A little update on this system -- since working on the drives, I ran them both for several hours more and everything is working perfectly. The speed on both drives is now super stable (and within spec) and the head movement on the MPIO drive also is working flawlessly now. The entire computer is working perfectly again -- even after having it on for hours and hours. I would say this has been a success!
Lubricants are composed of minerals and oily substances (solvents, esters, etc). Even when sealed, they can separate and lose their lubricity. Letting them spin creates agitation and friction, and can sometimes reintegrate them and allow them to behave like lubricant again. Good to see them come back to life. As long as there isn't pitting on the bearing surfaces, or abrasive metal particles liberated by running them without adequate lube, they should be fine. Likely culprit is storage conditions (temperature extremes) and intermolecular forces IE bonding preference, decomposition and byproduct interactions, and so forth.
Head alignment issues. As you're using the drives the alignment settles in. I would exercise drives if not used for a while let alone the time span as these drives. I used to get similar problems when I used to convert data from old I'm systems and re- using PC disks. It used to be a pain going home cpm to PC and then go to the customers and it not read. As you seen the spin speed but heads struggle as well. In the day I used to have a device called disk exerciser which had different test patterns.
I'm a software dev so I naturally have interest in computers and I'm just getting into reparing retro stuff and learning electronics trough it. It's channels like yours that really inspire me. I hope to one day have an level of understanding that rivals yours.
My first job was a computer technician at an Apple dealer in Montreal. Brought back a lot of memories that I forgot I had forgotten! What I love about old computers, is how simple they were to understand and repair, and how fast they ran programs on fumes of RAM. Time and humidity was responsible for that drive's failure. I bet the drive was working fine before the computer was stored in the garage, basement or attic for decades. The corrosion around the timing disk and belt was a give away. Same corrosion happened in the bearings. Excellent video.
Many motors like that use sintered metal bearings, and whatever oil was added to them during manufacturing tends to harden with age and dust. What does help is putting a drop of alcohol on them first and moving them a bit to loosen the hardened gunk, then adding a bit of oil afterwards. The same goes for ball bearings. For bearings that are really stubborn, a little bit of heating can help as well, as long as you don't go nuts with the temperature and start melting things.
I was eagerly waiting this keyboard repair, not knowing what "foam and foil" is and how you would even replace something like that. Glad that the pads are still made.
Pretty good video. I used to service a lot of these drives back in the day. DON'T use a Dremel on the drive wheel!!! Put one drop off your oil on the shaft & hand spin it for a while and it will probably free up. If it's really sluggish, use 3in1 oil, 1 drop & turn it until it frees up. If it doesn't, you can remove the shaft and clean out the bearing with iso alcohol. IF you spin it too fast, you can permanently damage the bearing &/ or the shaft. These were never meant for high speed turning. This usually happens when exposed to cold and damp, or very warm and dry. With the stuck belt and corroded pulley, I would say cold and damp. These old drives are pretty simple, well built, & easily repaired. If you lube up the mpio drive it will probably never quit.
Just wanted to say that since I found your second channel a few weeks ago, my love and passion for electronics fault finding has been reignited. :D while I usually work with fire panels, they are often swap the board jobs, so taking some of these boards home and seeing what life is still in them is fun. :D some are running on some old tech too! Lol So a huge thanks from me for doing what you find fun and sharing it here!
Great video as usual. Btw those duster cans do not contain compressed air. Those cans are filled with a refrigerant/propellent like HFC-134a, HFC-152a, HFO-1234ze, CO2, and DME. Windex contains ammonia which deteriorates plastic and rubber. There are ammonia free glass cleaner that are plastic and rubber safe.
This was my first real computer, well after the Atari XEGS. It was a hand-me-down from one of my dad’s coworkers who knew I was into electronics and computers at a very young age. He also included the amber color Gorilla brand CRT monitor and a color dot matrix printer which took an ungodly amount of time to print anything in color but you knew I was printing banners from the Broderbund Print Shop program.
Excellent episode. My experience with the 5.25" drives has always been that the sliding rails are always gummed up, and every other moving part will need some love as well. Most of them have been sitting idle for sooo long. That is such a nice integration of the floppy drives... nicest I have seen.
Any chance there will be a revisit on the AT&T Unix PC? It looked like you had all the stuff to get it going now. I think you had the disks and I seem to remember it took a standard MFM style drive. That machine looked really interesting.
A trick I've learned for old bearings that were always right side up was to flip the drive over and hit the bearings with a heat gun, on low heat of course.
Unintentionally you actually aligned this video with #Appril2. Don't know much about Apple 2's as I started using Apple products in the Mac era... I love seeing old storage formats, especially magnetic media, at work so cool you got the drives fixed.
Adrian - I have several versions of Locksmith from back in the day - 4.1, 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0. IIRC, at least one of the versions had a "degauss" or "de-magnetize" feature which would drive the head back and forth across the disk continuously until the user stopped it. Version 4.1 had it, maybe one of the later versions. Would be useful for scenarios where the head has stiction issues. I used that feature back in the '80s every now and then to exercise the stepper motors in the Disk ][ drives.
Ahoy, Thanks again for the video. Anytime I start missing the old fun times I can watch a video like this to remember the pain of of all the work then to keep your ONE system running. I'm spoiled now that I can pick a different computer each day for a month. I really enjoyed this series on a computer system like I owned. Cheers daveyb
MPI, or Magnetic Peripherals, was Control Data's storage division. They were headquartered in Oklahoma City and was eventually spun off as Imprimis, which was acquired by Seagate in the early 1990s.
Brake fluid makes rubber swell up. I ruined a car tyre once by leaving the car parked on a puddle of brake fluid, the rubber had expanded so much that the gaps between the treads were almost completely closed up.
@@Zeem4 I suppose the effects are bad on good condition rubber, but it's usefull when we have very old rubber hard and brittle. I've used a mix of thinner or acetone and brake fluid to fix the impeller of water pumps on 1950's outboard engines. It's made of rubber, and dry and shrink with age. Dipping in this mix save them. Not exactely your sad case with new tires :)
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. No kidding, though, eye protection is so neglected and so important. Great advice. Keep up the great content Adrian.
In the long term for future reliability, the bearings in that second drive could do with some re-lubricating, this would of course involve some in-depth surgery to gain access to the bearings, but from experience of reviving electromechanical fun things with dry, sticky bearings (both sleeve and ball bearings) hiding behind loctite-bound screws and nuts, it's oh-so worth it, a very satisfying exercise... :)
A trick I've been using for sticky/binding bearings that don't just free up with oil alone is to mix some acetone into the oil before dripping it into the bearing. This helps to get thicker oils into tighter spaces by thinning it out so it can more easily wick in around the bearing shields, but thickens back up once the acetone evaporates. With dried up old grease, I find once the mix gets worked in a little bit, the bearing will start to spin extremely freely by hand once the acetone gets everything liquified. Then when the acetone evaporates, the oil is thoroughly blended into the old grease which keeps it soft enough to be usable for a good while longer. You do have to be cautious with acetone around motor windings though, as if you squeeze in way too much, it can drip/run too far inside and ends up dissolving the coating on the windings (depending on their coating) and can cause them to short.
Acetone is really a Paint and Coatings solvent. I use MEK and it works wonders. First time about two drips of Mek then a towel to absorb the failed goop. Then a drop of fresh non detergent light oil. MEK is extremely soluble in oil and grease and meant to clean and quickly evaporate The Acetone may alter the chemistry and shorten the life but the concept is the right idea
Haha that's great you got that old disk drive working. I remember back when I was working at a school with donation computers and there was a 3.5" disk drive that didn't work right. It was going to get thrown away so I figured what the heck, and made a batch file that just ran rawrite.exe like 500 times using copy and paste. It just kept trying to write an image, ignoring errors. It was working perfectly by the time it was done. The teacher didn't want to mess with a drive that was potentially unreliable though so I think we just gave it to someone who wanted it.
Did that foam'n'foil job myself, just recently, with an original ACT Apricot PC. I've still got to fix one key I missed. Definitely tedious. Definitely worth taking your time over that one. I've got another machine to do, too.
What's funny is this video would be the podcast that I would listen to while putting together my own foam and foil keyboard. Listen to you talk about doing it while I do it
Also you're absolutely correct you should not use alcohol depending on the alcohol and depending on the belt formulation. Some can resist it others cannot. It'd be kind of strange for it to not resist it but at the same time it's not worth the risk. if you want though drinking alcohol is always safe. Although I can't see any reason you'd want to use that
Finally you should have probably used a silicon grease for the turntable style mechanism. Such light oil as bearing oil is just going to not cut it It's too thin
It's actually often quite simple to replace those kind of bearings. With a small vice and regular sockets it's possible to press the old one out and the new one in. The only important thing is to always put the pressure on the correct ring. If it's on a shaft press the inner ring, if it's in a housing press the outer ring. :)
When you say get rid of all of that foam, you mean it! we have this issue in vintage organs and keyboards and the foam will corrode or damage contacts and wire!
Re. alcohol on rubber: what I've learned from repairing cameras is that lighter fluid (like ronsonal, not charcoal starter) is usually safe for rubber, and most plastics (it is also less liable to damage paints). I've also used it to temporarily rejuvenate rubber parts on old model trains (traction tires, rubber drive bands, etc.). Unlike alcohol, lighter fluid has a slight lubricant effect, and it also doesn't leave residue on most surfaces. Of course, it is even more flammable than rubbing alcohol so there is an even greater need to take care when using it for cleaning.
I don't have any experience with Ronsonal but I can tell you for sure that the other common lighter fluid, Naptha (used in Zippo brand lighter fluid), definitely interacts with plastics as I found out when I accidentally frosted some clear acrylic with it.
Hi Adrian, thanks for the exceptional work. I have a little wish or suggestion. As you „broadcast“ to the whole world, it would really be helpful when you describe a little bit more, whenever you use some north american brands like „scotch bright“ or „windex“ - either by researching some replacements in other parts of this world or by just putting some chemical info (links) into the comments. ;)
I had a similar issue with my A1200 when first using it again. It was the hard disk rather than the floppy, but at first I couldn't get into Workbench, but after a few games of Sensible Soccer and Lemmings it fixed itself, but still gave the odd read error, but the longer I used it, the less it happened and now it's like it was never a thing. I guess sometimes just being sat unused for 20+ years can cause stuff to get stuck in place.
Great job I learned a few things thanks Adrian. That's a nice computer. Maybe the color can be fixed with replacement caps on the video board or elsewhere? Maybe check voltages and signals on the board? 15:09 good idea to check the pad, opposite the read/write head and re-glue it if the existing glue has deteriorated. Otherwise the pad will come off and the plastic clip pad holder start to squeal against the disk. The Clip can be seen at 15:24 15:54 no a cleaning disk will wear on the pad, opposite the r/w head afaik. Cleaning disks are mostly for double sided drives, no? Drol looks like that on A8 but performs better and has music. =) still very similar graphics that use artifacting.
I never even knew of the existence of these machines, until seeing an earlier video of yours. In a way not surprising though, as the early Apple machines were not that popular here in the UK.
A useful lesson. As a rule if a digital device is not functional I will assume it's broken: One's and zero's, on's and off's, working or broken. But there may be room to fiddle a mechanical digital device back to functionality.
Whoa. Locksmith. I haven't seen that since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I have this vague memory if holding down a key during boot to make it use all 128kB of RAM, a trick I learnt about three days before we sold the 2c that had the memory. So many hours swapping disks for no reason!
When you popped out the old foam keys, if you had a vacuum hose in your other hand you could flick the old switch and debris right up into the hose to cut down on the mess.
You really should use silicon oil while lubricating this sliders, there is plastic involved and non-silicon lubricants can melt plastic.. Anyhow keep up the good work. We love what you do..
👍 for the tip about backing off screws first before screwing in, i always do it ,many just ram the screws straight in, in may cases cracking old brittle plastic...
19:30 Get a cordless drill with a Phillips bit to spin the drive and clean the pulley at the same time with the scotchbrite. A little alcohol on the scotchbrite stops the dust and it seems to work a bit quicker.
Hi Adrian, I've never worked on a foam and foil keyboard, so this might be a silly idea, but I was thinking that you might be able to use a wooden dowel, of a diameter slightly smaller than that of the foam and foil pads, and use that to press all 4 sides of the plastic disc past the 4 catches. The metal cylinder body of a discarded disposable e-cigarette might also do the trick (if that's something you have access to in the US).
Adrian. It would have been easy to take a battery powered drill with a screw bit and spun that second drive pully (via the pully screw) while holding the scotch-brite to both exercise the bearing and quickly clean the corrosion off that pully.
*Adrian:* The Franklin drives I used on my Apple ][+ supported 40-tracks, there was a value you could poke into memory to change that. I'm trying to recall it.
The problem with using oil or grease to lubricate things like drive actuators is that they attract dust. A better solution is either graphite powder by itself or graphite powder in wax. If using graphite powder by itself you need to be very careful that it only goes on the component that you are targeting.
Nice job there with the silicone grease, Adrian. Too many tech / retro UA-camrs who should know better use lithium grease, which is not great on plastics long term.
The Franklin Ace 1000 was on my wish list back in the day, but like the Apple ][, was out of my price range. (Minimum wage was $3.35/hr, and when I enlisted, I was making a whopping $150/week.) I had worked all summer (1977) to scrape up the $399 for my TRS-80 base unit; I couldn't even afford the monitor.
49:38 I see the white level starting ok and then the whole picture dims down within a few seconds. Not sure if it's the retrotink or the signal? For the stuck drive, the pulley at the bottom has a screw, I was thinking that maybe removing it would give you access to the bearing. Yes they are "sealed" but usually they would let some lubricant in. Very good job though!
I am sure that the reason for the metal shield all around the drives were to meet the FCC Class B requirements for electronic devices way back when! Now I doubt much actually meets those specs when its so cheap from China.
Windex isn't much better than isopropyl alcohol to clean rubber belts since it contains 2-hexoxyethanol and isopropanolamine and other chemicals that aren't suited for rubber, especially with a belt that has become slighly rigidified. The best way to clean/rejuvenate rubber parts or belts is to use rubber joints protector spray, the Michelin 009455 is quite efficient.
This is one time where we can credit Jobs. He was already gone while Apple were attempting to crush Franklin. I'm sure Jobs would have tried to crush them twice-as-hard though.
A little update on this system -- since working on the drives, I ran them both for several hours more and everything is working perfectly. The speed on both drives is now super stable (and within spec) and the head movement on the MPIO drive also is working flawlessly now. The entire computer is working perfectly again -- even after having it on for hours and hours. I would say this has been a success!
Cool😊
Lubricants are composed of minerals and oily substances (solvents, esters, etc). Even when sealed, they can separate and lose their lubricity. Letting them spin creates agitation and friction, and can sometimes reintegrate them and allow them to behave like lubricant again.
Good to see them come back to life. As long as there isn't pitting on the bearing surfaces, or abrasive metal particles liberated by running them without adequate lube, they should be fine.
Likely culprit is storage conditions (temperature extremes) and intermolecular forces IE bonding preference, decomposition and byproduct interactions, and so forth.
@@tiporari "lubricity" is a word that I didn't know existed but am extremely pleased to find that it does!!
Head alignment issues.
As you're using the drives the alignment settles in.
I would exercise drives if not used for a while let alone the time span as these drives.
I used to get similar problems when I used to convert data from old I'm systems and re- using PC disks.
It used to be a pain going home cpm to PC and then go to the customers and it not read.
As you seen the spin speed but heads struggle as well.
In the day I used to have a device called disk exerciser which had different test patterns.
You need to change the bearings anyway.
Please change them so that the same thing does not happen again in the future.
It’s Chanel’s like yours that are not only educating me, but also makes my long hospitalization that much bearable! Thanks for the great vids!!!
I'm a software dev so I naturally have interest in computers and I'm just getting into reparing retro stuff and learning electronics trough it. It's channels like yours that really inspire me. I hope to one day have an level of understanding that rivals yours.
The power of bearing oil and persistence is awesome. Excellent fix, Adrian!
My first job was a computer technician at an Apple dealer in Montreal. Brought back a lot of memories that I forgot I had forgotten!
What I love about old computers, is how simple they were to understand and repair, and how fast they ran programs on fumes of RAM.
Time and humidity was responsible for that drive's failure. I bet the drive was working fine before the computer was stored in the garage, basement or attic for decades.
The corrosion around the timing disk and belt was a give away. Same corrosion happened in the bearings. Excellent video.
Many motors like that use sintered metal bearings, and whatever oil was added to them during manufacturing tends to harden with age and dust. What does help is putting a drop of alcohol on them first and moving them a bit to loosen the hardened gunk, then adding a bit of oil afterwards. The same goes for ball bearings. For bearings that are really stubborn, a little bit of heating can help as well, as long as you don't go nuts with the temperature and start melting things.
Franklin also sold these drives individually, in Disk II-style cases.
I was eagerly waiting this keyboard repair, not knowing what "foam and foil" is and how you would even replace something like that. Glad that the pads are still made.
Pretty good video. I used to service a lot of these drives back in the day. DON'T use a Dremel on the drive wheel!!! Put one drop off your oil on the shaft & hand spin it for a while and it will probably free up. If it's really sluggish, use 3in1 oil, 1 drop & turn it until it frees up. If it doesn't, you can remove the shaft and clean out the bearing with iso alcohol. IF you spin it too fast, you can permanently damage the bearing &/ or the shaft. These were never meant for high speed turning. This usually happens when exposed to cold and damp, or very warm and dry. With the stuck belt and corroded pulley, I would say cold and damp. These old drives are pretty simple, well built, & easily repaired. If you lube up the mpio drive it will probably never quit.
Fully functional and programmed in multiple techniques.
Just wanted to say that since I found your second channel a few weeks ago, my love and passion for electronics fault finding has been reignited. :D while I usually work with fire panels, they are often swap the board jobs, so taking some of these boards home and seeing what life is still in them is fun. :D some are running on some old tech too! Lol
So a huge thanks from me for doing what you find fun and sharing it here!
Adrian's magical digital basements surprised me again! :) And I like it! Arian! Thank you for your expertise and skill!
Great video as usual. Btw those duster cans do not contain compressed air. Those cans are filled with a refrigerant/propellent like HFC-134a, HFC-152a, HFO-1234ze, CO2, and DME.
Windex contains ammonia which deteriorates plastic and rubber. There are ammonia free glass cleaner that are plastic and rubber safe.
This was my first real computer, well after the Atari XEGS. It was a hand-me-down from one of my dad’s coworkers who knew I was into electronics and computers at a very young age. He also included the amber color Gorilla brand CRT monitor and a color dot matrix printer which took an ungodly amount of time to print anything in color but you knew I was printing banners from the Broderbund Print Shop program.
This is like a personalized video just for me! I've got this exact system with these exact problems! Thanks!
Impressive that Franklin engineers were able to reverse-engineer the Apple floppy controller. Good for them!
Excellent episode. My experience with the 5.25" drives has always been that the sliding rails are always gummed up, and every other moving part will need some love as well. Most of them have been sitting idle for sooo long. That is such a nice integration of the floppy drives... nicest I have seen.
I was thinking about wanting a Franklin Ace 1200 about 2 or 3 days ago before I even saw any mention of it online in over a year. Now I see this.
I really enjoyed this production. Heck, I like all of your stuff.
Love the suspense and Adrian's exitement. Inspiring!
Any chance there will be a revisit on the AT&T Unix PC? It looked like you had all the stuff to get it going now. I think you had the disks and I seem to remember it took a standard MFM style drive. That machine looked really interesting.
Thanks so much for a really superb presentation.
Educational and enjoyable to watch. Thanks Adrian.
A trick I've learned for old bearings that were always right side up was to flip the drive over and hit the bearings with a heat gun, on low heat of course.
Coach made it run laps. Fixed it right up.
Unintentionally you actually aligned this video with #Appril2. Don't know much about Apple 2's as I started using Apple products in the Mac era... I love seeing old storage formats, especially magnetic media, at work so cool you got the drives fixed.
Man I really dig this machine if I was getting a computer back then this would have been the one to get, dig that 70's look for sure
Adrian - I have several versions of Locksmith from back in the day - 4.1, 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0. IIRC, at least one of the versions had a "degauss" or "de-magnetize" feature which would drive the head back and forth across the disk continuously until the user stopped it. Version 4.1 had it, maybe one of the later versions. Would be useful for scenarios where the head has stiction issues. I used that feature back in the '80s every now and then to exercise the stepper motors in the Disk ][ drives.
Ahoy, Thanks again for the video. Anytime I start missing the old fun times I can watch a video like this to remember the pain of of all the work then to keep your ONE system running. I'm spoiled now that I can pick a different computer each day for a month. I really enjoyed this series on a computer system like I owned. Cheers daveyb
Nice work! Also, the Amdek amber monitor is just a perfect fit for this system 🙂. Very nice!
MPI, or Magnetic Peripherals, was Control Data's storage division. They were headquartered in Oklahoma City and was eventually spun off as Imprimis, which was acquired by Seagate in the early 1990s.
Windex usually contains ammonia.
Ammonia is bad for rubber :)
Brake fluid is good, it helps rejuvenating.
Brake fluid makes rubber swell up. I ruined a car tyre once by leaving the car parked on a puddle of brake fluid, the rubber had expanded so much that the gaps between the treads were almost completely closed up.
@@Zeem4 I suppose the effects are bad on good condition rubber, but it's usefull when we have very old rubber hard and brittle.
I've used a mix of thinner or acetone and brake fluid to fix the impeller of water pumps on 1950's outboard engines.
It's made of rubber, and dry and shrink with age. Dipping in this mix save them.
Not exactely your sad case with new tires :)
Oregon Trail? My Great-grandfather came overland to Sacramento in 1949. He passed away in 1900, long before my time!
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. No kidding, though, eye protection is so neglected and so important. Great advice. Keep up the great content Adrian.
In the long term for future reliability, the bearings in that second drive could do with some re-lubricating, this would of course involve some in-depth surgery to gain access to the bearings, but from experience of reviving electromechanical fun things with dry, sticky bearings (both sleeve and ball bearings) hiding behind loctite-bound screws and nuts, it's oh-so worth it, a very satisfying exercise... :)
A trick I've been using for sticky/binding bearings that don't just free up with oil alone is to mix some acetone into the oil before dripping it into the bearing. This helps to get thicker oils into tighter spaces by thinning it out so it can more easily wick in around the bearing shields, but thickens back up once the acetone evaporates. With dried up old grease, I find once the mix gets worked in a little bit, the bearing will start to spin extremely freely by hand once the acetone gets everything liquified. Then when the acetone evaporates, the oil is thoroughly blended into the old grease which keeps it soft enough to be usable for a good while longer.
You do have to be cautious with acetone around motor windings though, as if you squeeze in way too much, it can drip/run too far inside and ends up dissolving the coating on the windings (depending on their coating) and can cause them to short.
Acetone is really a Paint and Coatings solvent.
I use MEK and it works wonders.
First time about two drips of Mek then a towel to absorb the failed goop. Then a drop of fresh non detergent light oil.
MEK is extremely soluble in oil and grease and meant to clean and quickly evaporate
The Acetone may alter the chemistry and shorten the life but the concept is the right idea
Haha that's great you got that old disk drive working. I remember back when I was working at a school with donation computers and there was a 3.5" disk drive that didn't work right. It was going to get thrown away so I figured what the heck, and made a batch file that just ran rawrite.exe like 500 times using copy and paste. It just kept trying to write an image, ignoring errors. It was working perfectly by the time it was done. The teacher didn't want to mess with a drive that was potentially unreliable though so I think we just gave it to someone who wanted it.
Old tech is fun to work with, they were made to be repaired compared to today
Locksmith is a dang powerful lil utility! Makes you wish that was available across more platforms lol
Another engrossing upload. Thanks, Adrian. 👍
Did that foam'n'foil job myself, just recently, with an original ACT Apricot PC. I've still got to fix one key I missed. Definitely tedious. Definitely worth taking your time over that one. I've got another machine to do, too.
i have found the best to use on rubber belts is simple green. cleans them well and allows the belt to grip nicely.
What's funny is this video would be the podcast that I would listen to while putting together my own foam and foil keyboard. Listen to you talk about doing it while I do it
Also you're absolutely correct you should not use alcohol depending on the alcohol and depending on the belt formulation. Some can resist it others cannot. It'd be kind of strange for it to not resist it but at the same time it's not worth the risk. if you want though drinking alcohol is always safe. Although I can't see any reason you'd want to use that
Finally you should have probably used a silicon grease for the turntable style mechanism. Such light oil as bearing oil is just going to not cut it It's too thin
It's actually often quite simple to replace those kind of bearings. With a small vice and regular sockets it's possible to press the old one out and the new one in. The only important thing is to always put the pressure on the correct ring. If it's on a shaft press the inner ring, if it's in a housing press the outer ring. :)
When you say get rid of all of that foam, you mean it! we have this issue in vintage organs and keyboards and the foam will corrode or damage contacts and wire!
Nice to hear some of Nathan’s compositions 😊
QD is very good for removing oxidation from contacts and it leaves no residue. It's been my go-to contact cleaner for many years.
A rare narrated video! Nice! And ugh I hate foam and foil.. why lord.. why...
Love your videos! Super entertaining and informative! Thank you!
Persistence paid off!
Another very enjoyable and informative watch.
But I have to deduct points on this one for a complete lack of Rees. 😉
LOLOL! Thanks
awesome video! I look forward to your videos on Saturday and Wednesday on the second channel!
The Shugart DJ gonna lay down some tracks.
Re. alcohol on rubber: what I've learned from repairing cameras is that lighter fluid (like ronsonal, not charcoal starter) is usually safe for rubber, and most plastics (it is also less liable to damage paints). I've also used it to temporarily rejuvenate rubber parts on old model trains (traction tires, rubber drive bands, etc.). Unlike alcohol, lighter fluid has a slight lubricant effect, and it also doesn't leave residue on most surfaces. Of course, it is even more flammable than rubbing alcohol so there is an even greater need to take care when using it for cleaning.
I don't have any experience with Ronsonal but I can tell you for sure that the other common lighter fluid, Naptha (used in Zippo brand lighter fluid), definitely interacts with plastics as I found out when I accidentally frosted some clear acrylic with it.
Hi Adrian, thanks for the exceptional work.
I have a little wish or suggestion. As you „broadcast“ to the whole world, it would really be helpful when you describe a little bit more, whenever you use some north american brands like „scotch bright“ or „windex“ - either by researching some replacements in other parts of this world or by just putting some chemical info (links) into the comments. ;)
I had a similar issue with my A1200 when first using it again. It was the hard disk rather than the floppy, but at first I couldn't get into Workbench, but after a few games of Sensible Soccer and Lemmings it fixed itself, but still gave the odd read error, but the longer I used it, the less it happened and now it's like it was never a thing.
I guess sometimes just being sat unused for 20+ years can cause stuff to get stuck in place.
Great job I learned a few things thanks Adrian. That's a nice computer. Maybe the color can be fixed with replacement caps on the video board or elsewhere? Maybe check voltages and signals on the board?
15:09 good idea to check the pad, opposite the read/write head and re-glue it if the existing glue has deteriorated. Otherwise the pad will come off and the plastic clip pad holder start to squeal against the disk. The Clip can be seen at 15:24
15:54 no a cleaning disk will wear on the pad, opposite the r/w head afaik. Cleaning disks are mostly for double sided drives, no?
Drol looks like that on A8 but performs better and has music. =) still very similar graphics that use artifacting.
I never even knew of the existence of these machines, until seeing an earlier video of yours. In a way not surprising though, as the early Apple machines were not that popular here in the UK.
A useful lesson.
As a rule if a digital device is not functional I will assume it's broken: One's and zero's, on's and off's, working or broken. But there may be room to fiddle a mechanical digital device back to functionality.
Man, keeping these oldtimers alive is a full time job 😅
Those drives must have been humming along to that Dead or Alive song.
Nice job getting those drives running, they really are tanks! And just in time for #APPril2 (the new Apple II themed month for April) 😀
Like us, we all get stiff joints and creak a little, exercise always helps.
Whoa. Locksmith. I haven't seen that since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I have this vague memory if holding down a key during boot to make it use all 128kB of RAM, a trick I learnt about three days before we sold the 2c that had the memory. So many hours swapping disks for no reason!
When you popped out the old foam keys, if you had a vacuum hose in your other hand you could flick the old switch and debris right up into the hose to cut down on the mess.
You really should use silicon oil while lubricating this sliders, there is plastic involved and non-silicon lubricants can melt plastic.. Anyhow keep up the good work. We love what you do..
With those single sided drives, I remember replacing the felt pad was something we always did during service. They would tend to become hard.
40:15 malfunction in Adrian, press escape to continue...
👍 for the tip about backing off screws first before screwing in, i always do it ,many just ram the screws straight in, in may cases cracking old brittle plastic...
The type of tablet stepper motor usually has a gear arrangement inside and should not really be turned around as the plastic gear can be damaged
19:30 Get a cordless drill with a Phillips bit to spin the drive and clean the pulley at the same time with the scotchbrite. A little alcohol on the scotchbrite stops the dust and it seems to work a bit quicker.
Hi Adrian, I've never worked on a foam and foil keyboard, so this might be a silly idea, but I was thinking that you might be able to use a wooden dowel, of a diameter slightly smaller than that of the foam and foil pads, and use that to press all 4 sides of the plastic disc past the 4 catches. The metal cylinder body of a discarded disposable e-cigarette might also do the trick (if that's something you have access to in the US).
Adrian. It would have been easy to take a battery powered drill with a screw bit and spun that second drive pully (via the pully screw) while holding the scotch-brite to both exercise the bearing and quickly clean the corrosion off that pully.
Looking forward to part 3!
Your little Sony Trinitron tv is really sweet.
Damn Mr. Black makes some great content!
seems the patience factor would be a pain with putting in the new pad, wow
*Adrian:* The Franklin drives I used on my Apple ][+ supported 40-tracks, there was a value you could poke into memory to change that. I'm trying to recall it.
Capstan drive head positioning. I never imagined that.
The film left behind by the Deoxit is protective, it's not supposed to be removed, and it shouldn't interfere with electrical connections.
floppy drive necromancy is getting more and more spooky :V
this is awesome :) i cantw ait to rebuild my 1200 . since these are rediculously rare and worth soo much money
the deoxit layer is supposed to be protective (stops corrosion) you should be fine to leave it - it does not affect conductivity
The problem with using oil or grease to lubricate things like drive actuators is that they attract dust. A better solution is either graphite powder by itself or graphite powder in wax. If using graphite powder by itself you need to be very careful that it only goes on the component that you are targeting.
Nice job there with the silicone grease, Adrian. Too many tech / retro UA-camrs who should know better use lithium grease, which is not great on plastics long term.
^^^ This. Lithium grease will increase plastic breakdown.
The Franklin Ace 1000 was on my wish list back in the day, but like the Apple ][, was out of my price range. (Minimum wage was $3.35/hr, and when I enlisted, I was making a whopping $150/week.) I had worked all summer (1977) to scrape up the $399 for my TRS-80 base unit; I couldn't even afford the monitor.
49:38 I see the white level starting ok and then the whole picture dims down within a few seconds. Not sure if it's the retrotink or the signal? For the stuck drive, the pulley at the bottom has a screw, I was thinking that maybe removing it would give you access to the bearing. Yes they are "sealed" but usually they would let some lubricant in. Very good job though!
Drol means turt in Dutch, i know because i am Dutch :)
Watching this video from begin till the end, realy enjoying it.
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that gummed up bearings can only react positively to being spun up faster and faster.
@6:00 You can check all the letters with this sentence: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
I am sure that the reason for the metal shield all around the drives were to meet the FCC Class B requirements for electronic devices way back when! Now I doubt much actually meets those specs when its so cheap from China.
Excellent video thank you Adrian.
Also, trying not to laugh as my wife came into the room asking what on earth you were talking about here @23:56
Windex isn't much better than isopropyl alcohol to clean rubber belts since it contains 2-hexoxyethanol and isopropanolamine and other chemicals that aren't suited for rubber, especially with a belt that has become slighly rigidified.
The best way to clean/rejuvenate rubber parts or belts is to use rubber joints protector spray, the Michelin 009455 is quite efficient.
Just a FYI alcohol will not destroy the belt, but the ammonia in Windex will destroy the rubber.
Maybe the drives have extra metal casing to help support heavy monitor. The plastic of the case might not be enough.
I did that a lot of years ago, it was a great deal then.
This is one time where we can credit Jobs. He was already gone while Apple were attempting to crush Franklin. I'm sure Jobs would have tried to crush them twice-as-hard though.
I was taught those are rubber impregnated fabric belt. Without feeling it myself there is a chance it was different process, but pretty sure.
Those cooton swabs are relay contact cleaners, from when things were electric and not electronic...
I had one of these back in the day.
“You have died of dysentery.” Your Franklin, however, seems to have survived. 😉