Model 16 first power on and disk request

[Dokken]

I've had this fairly nice condition model 16 for a while and have never powered it on. it originally powered on fine with a floppy prompt (insert diskette). my plan was to disassemble it immediately after the smoke test. it ran like this for a few minutes, but subsequent power ons gave no video or power light.

disassembly was quite a chore. replaced the X caps, tested voltages (all good), then started testing. Floppy B (? the right one) seems to be shorted as it will not power on with this drive connected.

I disassembled floppy drive B, and every electrolytic has leakage. damage does not look too bad. working now on getting new caps in and will then power test. I also assume drive A has similar cap issues, but I'm leaving it alone for now since it powers on and lights up and spins.

would anyone be willing to sell me some bootable floppies for this? These are my only 8" drives. I plan to look into testing with a gotek, but would love to get these drives functioning.

 

[dlightman]

Search for "TRS-80 Model II/12/16/16B/6000 Diagnostics Disk" on ebay and you should find an auction selling floppies. Be careful with those TM-848's. Running them with the cardboard shipping disks inserted isn't great for the heads.

 

[pski]

Yeah, powering it on with the cardboard inserts may have damaged the drives unfortunately. Good luck and let us know how you make out. The electrolytic on those TM-848 drives rarely go bad. However they are notorious for blowing tantalum capacitor on the power input circuit.

 

[Dokken]

most of the caps on the floppy board looked like this:

 

[Dokken]

making some progress. one drive had a shorted C1 tantalum which caused the PSU to shut down when connected, got that fixed. And every electrolytic on both drives was oozing. Very little trace damage thankfully, only one visible repair.

 

[Dokken]

Looks like this thing is functioning.

I hand-made a 34 to 50 pin adapter with some perfboard hackery, but it works. I can boot to the Gotek, format/copy/duplicate to the 8" drives, and boot from the 8". both drives seem to work.

the keyboard pads were disintegrated and I have those on order.

 

[eswan]

Don't feel bad if the keyboard doesn't work first time after re-foaming. It took me 3 tries each on a Model II and 6000 keyboard to get all the keys working.

 

[Dokken]

keyboard contact pads installed and put back together. everything seems to work great.