• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Some archeologist will find an IBM 5150 ...

billdeg

billdeg

Technician
Joined
Nov 18, 2003
Messages
3,885
Location
Landenberg, PA USA
... half burried in a bombed out city 1000 years from now, dust if off and it will still run. Today I got an IBM 5150 B in the mail. It was absolutely filthy. There was a layer of dirt-turned-crud covering everything. There were playing cards stuffed in the B drive and an old disk in the A drive. The system did not power up.

I almost gave up right then, but ..

I took out all of the cards (CGA, AST SixPak, IBM floppy drive controller) and then cleaned everything as well as I could.

Powered up - fan started, long beep two short beeps (missing/bad display). Ah, it must be one of the cards shorting out the power supply.

Correct - It was the display card. I replaced it. Put everything back in to the slots.

Powered up - fully functional.

I cleaned it to "excellent" condition with a magic eraser.

Another computer saved from the dump.

Anyone else have a similar story with a thought-dead computer that you were able to fix??
 
Nec apc iv

Nec apc iv

Well, I bought a NEC APC IV years ago on eBay, and when I got it, it turned out a mouse family had moved in and decided to use the MFM drive wiring as nesting material, the drive electronics as a urinal, and the expansion slot area as, well, for other bodily residue.
They sort of chewed through other cabling to get from point A to B.
So that one was a bit of a stinky, nasty mess that I actually put gloves on for. I still had some Freon-based degreaser at the time, thank god. Got it to work in the end. Still have it somewhere.
patscc
 
Bill,

I heard about one that had been used in a concrete plant. The motherboard was coated in so much powder that you couldn't see the components. It was said to have worked, although I wouldn't want to leave it turned on for too long out of fear that some components would overheat.

Sean
 
I had some old macs that had hair and dust clogging every air intake, cases that looked trashed but after a good scrubbing looked almost new. Some machines I swear I was going to gut and toss the rest but I tried cleaning them up and they look fine afterwards so I kept them intact.

I did get an odd 486/66 (which actually had a 4 pin molex type plug for the heatsink fan on the motherboard) full of wood chips/dust making me wonder where it had been.

The other day I got an old Gateway 2000 keyboard (1994 variety) that had some nasty silvery gunk caked on it (cigarette asshes maybe?) plus dirt and grime. The guy who gave it to me (along with a Tandy 1000) said he didn't think I would want it because of the dirt. I took it apart and washed all the plastics (removed all the keys and cleaned them individually), looks clean now and smells nice. Any keyboard that smells of animal pee gets tossed outside asap, but anything dirty or grimey that is old and clicky gets cleaned up. I draw the line at pee and poop, it would have to be something very rare for me to even think of cleaning it.

It is getting to the point I hose off motherboards and a week ago I even hosed off an old AT power supply that had seen better days (worked fine when assembled after it dried in the basement a day). Its nice what some concentrated dish soap with oxy in it will clean up like new.
 
Interesting to hear about the clean-up experiences.

Yes, the worse case I've had to deal with were the mouse nests aka Apple IIs and clones donated to me one day. Out of the six I managed to clean up and rescue four of them.

Tez
 
My friend and I got a ND-500 mini computer with a dead "something" in it, we through the animal out and cleaned it up. Not quite working yet, but my friend is working on it.
 
When I worked in a school, the PC in woodworking wasn't working - kept shutting down. It was a 900MHz Pentium III, probably about 4 years old at the time.

I opened it up and the WHOLE case was just packed full of sawdust and fluff - you couldn't actually see any of the components!

I disassembled the whole thing, cleaned it all off, lubed the fans and it worked perfectly. Had to replace the floppy drive though.
 
I've got an IBM model M keyboard that I picked up out of the bottom of the aluminum scrap drum behind the machine shop at work. It had been used with an old PS/2 to control some CNC machinery. The 55 gallon drum was full of green rainwater and mosquito larvae with a 4 inch layer of silt in the bottom and some sort of green bubble algae on the top.


I REAALLLY wanted an IBM model M and didn't want to pay for one on Fleabay so I dumped the bin over and fished it out. I almost threw it back. I took it home and hid it where my wife couldn't see it. When I got around to cleaning it(when my wife wasn't home), it was about half full of a very fine black silt and aluminum shavings. I popped off the keys and threw the plastics and the internal circuit board in the dish washing machine. A little alcohol on a rag and the cable was clean.

It came away looking like new, hardly used. There weren't even any shiny spots on the keys. Apparently the aluminum shavings in it were wreaking havoc and they tossed it and replaced with a generic keyboard. I have no idea how long it sat in that nasty swamp water, but hte immersion seems to have had no lasting effects on it.
 
Trixter said:
What is this "magic eraser" you speak of?
Click to expand...

mr-clean-magic-eraser.jpg

You can find them in walmart for about 2.00$ for a box of 2, they work amazingly well.
 
Hm.. bleh.. I think if I get a system with dead possums in it, that's probably the end of the work I'm doing with it. Some things I'm dead set on saving, but cleaning out bile isn't on my list of systems I'm keepin.
 
barythrin said:
Hm.. bleh.. I think if I get a system with dead possums in it, that's probably the end of the work I'm doing with it. Some things I'm dead set on saving, but cleaning out bile isn't on my list of systems I'm keepin.
Click to expand...

You're spoiled... :/

Poor computers, you abandon them as if they don't matter, just because someone has abused them. :(

If you feel like shipping bile-filled computers to me I'll fix them... :p
 
Yes, those mice can be problematic.

Cleaned out a PC that was used as a mouse toilet a couple of years ago. Contact cleaner, a brush and some patience was all I needed.

Have done quite some diagnostics on a 300SL a while ago. Again, a mouse made it's house (and toilet) in one of the most expensive parts of the car, the ECU compartiment. Mouse ate through several 12v wires, effectively disabling the roll bar and soft top module.

So if mice already discovered the joy of Personal Computers and of Mercedes-Benz convertibles, what will be next? Nesting in breweries?

Remember the old saying: "Shit cleans off" :D
 
linuxlove said:
well, obviously tezza doesn't mind infestation in computers :p
Click to expand...

Hey, if it's a matter of cleaning off some urine and mouse droppings to aquire some vintage gear..no problem. Whatdaya think I am, a wuss?? :D

I'm really kicking myself for not taking photos of these those original mouse infested Apples. I think the reason I didnt was that the stench of urine, coliform-laden pellets and (in the case of one) decomposing mouse was just a little too much to hover over. :)

Tez
 
See.. and the impressive part is we may have avoided it due to disgust but you clean it and we'd end up bidding on it later and never knowing the difference ;-)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top