Spent a while the last week or so trying to fix up a couple of my old machines...
Met with a lot of frustration along the way, as for various reasons, I've had a bunch of my collection of old machines in storage for a while. They've been stored indoor, but some have been sitting for ~10 years, and several were hardware I picked up for free from work or other places that were tossing them. At that time, I wasn't thinking about how long they'd sit, or that I should have thought about removing CMOs batteries or other things. Luckily, the leaky battery issue has only been an issue on one board so far, most of the other issues have been probably what is considered normal old age hardware failure, like what I'm assuming are capacitors dying and floppy drives being cranky, and old HDDs dying, etc.
Needless to say, they basically all went into storage in working condition, and like 70% are coming out with one issue or another.
Three main things I've been working on the last couple weeks. I have a Tandy 1000SL, a Commodore PC10-III, and a generic 486 40MHz computer. The Tandy is currently on hold, as there's something wrong with the RAM, be it one of the chips or something with one of the banks, like a solder joint or trace or a different chip that is causing issues. I'm fairly sure the memory chips are good, but am waiting on a few replacements in the mail. Currently, it will only see 384k of 640, so I can't run most DOS programs.
While that's on hold, I've been working on the Commodore and the 486.
I got the Tandy and the Commodore with 2 CGA monitors (Tandy CM5 and CM11) and like 50 billion original 5.25 game disks for 14 dollars at a garage sale I stumbled across in around 2006. I offered them that cause that's all I had in my pocket.
Anyway,
Commodore PC10-III
I think this is a really early version of the PC10-III, as I cannot find any photos of this model online that look like this. Also, the BIOS version is 4.3, which is lower than any I've seen photos of, and the board rev is 5.1, the lowest I've seen online is 5.7 I think. The case looks closer to the PC10-II or the COLT.
Luckily this machine still worked mostly correctly when I hooked it up recently after sitting for 10 years. The hard drive and the CMOs battery were both bad. The HDD is like 85% bad, it can still read some of the files, but not reliably. The controller card also started smoking last night, I have no idea why. Luckily, it didn't hurt the motherboard. And, luckily I had just moved to a XT-IDE and CF solution because of the unreliability of the old drives, and cost/difficulty finding them.
I tried to replace the CMOS battery with 3 x 1.2v AA batteries (The original was a 3.6v rechargeable) but I think there's something wrong with the connections on the board, as it still would not keep time after I soldered it in, and 90% of the time on POST, it does not list the RTC in the detected hardware, but 10% of the time it does. Oh well, it only seems to affect the date/time, all the hardware either autodetects on each boot now, or just works, so I don't care enough. I just removed both batteries and cleaned the little bit of corrosion off the board.
The Computer has an XT-IDE card, a CF to IDE adapter, and a Sound Blaster CT1350B. I've also got an original mouse for it, that I believe I just happened to find elsewhere over the years, I don't think it came with it.
The monitor currently is the CM-11. I have a CM-5 as well, that is in better looking condition, but it's a smaller screen, and it's more yellowed. The CM-11 is nicer. I'm working on trying to make a 3D printed model replacement for the monitor adjustment panel thingy, as that cover was missing when I got it. You can see a small section of it in the picture as one of my test prints, also I've attached a picture of the current model, I haven't finished it, and I have to figure out how I'm going to bend it slightly to fit the curvature of the monitor (Possibly heat it up a bit and bend it) but it was just a thought I had. I will work on colors or painting the model or something possibly.
I cleaned the monitor a little, as it was much dirtier, but have not fully cleaned it up yet.
The KB is just a generic XT/AT keyboard I had.
I replaced the PSU Fan the other day (It was loud) and I replaced the 2nd 5.25 Floppy drive with a 3.5" drive.
It had an EGA card in it, I may put it back in at some point, but right now, I don't have an EGA monitor.
Currently it has DOS 6.22 on it just for testing purposes, I may go back to 3.3 or so, as it's closer to the original version.
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Generic 486 40MHz
I don't currently have any pictures inside the case, and don't feel like taking it apart again.
It's got an AOPEN VI15G Motherboard, 486 40MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, Cirrus Logic VESA Video card/IDE/Floppy Controller (Combined), SB CT4520, CF to IDF Adapter, 5.25 and 3.5 Floppy Drives, and a slot loaded CDROM drive.
I decided to use the 40MHz CPU, I have a 66 and and I think a 100 as well, but I've never had a 40MHz machine, so I went with that. I could also run it without a heatsink.
The handle thingy for the 5.25 drive I had to 3D Print a replacement for, as it broke a while back.
Currently, it just has WFW 3.11 on it and DOS 6.22.
The Compaq v50 Monitor is one I found cleaning out an old School Autoshop a few years back, it was covered in black dust. Looks like new after a lot of cleaning, and works well.
The only issue it currently has, is for whatever reason, about 80% of the time you turn the machine on or reboot it, it says the CMOS settings are invalid and makes you redo them. I have no idea why. Guessing there's a bug in the BIOS version or something. The CMOS battery is fine, I've checked it, and it never loses date or time.
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Some of the other hardware that I have that I'd like to get cleaned up or mess with again include:
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Apple IIe (One of the more original ones from the early 80's, and a couple from the later 80's) - Last I knew, these all worked, I tested the older one the other day, and had to re-solder the composite connector, and the PSU acts like a capacitor is going bad, so I might have to address that...
- Apple IIc - Works fine, just dirty
- 2 x Mac SE/30 - 1 Seems to work fine, the other acts like a capacitor or something is going bad, as it turned on/off with a flashing screen the other day for a little while before working fine.
- Compaq SLT/286 Laptop - Checked it the other day, the HDD and floppy weren't working right. Replugged the HDD, and that's working now, but the Floppy is only intermittently reading. Might just need to be configured properly, I noticed it thinks it's a 360k drive, but it's not.
- Dell 486 Laptop - Built in Trackball doesn't work
This list all came from a school environment, the Apple IIe's were in use from the mid 80's until 2007 or so, they supposedly were left on 24/7 all school year long (Just turned off the monitor) so they were probably on for 15 years or so total. The teacher donated them to me when she retired because she knew I thought they were interesting.
