Date   : Sun, 21 Jan 2001 13:14:52 +0000
From   : Kris Adcock <kris@...>
Subject: Desecration

Afternoon all,

Someone's given me a BBC micro (I think it's a model A) in rather good
condition considering it was treated perfectly but left in a loft for
fifteen years. So I've taken it to bits and I'm halfway through cleaning
it up, with the intention of reliving my wasted youth.

Does anyone know how sensitive the boards are to soldering? I mean, it's
hardly the latest sub-miniature-surface-mount-fart-and-the-static-will-
kill-the-processor stuff, is it? I'd like to remove the UHF doodah (to
start with anyway), because its manky and I'll never use it. And I've
already had to cut the composite wires to get the board out of the case,
so those will need doing.

Something else I'm considering, is fitting the Beeb into this Pheobe
case that I bought on impulse and have done nothing with. I think it
would be quite ironic - one of Acorn's earliest machines running in the
case for what should have been their greatest creation (or
alternatively, "Acorns most successful creation running in the case of
their biggest flop"). I'm going to call it "The 6502 Banana Computer",
or something. I'll start up a website on the subject, and do funky logos
you can print onto transparent sticky stuff and adorn it all with.

Thing is, I'll have to build the keyboard into a separate box and link
them. Inside the beeb, the connection between keyboard and motherboard
is a short ribbon cable of (I think) 17 wires. What would people suggest
here? Could I just extend it? (A metre-long cable of 17 wires strikes me
as being a bit fat and unforgiving.) A PIC at each end, turning things
into serial data and back again? Or is there a stage in the keyboard
electronics which involves less connections which I could buffer, and
then move the remaining components into the tower?

Alternatively, has anyone got one of those Viglen keyboard things for
sale? (I didn't know they existed until I saw the pics on the 8BS site.)

Cheers,

-- 
/------------------------www.adcock.demon.co.uk-----------------------\
|         Kristoffer Adcock, Normanton, Derby, UK, Planet Earth       |
|   "Fighting the ceaseless battle against literacy and good taste"   |
|     with RISCOS, BeOS 5 Pro, MacOS 9, Linux, PalmOS and Windows     |
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