Posts tagged "Repair Failures"

Not every repair is successful. Sometimes, a broken part is not available, or a system is no longer worth the effort and expense to fix. Other times, I just screwed up and made things worse. These are their stories.

thumbnail for "The Sega SC-3000 goes to a key party"

The Sega SC-3000 goes to a key party

I fixed up my SC-3000’s cartridge slot almost a year ago, but I haven’t been using the computer. Why not? Because the keyboard is super unusable. It’s time to fix it now, though, because I just paid a king’s ransom for a copy of Flicky.

thumbnail for "Not conducting myself appropriately - a CoCo keyboard inspection"

Not conducting myself appropriately - a CoCo keyboard inspection

When I got the CoCo up and running in the previous entry, I noticed that the keyboard wasn’t working particularly well. I found myself with some spare time to dismantle the keyboard, and unfortunately it has not yet been fixed. That doesn’t mean we can’t still learn a thing or two.

thumbnail for "Foiled again by the Tandy 1000SX"

Foiled again by the Tandy 1000SX

We fixed the 1000SX’s power supply, and tested the motherboard for shorts. There’s nothing left to do but put the computer back together again and see if it works. And take it apart again. And to wish I had a fully-operational chip fab and precision schematics of every custom IC. Yeah, this one is gonna take a little more time.

thumbnail for "Will It Short? A Tandy 1000SX motherboard inspection"

Will It Short? A Tandy 1000SX motherboard inspection

Last time on the Tandy 1000SX show, I blew a hole in a power-supply capacitor without even getting the machine to boot. Talk about ungrateful! At least it gives me an excuse to buy more tools.

thumbnail for "Tandy 1000SX power supply has an oops"

Tandy 1000SX power supply has an oops

I picked up a Tandy 1000SX recently. My plan is to use it for experimenting with Tandy graphics and sound, and maybe even port a few hobbyist games to the platform. As per usual with my pick-ups, this one needs a little bit of work before it can be usable.

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The Magic Smoke SE

Fresh off the success of the trace-repaired Genesis, I decided that I was an electronics god and could fix anything. That’s why I ordered this untested Mac SE from a place in Texas, where it was listed as being good to make a movie prop out of.

thumbnail for "SparcStation 1+ - still no booting"

SparcStation 1+ - still no booting

The SparcStation 1+ is still pulling its weird “Illegal Instruction” error, but at least now we know the keyboard works.