ScuzzBlog: Diaries June 2017
Entry 2nd June 2017: Post: 05
Rubber band man
Hi
Woke up bright and early ready to power unscrew my various screws that
have prevented me from fixing the Acorn 3010 and the GVP sidecar.
Anyway, being reasonable I decided it was a bit early at 7.30 to be
drilling.. so what to do.. what to do ?
The other day when I hooked up the Apple I had to move the PCW8256. This
computer sadly has a broken drive. I suddenly remembered that when I was
looking through the BBC box of goodies I found a bag of Amstrad bits
including a healthy stock of drive belts. You may recall that I had once
tried to fix a PCW9512 and managed to blow it up. These were the drive
belts I must have bought at that time. Anyway I was up like a shot and
dragging out the 8256.
http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz408.htm
The drive on this is to the side and a touch easier to remove. The
computer has an external 3.5" floppy which just feeds out from a ribbon
at the back. Sure enough in no time I was down to my old routine of
cleaning drive wheels from busted belts. This one wasn't too bad. So I
installed the new belt and screwed the machine back up and then....
bugga. Where did I put the disks for this machine. They are different
than the the 9512 as they are single sided. Took a while but eventually
I found some Locoscript disks. Odd, cus they are like tape cassettes, or
not, only in so much that you have to turn them over to read the other side.
Fingers crossed, switched on and got wrong side so launched CP/M. And
the machine was beeping at me continuously. No keyboard. Where is the
bloody keyboard. You gotta be kidding me. Looks up at other floppy based
9512 and climbed the retro mountain to recover. [ Its like that here ].
Plugged in and all is quiet and I have beautiful green screen version of
Locoscript.
This is a very quick machine to load. Much faster than the 9512. Not
sure about the green screen though. Anyway.. she is fixed and all before
breakfast. I'm getting a dab hand at fixing drives on busted Amstrads.
Maybe I can make a living out of it.
Time for some drilling.... or should I cut the grass. Nah it hasn't
blocked the light out the front windows yet. Can wait another week.
I have only fixed an Acorn 3000, BBC Master and Amstrad 8256 this week.
I'm slipping. In truth I'm not fixing, more getting them probably back
to the state they were in when I bought them in 2005-8. And life is like
spinning plates as I try to check them daily, weekly , monthly to
prevent the same happening again. Good news is that all the Amiga 2000s
that came back to life last week are all still running without fault.
Amazing really. Last three weeks has been A600 week, A2000 week and this
week I have been mostly what I said above. Next week I was thinking of
building a powerful particle collider... just gotta find where the
rubber band goes.
Happy days.
scuzz
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