Date   : Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:21:50 +0100
From   : mike@... (Mike Tomlinson)
Subject: Free Stuff Tranche 1 (Sheffield)

In article <4BBE01A3.1000907@...>, Tim Fardell
<tim.fardell@...> writes

>Excellent. If it still does exactly what you want, no need to get rid 
>of it. I wonder how many hundreds of these have been thrown out just 
>ecause the disk drive belt disintegrated :-(

More than a few, I think.  Also on the 9512 the plastic actuator which
moved the hammer to strike the daisywheel would crack, leading to faint
or no print.  Trivial to replace once you knew what it was.

It was impossible to test the disk drives outside the 8256.  You may
recall the drives, when installed, are housed in a surprisingly thick
steel cage, sometimes with an additional shiny metal inner layer. 

I found one couldn't test the drives out of the cage (just holding them
in the hand) as there was so much EMI hash from the nearby unscreened
video board that it rendered the drive unable to read any data.  The
German 8256s (with the Centronics connector for the expansion port) were
well screened inside - the entire PCB was cased in metal.

And did you ever lose the write-protect pin during a belt change :o)

-- 
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