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

[white exec]

Zel, one of those MK energy-saving homes in Bradwell Common was lived in by a friend of mine, Dr Mike Beetham, one-time head of academic computing services at the OU. A neighbour of yours?

I visited the house a couple of times: the only one in the Close with a garage (and a double, at that). The architects, he said, thought that cars wouldn't much feature in the future. Mike was the founder member of the P6 Rover Owners Club.

[Zelandeth]

Not a name I recognise, but that doesn't mean much!

Probably the Solar Home if it has a double garage, which is just round the corner from us.

It's the one thing they got very wrong...the reasoning behind our own garage being very narrow is that "Cars will be smaller in the future." Made sense with the success of the Mini and with things like the Metro and Fiesta being such strong sellers at the time...but they got that a bit wrong. You'd never get a modern car in the door, much less be able to get in/out of it. Well they couldn't get everything right!

[Hell Razor5543]

Well, two of your vehicles would fit in the garage; the Invacar and the C5!

[Zelandeth]

Well, two of your vehicles would fit in the garage; the Invacar and the C5!

One of the reasons I was drawn to the Invacar once I learned of their existence! The sliding doors really do make so much sense and save so much space.

Today was the first day that I successfully managed to rescue something from our tip. They're absolutely immovable on the "Once it comes in it never leaves rule" but managed to bag these while depositing a load of other things in the electronic waste bin while nobody was looking.



The 3210 sadly is a write off due to having suffered catastrophic battery leakage. The 5110 though looks more hopeful.



It's at least trying to charge, battery is understandably shot, but it's showing signs of life at least.

I don't specifically collect phones... though by now I have a pretty good show from the present day back to the mid 90s. Probably the two I find most interesting are an NEC e313 and Samsung S8300. Both from that strange no-man's-land between mobile phones being just that and what became the smartphone...but before anyone had really decided what form that would take. They vanished pretty quickly once it became clear that the iPhone-esque design was going to become the norm, so I see them as an interesting time capsule.

Even after all these years though, the Motorola V3 is probably still my favourite bit of kit in that box though. It's just such a wonderful bit of design and engineering.

Guess that's an obvious little addition I could tack on to the vintage technology section of my website now I think about it...

Bit irked the weekend has eaten up every second of time so I've not had a chance to give the brakes on the van a check over. Will just need to drop it off for the garage to sort in the morning. Really hoping it won't turn into a massive epic this time... I've still not quite got over the £600 bill from Egerton's last year when they "fixed" the rear brakes...

[Gibbo2286]

My old friend has been forever changing her mobile phones never really satisfied with what she's had but has worn out an old basic Nokia like the one in your photo.

So at the weekend I took her to Tesco to find another replacement, she opted for one of these, I set it up for her and I'm astonished at how much tech they managed to put in a £30 phone, internet, camera, calendar, radio, games, alarm clock, on and on.

Not that she'll use much of it it will be used for texting and the occasional voice call, all the rest will go unused.
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/9172685 ... src=3p.ds

[myglaren]

That looks interesting and only £5 more than my current one

[Zelandeth]

Pretty sure those are the phones we used to give out to our community transport drivers when I was back at the council...back prior to 2013! To be fair in that segment it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest - they did the job and proved to be pretty much indestructible provided they didn't get drowned or run over. Plus they were cheap enough that it really didn't matter when the odd one here and there did die.

So the van was back in for remedial work and a retest this morning. Something became immediately apparent pretty much the moment I pulled out of the driveway - and that was that she was now pulling up in an absolutely perfectly straight line, rather than pulling hard to the right under braking. Apparently whatever was causing the nearside caliper to be lazy has cleared itself. Sure enough, on the rollers at the test station the brake balance was spot on. One headlight adjustment later...



Advisories:

[] Corrosion on brake hose ferrules. Knew that going in. I'll look to get the flexible brake lines changed in the near future as I agree they've seen better days. While I can't see any perishing the rubber just has that "old" look to it that doesn't inspire confidence. There are only three on the van and they're not expensive.

[] Corrosion on rigid lines. They're fine I reckon and just need cleaning up and given some protection. If anything looks even vaguely suspect though I'll change it.

[] Frayed nearside seatbelt. It's been on every test back to about 2003 I think. Someone obviously used to regularly shut it in the door. If I come across a breaker at some point I'll change it, but I'm not worrying about it in the meantime.

[] General underbody corrosion. Yep...It's an 80s/90s Merc. The underside of the cab is basically a series of patches held together by some bits of vaguely cab-shaped metal...Though it doesn't look to have got any worse over the last couple of years - I do think that a Vactan/Dinitrol party will be in the van's near future though. I did actually think about doing that before the MOT, but I'd rather the tester be able to see it warts and all given it's the first time they've seen the vehicle.

[] Missing exhaust rubber. It isn't...There are about half a dozen exhaust layouts used on this van and the hangers are present on the chassis for all of the variants - the one that's "missing" is positioned in such a location that on this system there is physically no way you could fit one there, it would pull the pipe into direct contact with the bodywork - not that there's a hanger on the pipe there for it to attach to anyway.

The initial issue with the brakes though is a clear signal that she's telling me that the calipers need to be given a good clean and inspection though. Aside from anything else the front brakes squeal horrendously when you're coming to a halt and have done as long as I've had the van. I'm seriously tempted to just to fit the new pads I've got in stock to see if that stops the squeaking as it's absolutely maddening in stop/start traffic.

Did mean I could get her out for a decent run this afternoon though which I'm sure has done the world of good. Also finally got around to replacing the horrible aero hybrid wipers which just looked daft.





If you couldn't see them so obviously from in the cab it might have annoyed me slightly less. Anyhow, standard wipers now on...and again have confirmed that there's nothing for making you realise how badly degraded your old wiper blades were than fitting new ones.

[CitroJim]

Congrats on the MoT pass Zel

[Zelandeth]

Seems to be a week for disintegrating wiper blades - Xantia decided to start shedding the rubber from the driver's one while I was out this morning so that too has joined the New Wiper Blade Club.



Disappointing to see the hybrid blades fail so quickly. They performed very well, but at more than twice the price of normal ones they would need to last at least twice as long as they did for me to consider putting them on again...so back to conventional ones it is. To be fair, they look absolutely daft on anything made before about 2010 anyway so probably for the best.

[Zelandeth]

Little been going on lately really as sadly boring responsible adult homeowner tasks have been keeping me very busy.

A little package arrived this morning though.



Lovely little IBM branded calculator paperweight. I wasn't expecting to win this to be honest as IBM memorabilia usually goes for silly money. Quite possibly because the calculator was dead so a static exhibit. I didn't really care either way as it's an interesting bit of desk furniture anyway and will look great next to the IBM keyboard (which is one of those bits of technology I can't ever see me replacing).

Oh...and one turned up on Saturday too. That was another £0.99 starting bid item that nobody else bid on so was less than a fiver delivered, so an Imperial 91S has also joined the calculator collection.



I don't have a problem...I can stop any time I want!

Of course being me the calculator built into the paperweight wasn't going to be left as a static exhibit if I could fix it was it? On removing the cover it was obvious no batteries were fitted, replacing those though did nothing so I pulled the board out.

Can you see anything wrong here?



Yes, that is indeed the front display polariser. Behind the display. Well that's not going to be helping anything is it. Sorted that out, cleaned the inside of the display window and put it back together and...



Success!

Have to wonder if that's a manufacturing defect and it's never worked since it left the factory in May 1984.

Tell you what though, by mid 80s standards it's a *slow* calculator. All 9s divided by 1 takes a good half a second. That's mid 70s territory! Guess that's the price paid for something so cheap as to be built into promotional novelties like this.

It's a lovely thing though and given I do tend to have a window open or fan in use a lot a paperweight is honestly something I'd been meaning to add to my desktop for a while.

[Zelandeth]

Well this afternoon was "fun."

The tap in our kitchen had failed. As is often the case these days it turned out that the bits it needed were proprietary and no longer available. After two weeks of bashing my head against it I ran out of patience and decided to just replace it.

The offending article.



This is DIY 101 and really should have been an hour's work. Maybe two given I don't do anything quickly.

However I knew it was going to be fiddly...Because the idiot who designed out kitchen stuffed the sink into the very far corner of the kitchen. If I ever meet the person who designed this I will coat them in jam and Chuck them into a fire ant colony. It is an absolute pig of a location to use the sink. However trying to do any servicing is nigh on impossible.

This is my access.



Now what makes this even more annoying is that the tap is set so far back that they actually had to cut a hole in the back of the cupboard to clear the pipework.



At this point I then ended up fuming because the last plumber to work under here hasn't done what I had asked them to. I wanted them to have remove the thoroughly mangled plastic isolator ball valves and the push fit fittings the tap tails went into to replace them with normal 1/2" fittings so it wouldn't be a headache in the future.

Look what I found...



That's the better one of the two. Oh...and look, the original fittings are still there.



I simply don't like plastic fittings. I know they're probably absolutely fine if fitted properly, but they just feel flimsy and floppy and just don't inspire confidence. I also don't trust whoever did this work to have fitted them properly.

Thanks to the ever-present scale here there was no chance whatsoever that the push fits were going to come apart. Cut me having to get the pipe cutter out and doing some sorting out.

Having been out three times I thought I was on the home straight - right up to the point I pulled the tails for the new tap out the box and realised they were about half the length of the original ones. The hot just reached, cold...not so much.



Finally.





Albeit with a bit of a mess to clean up!



By this point it was about 1830. This took me the *entire* afternoon. Plus I need to go back through at some point to actually anchor any of the pipework to...well... anything. Especially as all the elbows and Ts are push fit so just flop around. Given the hot and cold are overlapping sorting that will require moving at least some pipework. Oh...and I discovered that not a single one of the locking collars on the push fit connectors was properly screwed down.

If I'd known it was going to be such a hassle I'd have gone about this a very different way. I'd have just drained everything down (the original hot isolator is still there, just redundant) and ripped every piece of pipework in that cupboard out and rebuilt it from scratch. I think I probably will at some point anyway now I've properly looked at it. Work clearly done by the same folks who installed the master bathroom.

That was without exception THE most awkward bit of DIY I have ever, ever undertaken though. Not difficult, just unbelievably awkward. All done left handed, at the limit of arm's reach and entirely blind.

[Zelandeth]

Between poor weather and lack of time I've really not touched the cars or anything relating to them this week. Poor Invacar hasn't been out of the garage in over two weeks at this point, given the looks of the weather forecast it doesn't look like that's likely to change this coming week either.

Have had some quite major progress on one of my longer term historic computing projects though.

One of my favourite machines out of all those I've owned over the years was an old Toshiba T1200. An 80C86 based portable dating from 1988. I found it to be a really genuinely useful productivity machine, with a nice keyboard, form factor which made it actually easy to travel with, and a battery life which can put many modern laptops to shame. Sadly this came to a shuddering halt in mid 2002 when the power supply board developed a fault. Didn't take long to figure out that all it needed was replacement of a couple of capacitors and a good clean. Unfortunately due to a communication breakdown between me and my parents while they were doing a clear out, several key components were lost. The remainder was stuffed in a box in the hope that I could get back to it one day. Particularly of note was that I really wanted to recover several documents off the hard drive (I was young and stupid at the time and didn't have a backup regime in place), which meant getting this or an identical machine up and running as the hard drives are of a non-standard type so I can't just plug them into another computer.

Note the strange 26-pin interface connector.



It was then largely forgotten about for a good few years, until about ten years ago when I started to get back into the hobby of messing around with old computers. Unfortunately I discovered at this point that these machines are actually quite sought after, and the issues I had with the power supply in mine turned out to be one of those faults where it's a matter of when it happens rather than if it happens...as such working examples swap hands for several times more than I was willing to spend. Non working or those claimed to be untested seemed to have their pricing rather more determined by a random number generator.

The big problem with buying a machine that was non functional or untested is that the nature of the fault means that it's a complete lottery as to whether the machine is repairable, a good parts donor or nothing but a door stop. This is the power supply board used by the T1200.



By the standards of 1988 for a power supply board this is quite a complex bit of kit. That's because in addition to providing the voltage rails needed by the machine (12V, 5V - all normal there then, but also -9V and -22V more unusually), this board also does all the battery management and has direct control over power to the hard drive, floppy drove, internal modem (where fitted) and the display. It also interfaces with the screen closed switch to give the ability to suspend the machine state - which we take for granted on laptops these days, but in 1988 that was a truly cutting edge feature. One of the reasons that this thing was quite capable of getting north of 7 hours out of a charge with a bit of care on the part of the user.

The problem with these power supplies is with those electrolytic capacitors to the right of the board. Once they get to a certain age they tend to become physically leaky. In the short term this isn't a huge issue...It causes the power supply to trip out into a protection mode meaning that the machine won't work (you just get a flashing red status light) as it can tell something is amiss. The big problem however is that the electrolyte which leaks from those caps is corrosive, and if the board is left in that state (and when these machines stopped working they tended to just get stuffed away in a cupboard or loft and forgotten about) this causes the traces on the PCB to be eaten away. A pretty typical example of this is shown below. That photo is actually of the underside of the board...the traces on the top layer tend to fare even worse.



It would *probably* be possible to repair this...however I've never been able to find a schematic and layout diagram for the board so you'd need to reverse engineer it first. Trying to do that with half the traces and three quarters of the through board vias having dissolved is a bit like trying to do a crossword puzzle backwards while wearing a blindfold and a pair of boxing gloves. The *biggest* problem though is that due to the location where the corrosion tends to start, the first traces that usually seem to go are the output side feedback lines...meaning that when someone plugs a machine that they've just found in a box somewhere into the mains, the first thing that happens is that the output voltages from the power supply shoot sky high...Usually resulting in every chip on the motherboard being nuked about five seconds before the switching transistors in the power supply itself take exception to the situation and expire in a puff of acrid smelling smoke. Even figuring out what those are to replace them is a chore in itself as they seem to be stamped with only a Toshiba internal part number which doesn't match anything else anywhere. So you've quickly gone from a machine which needs £15 worth of capacitors and an hour's labour to sort...to a half dissolved, blown up power supply and a motherboard which is now a doorstop.

It's because of this situation that over the last couple of years I've ended up accumulating three parts machines in addition to the 3/4 I still have of my original one. The most recent of which arrived last week.

This was described by the seller as broken, with the light on the power supply initially being green when plugged in, but turning to flashing red as soon as the power switch was flicked. Having a pretty good understanding of how these machines work, I knew that was actually a VERY good sign. These machines don't like running without a battery installed - tending to trip out during high power events (such as the hard drive spinning up) if one isn't in place. If the supply had failed catastrophically and nuked the whole machine it would either do nothing or show a solid amber light (which isn't a valid state)...so the odds were that the PSU board in this machine was either working or in a state where it could be saved. The rest of the machine was missing a couple of bits here and there but nothing I didn't already have spares of.

Obviously the very first thing I did was pull the board out for examination and testing (which takes all of five minutes...oh how I wish modern laptops were this service-friendly!). Initial signs were very good. This is the area of the board which usually suffers by far the most badly.



I'm not entirely certain if these caps have just started to leak or if the grime on the board was just generally there from the fact that it's 33 years old (there is a small vent grill above the power supply in that area). However they're obviously going to be changed (along with every electrolytic cap in the entire machine) as a matter of course. After giving the board a good clean I did a bit of testing, sure enough the expected voltages were present in the expected places.

After a bit of head scratching I managed to figure out an arrangement where I could make all the necessary bits of wiring reach to allow me to do some testing without reassembling the case...and when powered up we got life on the screen showing that it was at least trying to work.



The hard drive that was actually in the machine at that point wasn't interested in working. It simply went "click" once and that was it. While having that drive working would be nice, I had another from the previous spares machine, plus the one I was really interested in was the one from my original machine. The other spare was successfully spinning up but kept shutting down again during the initial seek operation - it allowed me to confirm the right supply voltages were present on the right pins though and that I wasn't going to immediately fry my old drive by plugging it in...so it was time to do some testing of that. I had the camera rolling for the event. I had no idea whether the thing would even spin up, much less whether we'd be able to actually read data from it.



To my considerable surprise it spun up and worked absolutely fine on the first attempt...No untoward noises, no protest...just worked. Since that video I've managed to coax both of the other drives back into operation as well, though the one is still a little cranky about starting.

I had no memory of setting up a custom boot screen and a little system description that prints on the screen above the command line at start-up...but apparently I did! It's astonishing the things you find when digging through a drive you've not been able to look at for 15 odd years.

It was obvious though that something was amiss with the display...I had a *serious* lack of contrast.





I knew this wasn't right as I remembered the display on this as being pretty decent. A bit of examination quickly identified that this is a physical problem with the actual display itself - however I do have two good spares. Looking at it next to one of my spares it was really obvious that there's something wrong with the original panel. The "off" state of this display is dark, so in an unpowered state the display should be a uniform deep indigo colour - like the lower one in the photo below. You can clearly see how much paler the top one is, with the tan colour of the unlit backlight showing through.



Thankfully swapping the panels over on this - as with most parts - is a quick and simple job. The difference compared to the earlier photos is clear as day. While the response time isn't anything to write home about this display really isn't bad at all to use. Contrast is very good, viewing angle is fine and the backlight is more than bright enough in shady areas. When you're in an area with lots of light you can basically turn it off thanks to the nature of the screen.



At this point I put everything back together and set about copying the documents I wanted off the hard drive.



After that the system was depowered and everything unplugged. It won't be going near power again until such point as I've had a chance to replace all of the capacitors. Given it's taken me so many years to get to the point of having a working system again I'm being very cautious with regards to not doing anything stupid that might cause issues. Once the caps have been replaced there should be no reason that the system can't be put back to work.

I also gave the case a good clean. I may well transplant this into the case from my original machine as it's far, far less yellowed than this one is. That is if I can *find* the upper case moulding in the loft. I knew which box the innards were in...not so sure about the case! Sorting the loft out is a job on my list closely behind "sort the garage."





Another reason I'd like to swap the cases over is that the legend on the indicator lights above the keyboard clearly shows that this upper case half came from what was originally a dual floppy drive model which had the hard drive (and controller card) fitted at a later date, as it shows drives A and B on the legend.



Whereas factory hard drive equipped models have this legend showing A and C, like this.



Minor detail, but it would be nice to have that right if possible.

The battery in there is from the second parts machine which had obviously spent much of its life sitting next to a window and has one of the worst cases of yellowing I've seen! Despite dating from 1988 though that battery pack still took a charge!



While the capacity will no doubt be vastly reduced compared to its original figure it was still able to run the machine for more than the 15 minutes or so that I had it on test for. It shouldn't be too difficult to open this pack up carefully with a Dremel or similar and rebuild it though, if memory serves there are 6 2/3AA sized cells in there - and I've got a few of these packs so don't mind potentially sacrificing one in the interests of seeing how hard it is to rebuild. Having a useful battery life though is something I'd like to make sure this still has to offer though.

Just waiting on the capacitors to arrive in the post so I can give the machine a blanket cap replacement then it can be put back into use...and to have a bit of fun testing done on it. I know about and have a lot more DOS software in the library these days than I did back in 2002.

Feels like I've finally made some good progress on this one after ten years of false starts, setbacks and frustration.

[Hell Razor5543]

Zel, I think you need to amend the title of this blog to include "plus random IT posts and other utterly unrelated (other than through me) items.". Everything you write is of interest, even if it is highly varied in content.

[xantia_v6]

Can you share the list of capacitors so that I can recap mine?

I think that the LCD on mine may have also lost most of its contrast, although as it has not been plugged in since 1998, I am not sure now.

[Zelandeth]

Can you share the list of capacitors so that I can recap mine?

I think that the LCD on mine may have also lost most of its contrast, although as it has not been plugged in since 1998, I am not sure now.

PSU.
1800uf, 10v. X2
470uf, 25v. X3.
220uf, 25v.
150uf, 35v.
10uf, 25v.

Display
470uF 10V X2.
33uF 25V

There are a scattering of 10/33uF caps on the motherboard too... don't know the exact count off the top of my head as they came in multiples of 10 from the provider. I've never known those fail but I'll probably swap them anyway. There's also one large electrolytic cap on the motherboard, this is 4700uF, 10V.

I'll try to get an accurate count of the motherboard caps for you tomorrow.

Shame about the display, wonder what the actual failure mode is. Not something I've seen before.

I forget, is your one equipped with the hard drive or is it a dual floppy model?