Sharp PC-7000 Restoration 

15:25 What setup is needed for retrobrighting beyond plastic bins to hold the pieces, plastic wrap, hydrogen peroxide activator from a beauty supply store, water and sunlight? I dont understand why you make it out to be more complicated then it really is..

Your dedication to these projects is something else man, huge respect!

Nice machine and restoration! '78 '79 on the CPU are copyright years. I think the datecode is 533, 33rd week 1985.

Man you're the best. No BS NCS Music in background.. Only your peaceful voice and pure knowledge. 😊

I always wondered how to make coiled up cables myself, now I know, thanks.

With your voice, your look and your attitude I could totally imagine you as a character from "Waynes World"

Retrobrighting is a necessary thing in almost every retro computer restoration.

Oh man the spring loaded cover of the keyboard cable going up is absolutely fantastic. Such eye for quality.

I was happy to see this video show up. I picked up the same machine 5 years ago from a thrift store for 3 bucks. There wasn't much info online when I checked back then. Luckily I didn't need much because mine was 100% functional. I remember as I walked up on it in the store I thought it was a sewing machine.

I don't know if it's because I'm sleep deprived and feeling really silly, but I died laughing at "January 39th".

I'm stoked to finally see a restoration video of this unit. I have one of these but the power supply is dead. I hope someone posts a repair video on that :-)

Super relaxing video dude! Great restoration on this classic piece of tech!

You can 'invert' the coiled cable after it cools down to make the coil even more 'coily'.

Are you sure it's the backlight that's dipping and not the image on the lcd? Check the driving voltage of the lcd, i'ts probably a negative -24v rail. This may shake the contrast around making it look like the backlight is dipping. Also hate to be negative but the modem port is probably just a internal com port with some power rails alongside it. What I have done on some of my retro portables is to wire this up to a "wifi232" internally but make sure it runs on its own com port first sometimes it is shared with the external one. EDIT: For the modem. Just realized that you showed the bios on screen. So I checked and sure enough: Bad news: internal modem is serial. Good news: it has its own com port.

I am really enjoying ALL of your videos. It's the weekend, the lawn is overgrown, and my garage could use a good cleaning. But I'd rather just sit in my Dark room, with a cup of Coffee and enjoy your TLC videos.

Love the music you used while you did the quick time of the cleaning.

J A N U A R Y 3 9 , 2 0 1 9

the number of views of your videos is a nice example of how popularity is basically generated by the youtube algorithm that suggests videos- your videos are all really well made and interesting (well the one where you install office from diskette may be slightly less dense in information... :) ) yet a few videos have 10x the views than average... I like your stuff and I am looking forward to watch your computer wizardry that is absolutely out of my ballpark!

I just nabbed a PC-7200 at a garage sale and the display is actually REALLY nice. Super crisp and bright by today's standards let alone for a 35 year old computer. Unfortunately I can find almost nothing on this specific model so I have no idea what change was made to make it so much better.

damn, remember when you could just walk into a store and buy a bottle of rubbing alcohol? Shit's wild

You should replace the EL panel behind the LCD. You can get cut-to-size EL sheet in various colors, and it will REALLY do well for improving the visibility of the shoddy LCD contrast.

This thing almost has the build construction of a modern day oscilloscope. Awesome video too.

Favorite channel now, no joke. Thanks for the awesome content!

I know it's an old video, and I assume it's been mentioned before, but when you make a coiled cable the trick is to turn it "inside out" to reverse the handedness after the initial coiling - once you've done that, when the wire attempts to return to its original shape it actually tightens itself rather than straightening out.

First thought was, the cable looks like a RJ-11 telephone cable, got even more convinced when you said it was a 6 conductor cable :)

I've seen those stepper motors before. Googling doesn't turn up anything but I guess that's because they are so old they never appeared in any online catalogues, but I've seen them or some that looked very similar (and may be compatible) in Japan before. An electronics shop in Akihabara had some if I recall... Probably Nichibei Shoji. Not a lot of help but maybe if you check Yahoo Japan auctions one will come up.

Now that’s some serious fucking technology

Cool little portable! And MAN, cable making! I will NEVER enjoy making cables. You have more patience than I have LOL.

This guy is beating the pants off the 8-Bit guy in terms quality of content and I would love to see the sub count reflect how good this channel is. I'm tired of 30 minutes retro Brite videos which it feels like is the only thing happening on that channel these days. I love this channel for the raw knowledge and repair sequences and I found the key cleaning timelapse oddly mesmerizing.

you have to coil it, warm it to set the insulation memory, once its cooled back down, twist the entire thing inside out and then it will hold (that's how they make them for real real)

Holy moly, you were all in on retrobrighting back then huh.

Wow that dual monitor gaming was so immersive!

20:30 I used to play games in that speed in my netbook, even dos ones like duke nukem

*chortles at the BIOS screen* I'm fairly sure your system isn't Y2K compliant.

It’s hard to terminate non solid pairs. That is how you make coiled wire. A pvc case can be tempered to any shape.

VETTE! is amazing. It would even run on a Mac 512k. A 3D polygonal game on a machine essentially from 1984 that fit on a floppy disk, and even had networked multiplayer. But it was at its best on an EGA PC or a Mac II class machine that could do 16 colors. I always had fun messing with the gravity and crashing into things and driving into the bay. Also if you ever need some filler music and don’t feel like coming up with anything (seriously, creative motivation is hard) I’ve got some old stuff on a Bandcamp page that you’re welcome to use

Use white heat shrink tube to make a twist cable. After it shrinks, it may look ugly, but works every time.

In coiled cables, there's usually a coiled plastic in the wire itself and then the cable is made around that, so it's basically impossible to make your own unless you make your own cable

Nice restoration. I look forwards to seeing how it comes up once you're set up for retrobrighting. Did the power supply turn out to be ok in the end?

Excellent video on an underrated (and not well-documented AFAICT) computer. I'm also very curious about the ISA and/or HDD connections. Might you be willing to share the system disk image(s)? We have it running vanilla MS-DOS 3.1, but I believe we'd need the Sharp disk(s) to get into that setup menu.

Just got one of these, seems pretty cool. I don’t have a boot disk tho, so I can’t really use it. But still pretty cool

A cocktail of keyboard keys in that glass...

TO BE. It needs TO BE cleaned. It's not going down to the local walmart to buy some "cleaned" It needs TO BE cleaned!

I do love a good luggable. I have bot a TRS80 4P and a Compaq. But both of these are CRT monitors, which would make yours a pretty early attempt at an LCD, so in that regard it could be worse :)

just a note on the keyboard cable, what you can try to do is to coild the cable up, and once it's coiled then reverse the coil all the way and it should stay coiled

Would love to pick one of these up, but currently the only items on eBay are in the States and shipping to Europe in "covid-times" are both expensive and time consuming.. Nice one!

I've got a 7100 (With 20 MB MFM hard disk) and the screen is perfect. Only problem is the HD fails every now and then. Any tips on attaching an IDE or other drive?

did you try just putting new connectors on the old cable?

The same principle used to do springs should be used for coiling cables, as the cable, much like a spring, will expand a bit once free from the thing it was wrapped to.

I got a challenge for you. If you wish. Make a 2000-2005 laptop work as a workstation and gaming machine for max 2007 games. Any OS, Any laptop, your software must be "younger" than laptops age (e.g 2001 laptop must use 2002-2018 programs). Games you should try to run: UT 99,2004 n 2007. DOSGames (VIA Dosbox), Half Life 1/2 and Blood 2. Have fun, if you accept this challenge. :)

You should add some type of 8-Bit Guy 80's music. Or type of LGR, jazzy-comfort.

You might see if that empty socket by the 8086 is for a 8087 math coprocessor . It might speed things up a bit for the game and other select applications .

Did you make the music for the time lapse?

That's a cool luggable and I really like the Idea you expressed in the comments of trying to internally wire up a ISA to CF card! Another cool idea would be designing a full blown base unit faeturing multiple ISA connectors. Especially since that would let you use memory upgrades or different graphics cards and basically provide you with a full blown 8086 computer instead of "just" a luggable. But it probably isn't worth the extensive amount of work. Even though I will agree upon the CMOS battery working great for a 30 years old battery I would still replace it. (Or maybe unsolder it from the board and use some long wires to reconnect it while keeping it at a distance from the board.) The risk of the electrolyte spilling would make me too nervous. This is only based on instinct though. On that note: I have heard about replacing those cells with super capacitors. Would you consider this a good idea?

it was very cool at the time. much smaller than the Compaq portable!

If it's truely an EL backlight, you may want to look closely at the EL power supply circuitry. EL displays use high voltage to illuminate the panel, so it'll be converting the 12v up to some higher voltage.

The dates on CPU are usually the copyright for the die, brand name, and/or product names i.e. 8086 was made in 1978 or the product name Core 2 Duo was copyrighted 2005. I don't think I've ever seen a chip with a "date code" on it but it's possible manufacturer does it.

That computer really needs some retrobriting! But aside from that, it looks great!

00:28 sheit just got awesome

Seriously bummed that you didn't retrobrite. I was looking forward to the finished look of it. This is my first of ur videos. Do you ever retrobrite?

What series of fluke is that voltmeter?

The Screen is sharp!

Hey man I got to give you props you do a lot of really good work please keep up the good work I hope my likes and subscription help you out man

Hi All, i had a Toshiba T1000 for a while at work back in 1988, it is probably 10 years newer than your sharp PC-7000, but the similarity is that they are both basically IBM XT class with 8088 style 4.7mh processor and i think it has 512 ram. The good points were the built in Dos 2 or 3 in ram , but it also had a built in 3.5 floppy, it would boot of that disk if it was a system disk. The negative was even when new the display was horrible, i was just wearing glasses at that stage and i dont think i could have done more than 1 hour on it at a time, glare and lack of contrast annoys me. Luckily it has a external CGA or EGA monitor cable, so at work or home i use the external screen. I am not sure if there was a switch to disable the built in LCD screen but i definitly remember that the screen refresh rate is very slow, even using Multiplan or Microsoft Works 1 or 2, luckily multiplan has options to change colors on the spreadsheet and menu and Works has a few preset colour "skins" or laptop or reverse option as color presets. Games, yeah pretty much no, i am sure i played a few but the ghosting effect is very annoying, ( rougue was ok as was a few star trek text based games ) or the basic style games. If you have a good working parallel port, try laplink, pinouts for the standard parallel port should be used as you wont have advanced or fast / turbo / enhanced parallel port options in the bios it works with 8088 processor and you can map a remote pc hard drive and "share or copy" it like a network drive, it will be slow but i can use a XT -AT machine to get files from a Pentium 100 running dos only ( DOS or Win95 - Win98 class machines, as later models do not allow old programs to function at hardware level eg Win 2000 - XP ) You only need to look at a calculator from the time of that style of LCD and compare the washed out style of text and lack of clarity - it did its job and worked and saved on power usage Regards George

So it uses a 3 line phone cable to connect keyboard? Those definitely exist out there.

I listened more than watched this video but it reminded me of doing test and restore to a zenith EazyPC that was a 512k NEC intel clone all-in-one with pure black and white monitor built in. Man, does CGA ironically enough look good on monochrome monitors when PC's translate it to them. Same deal, only 720kb floppy drive, 2nd drive or HDD would been options someone who got the PC originally dis not opt in for, and finding zenith's specific DOS booter took it's own time. tl;dr: monochrome translated CGA is best CGA fight me.

nice job on coiling the cable. I might try that. why so much trouble terminating it? I haven't had to buy one in quite a few years, but 6-pin crimp tools used to be quite common since "business" phones often had 6 conductors and even the $15 tools would do it.

January 39th. The best day of the year.

Me in 1985: IBM PC is clearly superior to Apple, can you even ultrawide, plebs?

now THAT'S ultrawide

The EL inverter or the tube/sheet for the backlit screen is probably a goner. You could try hacking an LED strip in its place.

Omg Mister Argent was mentioned! Weird seeing IRC peeps mentioned on RU-vid...

Electroluminescent.. ooooh that is very sensitive to voltage drop.. ballast.. maybe a capacitor would help steady the voltage

Try to recrimp ends on the original cable. It's unlikely that the cable itself is bad. It's more likely that the old RJ11 ends oxidized.

It would be fun to use the case and keyboard for more modern hardware inside.

If the game is lagging on one of the world's first PC's...Win10 can't handle it

I guess for the time. That is why some other portables where using CRTs. You would not have worry about back lighting.

Painful watching you make a 6 wire cable. Just use a coil cord from a Toshiba Strata phone system. Already black, coiled, 12 inches long (not stretched), crimped and ready to go. Used to connect the phone base to the console.

I know I'm a bit late to the game on this one. But How It's made did a piece that showed how phone cord was made. They got the snapback by inverting the coil after they heat set it. And by inverting it they just wound the coil in the opposite direction after it was set. It's hard to explain but I hope you understood. If not please go watch that segment to see what I'm talking about.

love the channel. enjoyed the video on this system. i as well have one of these i plan to work on some time soon. did you ever find out about the connectors inside the system and for there pin outs. also. were you able to get a copy of the schematics for this system. . if you have any info on these systems that you could share. that would be greatly appreciated.

OMG... You have a computer from a world where there are 39 days in january!?

Here in 2020! Not sure if anyone has asked yet & if you still have this PC, but could you drop in an Nec V30 cpu to replace the 8086? Could make it ~10%-15% faster. Maybe also try adding a slightly faster main oscillator to overclock it a little bit (or some sort of drop-in daughterboard, if it can fit). Did you also try to clean the disk heads with alcohol & swab, if you can get in there? Try also finding a pc-7000 user manual, if you don't have one, might have some more stuff in there as far as operation you may not be aware of. It is kind of odd that Slow & Standard speed look the same, it's supposed to switch between normal 4.77mhz & 7.37mhz, from what I've read. Finally, I have not looked at other youtube videos of this model, so maybe other clips have some more info, including user mods, to enhance this machine.

I have a Sharp MZ-100 laptop from '89 and their LCDs went a long way in 4 years. It is 640x400 EL and blue but is is so bright and high contrast for the time. I modded mine to run on 6 AA batteries and it gets around 2 hours of battery life. Pretty nice machine to do stupid stuff like bringing it to the Coffee Shop to get wierd looks.Also, my power supply is good on this unit and it gets fed something like 7.5V instead of 6 from battery and the EL backlight still flickers. Same with my Tandy 1400LT. Both machines are pure white(no yellowing) so I can tell that these machines were used very little. All EL backlights flicker due to power supply changes. i.imgur.com/aKSrSGT.jpg Also, if you go into the SETUP and change only the display to inverse it will do it without a reboot.

Does DOS directly address each character-cell? I was under the impression that it sent serial ASCII to the monitor much like a UNIX terminal would. And of course since that process can happen to paper, the screen would just show whatever the most recent 25 lines of text were. That's how I always thought these old wide monitors did it anyway. Oh interesting, those keys are Alps mount. Are the switches actual Alps?

D'S screws have two NUTS. LOL

Nice lunchbox computer.

You said that the restoration was complete, but a 'restoration' is where you restore the color, touch up paint, clean it up, fill in cracks, etc.; what you did was a repair and _partial_ restoration.

hello sir i pulled floppy drive from pc7000a. and install it in my 286 pc.B: driver is working proper but A: drive is not reading writing or formatting what should i do.any idea.

Why wouldn't your just cut the ends off of the original and remake it that way?

hello sir i can fit hard drive inside pc7000 computer.please reply.if yes than how.

Who knew Jan 39th 2019 Was a Friday..... LUL...

You should also reverse coil it after first coiling and heat it again, then the coil is more "snappy" and has more "spring" :D. Trust me, I've made dozens of coiled cables (also sleeved with Paracord or Techflex)

I can hear that poor Sharp crying for some retrobrighting... Just listen. See?

I have one of these a PC-7500, where can i find boot disks!! Awesome video btw!

This! ... is a ... (nice Doug DeMuro reference.)

Always start with the battery, the original is usually on it's way out, causing weirdness.

im dieing this is a beautiful machine

You should just try changing the ends on the original cable. I'd bet that's all it is.

Just thought you should get yourself a little Air Compressor for quick Cleaning / Undusting maybe..? ^^

You could've tinned the wires to make them less soft.