apologies in advance for the wall o text.
in a moment of temporary insanity i purchased that "local pick-up only" lot of GRiDs on ebay, and boy was it worth it. i'm only partially done cleaning/testing/cataloging, but here are the preliminary findings:
1x 1307 - booted right up.
1x 1535 - boots, but the PSU can't drive the display. needs a PSU recap.
2x 1550sx - both boot, both PSUs only partially functioning and need to be recapped.
1x 1680 - functionality TBD, gorgeous cosmetic shape
1x 1680c - functionality TBD, only machine in the lot that i'll have to part-out/swap-out. the battery exploded, ruining the case, but the screen and mobo look like they rolled off the line yesterday. sparkly and new.
1x 1720 / 2x 1755 - the 17xx machines are intermittent and can't drive their displays, but are semi-functional (enough to occasionally boot and use external vga). a full recap should restore them to 100% but the PSU is integrated with the mobo, and the dc-dc board to drive the display is undocumented, irreplaceable, and encapsulated. extensive smd rework likely required. these poor boys might be a write-off.
2x 1810 - 1 with backlight, 1 without. both booted right up.
2x 4025nc - both booted right up.
2x 2102 GPIB 5.25" FDD
3x 3401 3.5" FDD
2x 2202 5.25" stackable device bays - one of which is modified to accept 2 cards, maybe multibus or something?
1x 2200 charging station
1x 1535 expansion tray (with an ISA GPS card?!?!)
1x 16xx expansion tray
also included 5 or so extra PSUs for the 15xx series (all of which will explode if plugged in thanks to those rifa caps), a big bag-o-roms, around 8 of those weird jvc jd3824 HDDs (still in sealed boxes from a supplier!), and a handful of other drives, a bunch of cables, some spare bits and bobbins, 4-5 laptop bags..
it's absolutely overwhelming. they're all in FANTASTIC shape. all of the screens are bright and flawless.
the good news: as far as i can tell from some bench testing, every single motherboard works. the bad news: every power supply in every machine needs a recap. piece of cake on the old machines. incredibly unlikely on the 16-17xx machines.
roughly half the HDDs tested are fully functional, and still contain data. kinda sketchy, yes, but *very* cool. i've backed up what i can, but even the old win2k box i have set up to do the archiving can't talk to the earliest conner drives. i'll have to devise some alternative.
the 1535 - the one with the GPS card - belonged to novatel, and i recovered all of the software for it! one belonged to ford, one belonged to OSHA, one belonged to us west. the 1307 is tempest so i'm going to assume DoD provenance. one of the 1550s is internally marked "army 19th special forces group," but has no HDD. sigh.
i'll be posting plenty (including hopefully a gallery) as progress is made and questions arise. if you have parts to buy/sell/trade/loan just let me know. i'll be keeping a few of them and selling the rest, but i'd love to give them loving homes, and try to connect them with the grid community. 8x rare HDDs and peripheral enclosures for the gridcase 3 aren't doing me any good, so i'd love to unload them - or trade one of my other machines for a gridcase 3!
updates as they happen. cheers!
https://imgur.com/a/AxPmhau
in a moment of temporary insanity i purchased that "local pick-up only" lot of GRiDs on ebay, and boy was it worth it. i'm only partially done cleaning/testing/cataloging, but here are the preliminary findings:
1x 1307 - booted right up.
1x 1535 - boots, but the PSU can't drive the display. needs a PSU recap.
2x 1550sx - both boot, both PSUs only partially functioning and need to be recapped.
1x 1680 - functionality TBD, gorgeous cosmetic shape
1x 1680c - functionality TBD, only machine in the lot that i'll have to part-out/swap-out. the battery exploded, ruining the case, but the screen and mobo look like they rolled off the line yesterday. sparkly and new.
1x 1720 / 2x 1755 - the 17xx machines are intermittent and can't drive their displays, but are semi-functional (enough to occasionally boot and use external vga). a full recap should restore them to 100% but the PSU is integrated with the mobo, and the dc-dc board to drive the display is undocumented, irreplaceable, and encapsulated. extensive smd rework likely required. these poor boys might be a write-off.
2x 1810 - 1 with backlight, 1 without. both booted right up.
2x 4025nc - both booted right up.
2x 2102 GPIB 5.25" FDD
3x 3401 3.5" FDD
2x 2202 5.25" stackable device bays - one of which is modified to accept 2 cards, maybe multibus or something?
1x 2200 charging station
1x 1535 expansion tray (with an ISA GPS card?!?!)
1x 16xx expansion tray
also included 5 or so extra PSUs for the 15xx series (all of which will explode if plugged in thanks to those rifa caps), a big bag-o-roms, around 8 of those weird jvc jd3824 HDDs (still in sealed boxes from a supplier!), and a handful of other drives, a bunch of cables, some spare bits and bobbins, 4-5 laptop bags..
it's absolutely overwhelming. they're all in FANTASTIC shape. all of the screens are bright and flawless.
the good news: as far as i can tell from some bench testing, every single motherboard works. the bad news: every power supply in every machine needs a recap. piece of cake on the old machines. incredibly unlikely on the 16-17xx machines.
roughly half the HDDs tested are fully functional, and still contain data. kinda sketchy, yes, but *very* cool. i've backed up what i can, but even the old win2k box i have set up to do the archiving can't talk to the earliest conner drives. i'll have to devise some alternative.
the 1535 - the one with the GPS card - belonged to novatel, and i recovered all of the software for it! one belonged to ford, one belonged to OSHA, one belonged to us west. the 1307 is tempest so i'm going to assume DoD provenance. one of the 1550s is internally marked "army 19th special forces group," but has no HDD. sigh.
i'll be posting plenty (including hopefully a gallery) as progress is made and questions arise. if you have parts to buy/sell/trade/loan just let me know. i'll be keeping a few of them and selling the rest, but i'd love to give them loving homes, and try to connect them with the grid community. 8x rare HDDs and peripheral enclosures for the gridcase 3 aren't doing me any good, so i'd love to unload them - or trade one of my other machines for a gridcase 3!
updates as they happen. cheers!
https://imgur.com/a/AxPmhau