I Fight a Tandy 1400HD to the Death
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
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I'm FINALLY able to take part in SEPTandy! Follow along as I try to rescue a totally dead Tandy 1400HD, because I have some very linux-ey plans for this late-80's chonk of a laptop.
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🍎 I fell in love with these horrible, beautiful Tandy laptops after watching this @vwestlife video: • 1988 Tandy 1400LT lapt...
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#SEPTandy #8088 #V20
Unstable supply voltage/dead caps. You hear all that noise through the speaker because of all that electrical noise on one (or more) power lines.
The Tandy is acting like it's not getting enough power. I'd suggest doing a full recap of the other power supply also. One way to test weak power supply power is to unplug the HDD and see if that improves overall performance, as the HDD is the biggest power consumer in that machine; The backlight being the second-largest power consumer.
Also consider testing and recapping the motherboard itself. And, while some people might balk, I'd suggest replacing EVERY electrolytic cap I see. Nothing lasts forever, and IMO, it would help to resolve a lot of electrical gremlins. It just depends on how much you want to invest in these machines.
1701 means hard disk controller error. Light blinking and disk spinning down indicates the drive has an error code to report (which it is blinking out). The drive thus is not responding to commands and thus the controller reports an error.
"I have no idea if theyre blown or not" So test continuity with a multimeter?
Glad I wasn't the only one yelling at the screen. 🙂
This right here...
Yup
There's almost never a good reason to jump a fuse. Either it's blown because there's some other faulty component that's drawing too much current, or there's some other problem that hasn't caused the fuse to blow. Either way, check the continuity of the fuse and if it's blown you need to figure out why it blew, not just replace it with a wire. If you do that and the problem is still there, it could possibly draw a lot more current and cause even more damage.
First step is always thou shalt check voltages. You should be able to see if a rail is loaded down. The fact that the screen dims under load should be pretty visible on the multimeter. If you haven't already replaced all the caps in the power supply, that would be a good start. I'd also check the diodes and transistors, make sure they're not shorted something. Also check the transformer to make sure there's no shorted windings, or shorts between the windings.
That capacitor falling on the motherboard could also have caused something to blow, which is now loading down a power rail as well.
Anyway, that's a good start for your homework. Please turn in your copybook once you've completed the assigned exercises.
I was internally screaming all the time he did that, I mean checking the fuse and recapping the PSU should be the first thing when you see the screen flickering when something drawes power...
You and your time traveling shenanigans sneaking into Sep-Tandy at the last minute Action Retro. You win this round 😁
"Evil shenanigans!"
"I swear to almighty I'll pistol-whip the next person who says 'shenanigans'." 🤣
1701-C? Congrats on your Ambassador class Tandy.
My regards to Captain Garrett.
The screaming noise is probably due to poor filtering on the power rails. Could also be the cause of some of the other weirdness. This could easily be due to the other caps in the power supply being bad, despite not looking bad, and not filtering the power rails properly.
Im happy you decided to do a full recap!
Visual inspection of caps just tells you they look nice, nothing more.
When a friend donated a Macintosh Performa 450to me he tested it and it was working.
I got it a few days later and it was stone dead. PSU caps where leaking everywhere and it was fresh! The problem was that o-rings dry up, they get hot during first power up and dont expand with the casing so they leak and die after that.
Fixed the PSU, it powered up but the FDD had a lot of issues, one was leaky caps with corrosion.
I was swabbing of the paint apple put on them during manufacturing, I wanted to read the specs printed on top of the SMD electrolytics hidden under the paint.
The dam caps fell strait off LOL!
Looked like traces and pads where gone, brown corrosion crap everywhere. Cleaned it off with vinegar and I found perfectly good copper under the corrosion. Recaped it, cleaned the heads (did not read or write properly), and eventually got i working properly again.
Still have to do the MB but will do that once I found a replacement for the HDD.
But I would not be surprised if the lose caps in your machine just detached them self's, old electrolyte seems pretty corrosive compared to more modern stuff and the legs just corrodes off the pads.
Im sure you get it going with some fresh caps and probably a few more fixes, often other stuff are broken too, not just caps but lets hope not.
Good luck and see you in part 2!
Technology Connections' "by the magic of buying two of them" has got to be the best way to solve a problem.
Bypassing fuses: "if he dies, he dies"
Seems like one of the drives is browning out the system. Or maybe the floppy controller. You should put volt-meters on all the voltage rails and measure them when its trying to do stuff.
I would probably try measuring the power supply voltages. Most likely 5 and 12 volts with a teensy bit of -12 for the serial port. Replacing caps wholesale is not the very best strategy, better to measure them first with a cap and ESR meter. It’s best to have some guidance from the measurements. Ad one is likely to maybe goof up on replacing 10% of the parts so fewer repairs is better.
The hard drive itself may have some leaky capacitors and/or the actuator motor may be frozen. Had both issues on some of my more ancient laptops. Dunno if these drives work now (as one machine is still dead and the others don't have a BIOS so I can even tell them that they *have* a hard drive), but at least the drives now pass their self test as in they spin up, wait another second, then the actuator arm moves around, parks itself, drive LED turns off and the drive stays on.
I'd love to make a Raspberry Pi cyberdeck out of one of those.
Put the Pi on an expansion card to replace the modem. Full original hardware with the power of a Pi on a bootable card.
@@JosiahGould There was a post on Hackaday last week showing how someone built a PCMCIA wifi card using an RP2040. I've found a standard Pi fits nicely in the case from a US Robotics Speedster modem, and can connect a hardware serial port on the GPIO pins.
If it's anything like the early ZDS XT laptops, the hdd controller did not report in bios the drive size.
Regarding the floppy used - was it single density? Some of those old laptops were single density only.
Hey Sean. You absolutely need to recap those power supplies. They use esr parts which allows for rapid discharge, but they've long given up the ghost. Do not just buy random caps for this, need to match parts. I can help you with this if you need
Of Rochester? Like the Medway town?
@@oldtechnobodycaresabout new york
Sean: I got a Tandy!
Me: Oh neat! It'll be a Tandy 1000 or a 3000HD or...
Sean: It's a luggable
Me: So you have chosen death
Gotta love a good old Tandy. Really love how they look!
Cute little computer. Floppy probably just needs a good clean, maybe has some sheered gear teeth. I would never expect such an ancient hard drive to just boot. Probably stiction or crashed heads. The 'voltage regulator' is most likely the step-up transformer for the backlight display. Remember to completely clean the boards before and after re-capping and watch out for loose pieces of solder.
The power supply is still suspect and may not be delivering enough power to the drives.
17:56 Perhaps back in the day or sometime in its life, someone pulled that capacitor off and replaced the card, but didn't continue disassembly to retrieve it. That's the only thing I can think of.
You still have a power issue. That squealing is noise from the power supply. Bad filter caps, could be bad caps on the motherboard as well. The dimming of the display shows me that the voltages are sagging when the drive motors activate.
Omg. That's the model... I've been looking for this long lost gem of my childhood.
this thing is really built like a small PC in a portable case! it's really cool
Only 25 years old and I love this channel and old tech. Love your awkward skits
Nice! And I hear you on the PC Convertible.. it's a CHUNK! IBM later fixed at least one sin by adding a backlit display, but as to why they didn't release the initial model with a backlit display is beyond me!
Sometimes to check just how bad the PSU is, i try to replace it by wiring up a standard PC PSU, however that implies figuring out the voltages for each pin.
Try to find a service manual for it if you can. The Tandy service manuals were very useful, and quite thorough for the most part. I used one of the LT1400's back in the day to write work procedures for our division on the boat.
The colour of the back light is a really nice on mine. It also goes a lot brighter than what it looks in this video.
SepTandy lives on, and we look forward to future shenanigans in getting this machine restored to former glory!
i think i wanted one of these when they were new. i'd stare the Consumers Distributing catalogue wondering how i'd ever have money to buy one. i was probably nine years old.
It's September 31, 2022, so you're good!
aren't those technically luggable computers? i have a zenith portable that looks like a big laptop, heavy weighs a bit more than 10 pounds. has no battery, runs on 110volts. only battery it had was a cmos battery which i removed, thank god it didnt leak on the board
A battle of epic proportions.
That hard drive controller card was...de-cap-itated.
Bought one of these earlier this year. Got so fed up trying to fix it that I sold it on after a couple of months. So cool but so janky.
The 286 systems are even worse! I have 3 and not 1 works...
You have been my recent alternative to the old Druaga1 videos that I solomly miss.
You find a better format actually editing your videos though. :)
That's worrying. I should check mine to make sure the caps aren't leaking. Last time I opened it up was probably about 7 or 8 years ago and it looked fine.
I wonder where you get all these amazing retro PCs 💪🙏
I like the low lighting.
Wow I have exactly a 1400HD. I found it in my mother’s garage after she passed away. Have no idea where it came from, certainly nothing she’d ever have used. Probably dead as a door nail but I don’t have a power supply for it. Someday I’ll have to troubleshoot that thing.
Dude! NEC stands for Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. and is generally not pronounced as "neck", but as Enn Eee See. My first IBM Compatible was powered by V20 chip. For its day, it was fast.
*Never replace a fuse with a random wire.* A protection fuse blows to prevent catastrophic damage. Replacing it with a wire almost guarantees the release of White Smoke™ from the funeral pyre of a now deceased machine.
Are you trying to boot 1.44 floppys in a 720K drive?
Dead drives and stuck motors which are controlled by pwm can throw weird audio via the pcm.
Yeah, I don't trust a single one of those caps. If one has leaked, any others that you ignore could leak. Recapping the whole thing is definitely the right course. You should be able to test the fuses with continuity mode on a multimeter. if blown, you can get replacements easily. Digikey is my go to parts supplier, but there's other places you can use too.
Speaker shrieks could be caps on board. At least that’s a symptom on some macs,
Why would anyone invent Fuses that are designed to Not be easily replaced?! That’s insane!
You bounce around in the chair like a championship winning chess player.
Just pickin', love the channel and love vicariously dealing with computer issues ever new video.
I really want to get an old laptop to use for note taking in classes, but I'm afraid to bite the bullet lol
small board is probably screen backlight module and it could shock you if it is cold cathode drove also the dimm and blinky backlight might be a sign your power suply is marginal, does voltages but caps are so worn out it lost all current sinking capacity
the one that only spins a fan and stops is looking like is smart enough to shoot down on a short circuit protection so either you replaced something wrong, or it is still having some acid under some components and don't like it or the motherboard itself have a short
try checking 12V line and 5 v lines on the working computer while it is in it's almost working oryginal state and monitor if any voltage go down when it dims down then trace a capacitor in power suply that is on that line and replace it before it blows up, repeat untill happy or no capacitors left
also check if power brick is ok, because if that is oryginal brick it may be cascading problems into working power suply , best would be starting with known good or even new power brick with the same polarisation and voltage, although new power suply can be more picky with overcurent protections and not even work
anyway, garbling noises and drives making wierd things while trying to work is often a sign of not having enough power to run, i had the same situation in modern security camera recorder, 12 power suply that wasn't enough to power up tha hard drive but was able to boot the system due to it working from different power rail and taking less power
Tandy 1400 HD, I owned one fore about 2 weeks, I am happy to say it was the main reason I became a Mac guy and have stayed a mac person since then. Within the first two weeks of owning this piece of crap, I returned to Radio Shack and demanded my money back. Week 1, Floppy driver failure, Week 2. Hard drive failure. When I took it in the idiot behind the counter tried to tell me it was user perception then when the Hard drive failed I was accused of dropping the laptop. Needless to say, it lead me to buy my first Macintosh a Macintosh LC and Never looked back. Years later I lived a life of an I.T. guy, rolling my eyes every time I had to put out the Windows crap fires. But, I kept telling myself its the reason I.T. prefers Windows over Macintosh (Job security)
I have the 286 version of this the 2830? 2840? hd . The power dc boards on these suck, they never age well. Ive tried a couple times to fix mine, and still doesn't want to boot. Stupid watchdog circuit is unobtanium. Maybe I'll try again soon. I can get it to boot bypassing the dc to dc board.
Sometimes I really hate dealing with ‘real vintage hardware’, it’s one reason why I pre-ordered an Analogue Pocket, yet a part of me longs for buying more ‘real vintage hardware’…..I think I may be a retro-masochist.
Edit:
Please seriously consider buying a multi-meter, you could save yourself allot of hassle e.g. test fuses with continuity mode.
Start with the really obvious. Firstly, check the bootable floppy disk is working, by booting off it in a known working machine. If it's fine, clean the heads of the Tandy floppy drive, and align them if necessary. Can you plug the Tandy fdd into a working PC to check it? Unplug everything that isn't needed just to boot from fdd. If you can, see if the hdd is recognised in another PC. Check the 'fuses' and PSU with a multimeter. Even better, look for a download of the service and user manuals for the machine. Then you'll have some clue as to what does what and what any error codes mean. Hopefully you'll get one or both working. 🙂
great video and great quality content as usual
On to Oc-Tandy!
That was a fuse? It looked like a ferrite bead when it was on the board 🤣
And this is why you should stick with the Macs! 😀
1701 is hard drsk error. I cannot remember. It has been to many years. If that is a hardware error or just missing boot files / make apparition active. I want to say hardware error
Maybe it needs a floppy to boot?
It October. 🎃
Never never Never just jump a fuse without replacing it. Also it would have been better to check and see if it blew in the first place :). And if it did, there was a reason it blew and since you don't know what that reason was, you should replaced the fuse and if it blew again you should check to see what actually caused it.
No those are fuses, anything marked F1, f2, ect is a fuse, they come in many different forms and ratings.
Am I heretical for wanting to gut these systems and replace the panel with a modern screen and fit a Latte Panda and a GPU in the case as an ultimate sleeper?
I mean, it looks like the caps were pretty likely to shred the entire board's traces, so while it's up to you what to do with your stuff, these do seem like interesting candidates
I can’t see anything in the screen. 😢
1701-C?!? Call Rachel Garrett and see if she can shed any light on this.
new hdd controller card maybe? or new power supply?
octandy
Just guessing, but maybe because of the fault it was trying to draw too much current and causing the computer to reset.
Never just jump a fuse. Check it with a multimeter first. Get the appropriate fuse or an equivalent.
Don't you know how to check a fuse with a multimeter? In any case, if you want to bypass the fuse, use the thinnest wire so that it can blow out if something happens. Also, you can connect the power supply in series with an incandescent bulb. In case of a short circuit, the lamp will simply light up. This is the best way among the wrong ones.
So what happened to this?
A Booty Beep . . .
hey hey
I am like nummber 896
Determination is key, and reframing of tNice tutorialngs you view as complicated.
You have a weak power supply.
bypassing fuses is always a bad idea tbh
*1400 HD you dolt 😂
You should adapt LattePanda 3 Delta in them, I think it would be better.
Such an unprofessional repair job. How hard is it to make some reasearch. Buy some tools and do things properly. First thing u should have done is to check the voltage rails with a multimeter. Replacing the capacitors is not always the solution. When things are 40yo there are lot more than capacitors that could go wrong and more importantly make things worse!.
this looks really white washed
Anybody here who has an old laptop that can play decent games that they do not use anymore? Can you donate it to me? I cant afford one because of my condition pls fellow gamers help out a brother..
The number of times I watched in horror, uttering *"hoh god"* under my breath at the freakish ways you wrestled with this poor machine make the title of this video very much earned.
R.I.P. the harddrive that fell over
Good old trinity... Apple II, Commodore PET, and Tandy TRS-80
I just LOVE retro computing... It is way more interesting... than these today's enthoos boasting about Threadrippers and RTX 4090s... I started with sister's boyfriend's Presario 700 which had Monster Truck Madness 2 on it...
@@mica7191 "Man I really hate modern computing because you can get a 64 core processor and a 4090 for $10,000 instead of, you know, a sub gigahertz processor, and 12mb of ram. Oh and I also love how every company was acting like apple today with proprietary parts for every line of computers." I like retro computing too. But y'all are blinded by nostalgia. Everything is wayyyyyyy better today.
@@TechnicalSpecter I will never understand some tech enthusiast channels like LinusTechTips... They are over the top... I will always have to afford a used pc... because I'm from a rural area in Croatia... and not from Canada like godmotherfucking Linus
You're not getting consistent power in. The noise your hearing is due to noise on your power lines interfering with the speaker, the reason you're hearing a difference in tone when accessing the floppy is likely evidence of this. The power supply needs some further work and it would be a good idea to recap the motherboard and have a close at the power rails to make each component is getting an adequate supply.
“I’ll just bypass these fuses here” - Death
That's getting into 8-bit guy troubleshooting right there 😂
The one that only lets the fan spin for a split second before turning off again might be caused by shorted tantalum capacitors on the motherboard.
Maybe test the fuse with a multimeter first? You wouldn’t even have to take it out.
That floppy drive might be 720K. Try using a 720K boot disk.
As a certain youtuber named Alec often says: "Through the magic of buying 2 of them!"
I thought it might be a deliberately off-brand reference.
that was exactly my thought!
Ok on fuses, you can use continuity checks on a multi-meter. Also with that much corrosion, you also need to check the continuity between traces on the board itself, because that level of corrosion most likely ate away some of the traces.
I'm watching this in horror, thinking "JUST CHECK THE CONTINUITY!!!, WHERE'S YOUR METER???? WTF????" , I'm currently at 8:03 so I don't know what happens next.
Especially vias, I've found...
Echo the comments above. I was so nervous…
I was thinking the same thing. If you don't have a meter, I highly recommend one that beeps for continuity so you don't have to look away from the probes while testing.
Why wouldn't you just test the fuse with a multimeter? Also, if the fuse is blown it might be for a reason.
Exactly
always love me some questionable computer shenanigans! they really help me recently with what i've been dealing with in my life
I find it interesting that this PSU is *completely different* from the one in my 1400LT, despite the rest of the system being so similar.
you should have gotten a 1400LT they are much more reliable and you can get a cf card adapter for it so you can keep both the dual floppies and still have a cf hdd. I did that to mines and its a blast using it!
That's the beautiful sound of electrical interference. There's probably a bunch of caps and resistors on the filter side of the psu that need help.
The sounds this thing makes reminds me so much of the SavestoLink terminals in alien...
could it be...
that square rectangle thought to be a fuse is also a filter? I hear low voltage power emanating from the power supply.
The 8086vic-20 chip architecture tells me the drive is a 720K floppy drive. Using a 720K boot floppy (not 1.44) should get you up and running. The physical difference you should be able to see is if there is a hole opposite the write-protect tab. I;ve had to cover the hole in the past to get the disk to get a 1.44 to format as a 720K. Of course, you could always install a 360K drive for testing on the bench. Tandy units tend to power over the data cable, so without seeing the connections on the drives themselves, a little difficult to know. If the HDD is dead, best to pull the card and drive for testing, that way the controller isn't hanging the bios on startup. It is possible the drives are working, just a LLF is needed. I suspect the light tube in the LCD may be worn out and is dragging down the power supply. They can be a pain to replace, but it is doable. If you need some tools, let me know and I"ll send you a few that you may be able to use. Let me know if you have issues/questions, as these 8-bit units (8086's) were how I started in the computing industry back in the day.