Vintage and retro computer and electronic restorations and repair. are some of the things I hope to be putting some videos up about. As well as mabe some of my other vintage electronic adventrues.
Good luck with the fix, I'm trying to do a similar repair of a similar 286. Something that's helped me massively is swapping out the ROMs with the supersoft diagnostic BIOS ROMs for the 5170. Since all 286 chipset stuff is a clone of the 5170 it works on generic 286 boards too. Using that and a CGA card with composite out it's able to display a picture and I've been able to find out that among other problems, there's one bad data bit on the ISA bus because when it tries to display "FAILED" it shows as "GAIMED" Perhaps the supersoft diagnostic would give some useful output on yours too.
Put a leaky container the size of a Varta battery where the old battery was. Fill it with radioactive liquid and give it a decade. Then put the mainboard on a piece of film. The radiation will expose the film and the film will expose where the battery liquid went. You'll get a subway map of all failed or damaged traces. Sorry, I didn't get whether you were asking for *practical* ideas for finding the fault.
There is little you can do if it's corroded internally and you have not got a circuit. But have you tried blowing a new BIOS because if it is hanging then the BIOS might be at fault?
Got to say jay, I work in pc repair. You know your stuff and are a very talented guy. Love the videos and seeing you bring back old tech. Keep it up pal. 👌🍻
That's a nice bit of maintenance, it should be ok for another 65 years 👍 You could have sprayed the back of the dail glass with some clear lacquer while the chassie was out to stop it flaking.
Interesting content... same old junk I collect :-) Subbed. Came via your C16 videos cos I have one to repair/restore, its probably gonna be TED or 8501 no doubt 😞
Hello Jay, My name is Przemek and I live in Warsaw, Poland. I watched your struggles with the Sony ICF PRO80 in RU-vid videos and I decided to ask you for advice In my case. Since I received my friend's completely dead receiver, I am trying to repair it. I have the Service Manual at my disposal. I have previously restored many Sony ICF SW1, ICF SW100, ICF SW55 and others. Of course, the most common cause of damage to these receivers were leaking electrolytic capacitors and the electrolyte itself causing severe corrosion. In the case of PRO80, I started by replacing 18 leaking electrolytic capacitors with tantalum SMD capacitors. Despite such a radical replacement, the receiver still did not respond. After turning off the muting system by disconnecting the collector of transistor Q201, I found that both Volume and Squelch potentiometers did not work so after gluing the contact sliders in place I successfully repaired both and the receiver finally responded. Unfortunately, stations on medium wave, long wave, FM and probably short wave, show a frequency on the display that is one or two tuning interval ch steps lower (9kHz medium wave, 6kHz long wave) than the transmitted frequency. I set the Reference Frequency Oscillator 7.2MHz (suggested in the Service Manual) to obtain 118.7MHz at the test point, but this result is not stable and jumps every few seconds between 118,700,032Hz and 118,700,096Hz however both values are within the required +/-100Hz range. I also noticed that the sound is distorted, probably due to lack of proper tuning. I have the impression that the problem lies in the frequency synthesis system, but I have no idea where exactly to look for it. I would be very grateful for all your diagnostic suggestions. Regards Przemek
Would be more reliable if you could compare LCR results with proper meter/measurement on some trusted device. Otherwise, speculation that LCR wasn't showing proper values or that after self-cal. it measures properly - is basically invalid and speculation (exactly same as before self-cal.)
Still have this old gal sitting around? Here’s how you can breathe new life into your Toshiba T1000 with some modern upgrades: • From FloppyEmulator (Dot Com): Pick up a 24 to 36-pin adapter cable. • Install a Gotek USB OLED Floppy Emulator: Load it up with FlashFloppy firmware to emulate floppy disks via USB. • From anywhere: Get yourself an NEC V20 CPU for a drop-in replacement to boost performance. • Upgrade the RAM: Grab the 384K external RAM expansion option to push your system to the maximum of 896K. • Storage Options: • Option 1: Use a parallel port Zip 100 drive as your hard drive. • Option 2: Hunt down a Backpack Parallel hard drive, and replace its internal HDD with a CF to IDE or mSATA to IDE adapter for modern storage solutions. • OS Setup: • Install MS-DOS 6.22 and run Windows 3.0a for a classic experience. • Create another partition and play around with rare versions like Windows 3.1 Beta 26 or Beta 43, where Real Mode is still available. • Add a partition for ELKS 16-bit Linux, a lightweight option to explore Linux on early hardware. • Mouse Upgrade: Use a Serial to PS/2 adapter to connect a modern Cherry PS/2 mouse for smoother input. • Networking Options: • Get a Serial Port Splitter or Hub for expanding your serial port options. • Use a Serial to Ethernet adapter to get TCP/IP Ethernet working in ELKS, allowing you to connect to the network. • You can even explore networking in Windows using the same serial-to-ethernet setup for early internet experiments. With these upgrades, you can turn your old Toshiba T1000 into a retro computing powerhouse with modern storage, networking, and performance enhancements! Enjoy the nostalgia with a few modern twists! (And it makes for super interesting content) Seeing Windows 3.0 on here; especially if able to make it not be so stretched is quite something. Also wish there were modern backlit displays available to replace this one with
That was a great video jay has ever,and very useful tips on how to diagnose,keep up the good work I prefer this kinda content,but it's just my opinion,love your videos..look forward to the next
All i wanted was to see how you fit belt not a full life story and the time you brought the items you migjt has well get a new lawm mower to draghed oug
Thanks for sharing that, Jay. This looks rather like a classic 'Let's make a good one out of two broken ones', doesn't it! If you can't get a schematic it's often down to getting another one to compare, or checking by injecting voltages to see which bits work, and then cobble something together to fix the bits that don't work. I wish you luck with it!
Oh ecky thump ! You really need a circuit for this as you need to know voltages. Then you could get or make the DC \DC converters and see it it works then ….. what a mess!
On some 286 systems you may not get post codes, also the startup beep might not happen until after it's finished the ram test which could take a long time. However you did try to hook up a monitor and still didn't get anything, was there a sync on the monitor? Some systems you might not even see anything (except maybe a flashing cursor which could even be off screen depending on your monitor settings) for a few seconds. If you're not getting a sync then there's definitely more work to be done but if you are then just as a sanity check try turning it on and just leave it on for like a minute. On this system are there jumpers or dip switches for display type? I'm thinking of the IBM 5160 which if configured for MDA or CGA you might get nothing out of a VGA card until the dip switches are set correctly. Probably not the same on this board but I thought worth throwing out there.
That's a good point regarding the RAM count I could prove that by removing a RAM IC from each bank thereby forcing a RAM error and hopefully some post beeps. The dip switch settings for colour/mono video shouldn't matter if your using an EGA or VGA card for video output. the board is set for mono output, that's how it was set when i got the computer with the original VGA card installed.
I could find a diagram of the physical bits of this thing - but no circuit. You are braver than me with that. They are as you say out in all weathers. Reminds me of my time mending CCTV stuff for Ultrak. We got those camera holdings back in for repair under warranty and we used to say 'Wash out the fish poo first'.....
I've read that a common problem with these is caused by the switch in the DC input jack which opens the circuit from the battery when the plug is installed keeping the circuit open even when the DC plug isn't installed into the jack. I found that on the EEVBlog site.
About a decade ago, I found one of these (TK19L, looking much more modern, but still using probably the same chassis as all the elements are in exactly the same positions) on the curb. Opened it, looked very low hour (the mechanism - because from the outside it looked unused, the pinch roller had quite a bit of tape deposit so not super low hour), plugged it in and it just worked with good sound quality in both record and playback. No repairs needed. Actually used it to "master" a Worms speech bank. That button should be recording. Probably depending on the model, you can also turn it to switch between auto/manual level control and/or trick recording (erase head on/off). It ended up on eBay for around a fiver. I also found a Philips RK14 (which had a bad rectifier tube), but I'm keeping it as it's a four-track and very nearly almost all my recordings are four-track. "Lost to time" is also why I like finding old tapes in the garbage. And even if their contents haven't been lost to time, you still have to remind the internet it exists (like music that just never gets played on the radio). I often find hidden gems.
It's Grundig's next wave of machines after the TK2x series. Some did have the Bulgin connector. They don't have belts for wind but they do for play - siimilar to the BSR TD2 deck. As far as the Electronicx go - West Germam capacitors are as bad anything that we could come up with! They are a good machine and the belts are still available.
