to do with why his computers keep dying on him 😵

Note that this was a late-ish P4, so about 15 years old. I'm no fan of Netburst, but if surviving this abuse for 15 years isn't a sign of excellent build quality, I can't imagine what is.

Uhhhh.... That looks really.... Ehmmm.... I have no words. I have not seen such a mess in the last +10 years.
Perhaps you understand the "cake" referance in my signature. 😁

Yes. Tobacco and unhealthy fast food are main killers, as such are exaust from diesel and gasoline vehicles.
Thankfully crystal meth and crocodile are not that widespread as smoking and unhealthy food.

dionb wrote:

The vendor who realizes that today's single cheap sale does the groundwork for that massive sale. Today I'm the geek looking for that one little part. Tomorrow I'm the engineer doing technical lead during vendor selection on contracts for hundreds of thousands of units per year. I don't forget, not the individual company and also not the country where their behaviour seems to be the norm. Once again, I'm happy to pay a premium for pro-active fuss-free service, in some cases even a quite significant premium. But if the perception is that the service is going to be actively worse than the cheaper alternative - no chance.

That could be the case. From experience I can tell that it rarely happens. As a seller it’s more likely that you end up with one of these so called ‘moron customers’ that ask a million questions, didn’t read instructions on your website, didn’t take a good look at the pictures, complaining about or endlessly discussing your service or prices etc. I am done with that. Some ways to filter such a problematic clientele: charge significant premiums for everything (yes that includes shipping), make clear how things work in your ad (or website) and scan their communication for any obvious moron signs. I sell to earn money, so I want serious, dedicated and well informed customers.

Apart from that; I am not biased towards U.S. sellers or buyers or from other western countries (if they look professionally enough to me). I have seen a lot of German sellers on eBay that actually don’t want to ship outside Germany, so it seems such ‘world ends here decision’ is also present in smaller countries.

dionb wrote:

Mister Xiado wrote:

[...] Performed a little autopsy: https://tweakers.net/ext/f/olmjg3KP23Y6xzgHMhHmcdEo/full.jpg […]
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[...]
Performed a little autopsy:

Your espresso maker looks fine, i don't see what the problem is. You just need to take out the coffee grounds when you're done.

Xicor wrote:

Have been working on the repair of a badly corroded Schneider EuroPC ...... […]
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Have been working on the repair of a badly corroded Schneider EuroPC ......

The plan A, is to clean an restore the copper tracks..... it's more or less coming along ....

The plan B, is to build a new pcb .... an it' almost done ...

Screenshot.png

No comment on this..? - Cool project keep us updated. However, very limited use for other people as you need the specific ICs and a Schneider case...