Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Hell Razor5543]

The concern was not the contamination. It was the fact that the whole unit was scorched (including the disk pack) and repairs had been necessary for the thing to work once. The overriding worry was that components could be on the edge of failure, and WOULD fail the next time the unit was powered up, with no certainty they could get it to work again.

[Zelandeth]

It's a bit sad that I'm going to have to wait a fair while to see if this will spin up, but it won't do anything without the 4MHz master clock from the host system. So until I've got a controller card running and all the leads hooked up it won't do anything.

I should be able to do a proof of life test though once I've checked out the power supply, as it should power up and show a fault condition, and after ~30 seconds release the disc loading cover latch. From what I've read though aside from the obvious physical maladies which can afflict them, especially if they've got damp that these drives are actually pretty robust electronically speaking.

I really ought get the VT-100 on the bench and at least have a look at what state that's in (aside from predictably scruffy). I'm also going to need to get a bunch of bits to make a keyboard adapter as I don't particularly fancy paying £200 for a probably broken keyboard missing a bunch of keys! However without a keyboard I'm not really going to be able to do much.

If I had half a brain I'd just use a terminal emulator on a modern machine, but where's the fun in that? I'm fairness I probably will, especially when we're initially trying to get things up and running just to eliminate as many unknown variables as possible. However actually in use using something era appropriate seems more attractive. Plus I like the idea of just because I can, using something that ancient to control my desktop workstation. Not every day, but just as a silly project to prove I can do it.