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

[Michel]

..... I said I wasn't sure, and she replied that, if I could not I would need a new keyboard as she wanted THIS one.

Having spent a couple of hours with your mum recently, I have no doubt at all that you would have had no say in the matter and lost your keyboard had you not found a new one.

[Zelandeth]

As far as keyboards are concerned for me, my favourite three are all pretty equal in my measure.

[] IBM Model M. Yes, they've got almost an annoyingly fanatical following as the original Mini does. I still reckon that there's not a better board to type on though, and certainly wouldn't swap mine for everyday use for any other. Even if I'm surprised that my husband didn't murder me when he had to put up with the machine gun like racket that I create when typing on it. It's one of the very few keyboards that I can sit down at and not feel like my fingers have been run over by a bus despite having just got down several tens of thousands of words. Simple fact: IBM did a LOT of research when they designed it, it shows. I'd love to try some of the other variants of the 'M (the split one especially, as I really like the layout of the Microsoft Natural curved keyboard)...but they're just way too pricey.

[] Northgate Omnikey Ultra. Lovely thing to use, very light Alps mechanical key switches. Found at work behind the stationary cupboard...and vanished to the abyss of IT when they upgraded my workstation when I was out of the office. I nearly exploded on the spot...Never found it again. Clean examples change hands on eBay for well over £150 now.

[] Toshiba T5200/3200 portables. ...Because they use exactly the same switches as the older Northgate keyboards mentioned above. I *believe* that these are being used by Corsair on some of their current range of gaming keyboards as well - so I may well investigate one of those at some point.

My oddball choice that I oscillate on whether I really like or really hate is the Apple Extended II keyboard. It's got a key action that really isn't like any other one I've come across, and I just can't make my mind up on it.

In other news: It looks like an ECU for the Lada MAY have been found...A friend reckons that one of the parts cars they're about to start stripping should yield a working ECU...Fingers crossed.

[Pug_XUD_KeenAmateur]

for those of an 'Old Computers' bent, a visit to the https://www.museumofcomputing.org.uk/ is worthwhile if you're in the area and its a Fri or Sat (it only opens two days a week).

Probably best described as 'cosy' but with a lot of old stuff, I found a lot of stuff I remembered using as a spotty teenager (a little over 30 years ago), some of which will be switched on and available to play with

I'm a bit surprised to see how woeful the website is. The Museum itself is worthwhile.

[CitroJim]

I'm a bit surprised to see how woeful the website is. The Museum itself is worthwhile.

Although I live locally I've never been and very unlikely to... It's a bit like a busman's holiday for me

A while ago they approached me as a potential volunteer as they have/had an old mainframe I have considerable experience of and spent 20 of my working years on...

I politely declined... These days computers of any age and I have a very difficult relationship bordering on hate... I detest the bloody things

[Michel]

I'm a bit surprised to see how woeful the website is. The Museum itself is worthwhile.

Although I live locally I've never been and very unlikely to... It's a bit like a busman's holiday

Me too, and I've only worked with the vile things half the time you have!

[andy5]

Someone I know used to work in computing at a well-known airline.

He quit at 50, and it used to amuse him that new people he met were stumped on what to say, expressing sympathy for him, wrongly assuming he'd been made redundant and now had not much to do in his life.

I bet he had a good laugh when it all broke down a few months ago (unless he was flying somewhere himself)

[CitroJim]

He quit at 50, and it used to amuse him that new people he met were stumped on what to say, expressing sympathy for him, wrongly assuming he'd been made redundant and now had not much to do in his life.

I've quit now. Not through choice but because of ill health

I have no trouble occupying myself... There's a lot of swimming, running, cycling, gardening, cooking, socialising and playing cars to be done.

The main thing is to always have a reason to get up every morning and stick to a routine... I surely do

Despite working my last few years part-time I honestly wonder how I ever found time to work full-time!

My forced retirement has it's upsides without a doubt and one of the bigegst is to be away from the corporate bulls**t.

[Hell Razor5543]

I rather like the way some Chinese airlines made sure their programmers sorted out the Millennium Bug issue. They were informed that they (the programmers, that is) were going to be flying during the New Year into the Millennium! There were, as far as I know, no incidents.

[Zelandeth]

A nice little upgrade was slotted into my workstation today.

While this isn't exactly a modern DSO, it's streets ahead of the scope it replaces.

The biggest step forward is that the new scope has some basic storage facilities, which will be an absolute godsend if I'm dealing with anything digital, or anything where I need a really low sweep rate. I'd love a modern DSO, but don't have a couple of grand to throw at it...this was less than fifty quid.

I hope to pass the old Telequipment D61a on to someone else who's getting into electronics as I was when I was given it a long time ago. It owes me nothing whatsoever, and should be fine for someone working on just radios and TVs etc.

Hard to believe given the amount of old tat I own that this is the first thing with a thermal printer in I've owned!

Tried to pick up a BBC Master, however the seller had clearly seen what they go for on eBay, so waaaaaay too rich for my blood. Likewise the ZX81. Both machines I want in the collection...but not with three figure pricetags. Which given how commonly they turn up is ridiculous... especially as they seem to spend most of their time in cupboards in folks collections.

Ps. I really need to get the scope you lent me back to you Jim!

[CitroJim]

Ps. I really need to get the scope you lent me back to you Jim!

No rush Zel, I have my vintahge Telequipent that does most of what I need

[Zelandeth]

Well, nothing major going on at the moment...Lada is still waiting on the new ECU arriving, and the Invacar is waiting on the donor vehicle arriving for the rest of the bits. I'm of two minds whether to start pulling the engine and gearbox out. Given the description I've had, it's pretty much beyond doubt that mine will be donating the running gear given that the chassis and floor in the donor are reportedly sound. Plus it has more than 30% of the bodywork present. However I'm reluctant to start actually pulling stuff apart until I've seen it. At least it's a running, moving and (mostly) stopping shell at this point. As soon as the engine is out it becomes infinitely more awkward to move. I do want it out at some point anyway though so I can properly clean it. The front of the gearbox in particular is in a right state.

In other news, given the weather forecast for this weekend is looking rather dodgy, time for some nice quiet work inside.

Here's a lesson: if you're putting old computing equipment into storage for a few years, don't forget to take appropriate precautions to prevent any inbuilt batteries from leaking. This problem has killed countless Amiga 500s (often totally beyond repair given the proximity to the main memory bus), and done a number on my Acorn A3000 pictured below.

Thankfully the damage appears to be pretty localised in this case. Generally just the handful of eaten traces you can see. The mouse port is an unknown quantity - but I've got a scrap machine I can Rob that from if need be. Nothing has actually rotted itself off the board - unlike on the aforementioned Amiga where I found a couple of capacitors rolling around in the case when I opened it up.

Suffice to say, if I do succeed in reviving this, a remote battery holder will be fitted so this doesn't happen again! ...easy in fact given the A3000 has an unused AA battery holder in the bottom of the case...

Fingers crossed there's not damage to internal traces on the motherboard or it will likely be beyond repair...nor easily replaced as these machines seem to fetch good money now.

[myglaren]

Here's a lesson: if you're putting old computing equipment into storage for a few years, don't forget to take appropriate precautions to prevent any inbuilt batteries from leaking. This problem has killed countless Amiga 500s (often totally beyond repair given the proximity to the main memory bus), and done a number on my Acorn A3000 pictured below.

Good advice that !
We have a Spectrum and an Amiga in the attic, been there for years so the damage is probably done but will check them some time in the next couple of years and see

I don't think the Spectrum has a battery though.

[Zelandeth]

Spectrum should be fine, it doesn't have a real time clock or anything like that - so no need for a battery.

Amiga depends on which model. The A500 is the one with issues, as it has an identical Varta NiCd cell to the one that's caused this on my Acorn. I've also got an Amiga A500 Plus sitting here that's suffered the same fate. A1200 is fine as there's no battery on the motherboard - there often is on the accelerator card if fitted - but they're usually CR2023 lithium primary cells and I've never seen one leak.

The Amiga 500 is usually far harder to repair than the Acorn pictured above simply because of where the battery is situated on the board. From memory on the Amiga it's right next to the main data bus between the CPU and the ram...and the traces under the memory soldered to the board usually get nuked. Usual fault mode is a green screen on power on (which is the system telling you there's a memory fault). I still need to take a proper look at mine...

I have to confess to never really looked at the A500. It came with a box of other Amiga stuff years ago, but the A1200 is the one I have a particular attachment to. That was the first computer I bought - and still own. Over the years I've spent more on that machine than on most cars save for the Lada and 107. ...if the Vampire accelerator ever comes out for the A1200 as it has for the A600 it will probably wind up costing me another few hundred quid! Really hope it does, as scandoubler boards change hands for that much...and I refuse to pay that much for the ability to use a modern monitor with it...so it sits in the corner with a multisync CRT attached - actually an Acorn one ironically. Mind you... that's a tool that I'm never getting rid of! A display you can throw anything from a composite PAL (interlaced or not) through to XVGA at and have it just sort it out is sometimes really useful. Well...it is if you muck around with 80s and 90s era computers all the time anyway.

I know both of these machines I could just run on my desktop PC...but I can't see the attraction of that to be honest. I do that with a VM to run Windows 2000 for a few bits of software that doesn't play nicely with Linux. I enjoy actually using the old machines... there's something pleasant to me to be sitting there with an old Connor CFS420A hard drive whining and chuntering about its business and having real operating software running on its proper hardware.

Amiga Workbench (3.0 in my case) is a solid system, ahead of its time, but at times utterly infuriating. It's also the most crash prone system I've ever spent time on, has some of the most inconsistent software design, and some right old hardware drawbacks - I eventually got so fed up of factory power supplies failing that I just hacked a standard PC power supply and attached it to the thing.

The Acorn is a much more solid machine, and I really wish that we'd seen where RiscOS could have gone if it had ever really broken out beyond the education and enthusiast market. It's nothing like any other OS I've come across and was massively ahead of its time in many ways. It's one of the few machines which very, very rarely hacks me off in any way.

Acorn Archimedes machines also have some of the best factory keyboards out there - they're way ahead of those used by Commodore on the Amiga or the horrible mushy mess the Atari ST had.

Speaking of that... I've got an Atari STe here...I really want to get all three of these up and running and put together a "battle of the wedges" video for YouTube comparing the machines. Not a "which is best?" Thing...just comparing them each on their own merits as they're three very superficially similar machines, but are actually vastly different under the skin and to use.

I appear to be waffling again...the above is definitely a sign that I need to actually get around to sorting out that section of my website...

[Zelandeth]

Very briefly ventured into the garage today. Quite abruptly I decided that this was a stupid idea as I nigh on passed out from heat exhaustion. I am simply not compatible with this stupid level of ambient humidity. Have I mentioned that I really miss Scotland? This sort of muggy but warm weather is far far rarer a condition there.

I did however get to the bottom of why the Invacar was being a nuisance last time I ran it though - this being in the bottom of the float bowl of the carb I reckon has a lot to do with it!

It's been left spotless now, and all the jets have been cleaned out again. It's not being run from that fuel tank again.

It will probably be left alone for the most part until a few weeks time when hopefully I'll have the donor vehicle here - at which point there will be some frantic activity.

Edit:

Also got a chance to give the Activa's seats a going over with the leather balm a bit later as it was getting a bit dry again.

Rest of the car still needs a good valet...but it definitely helps!

[Zelandeth]

Here's a photo I'll leave you with - those of you who have been following things will know that my old ECU in the Lada resulted in no working check engine light.

Okay...we now have a working check engine light. This isn't that big a thing...the big thing is that it also means that I now have a working onboard diagnostic system.

So while it has resulted in a couple of fault codes being logged, I now know what the fault codes are! 13 - no oxygen sensor signal. Fair enough...was half expecting it to be stuffed given what the old ECU was doing. 35 - idle speed fault. Okay, that's not one I've had before...will refer to the documentation I think after the obvious cleaning of the idle air control valve and checking that the throttle position sensor is giving a sane reading.

So while we now have a fault shown, it's a fault I can actually work on rather than a vague "it's not running right" which is all I had before!