Gary C
Veteran Member
A couple of months ago, I was worried that I was running out of projects, not now.
My XT 5160 is a bit battered, but the bezel is glued back together and the case has been hammered back into about the right shape. Just need some car body filler to remove the surface defects then it will be time to paint. Not sure how to make the splatter, might experiment with nozzle modification of rattle cans. Reading up, a nozzle fitted with a short straw can be used to create a splatter.
Will report on the success.
System given a complete stripdown and clean. Several chips in the PSU's airflow path were completely choked with dust and at work I have seen this cause crosstalk and cause our sigma graphics units fail. PSU powered up with fingers crossed, and worked fine. Plugged into board and failed to run. Blown tantalum capacitor which is apparently a common problem. Interestingly its a three legged unit, designed to make it impossible for the cap to be soldered in the wrong way around, what a good idea but I could only find three leg units from the US with a daft delivery price, so a fist full from RS obtained for pennies and board now sorted.
Powered the unit up with the hard drive and the floppy and what do you know, it works ! The hard drive seems to be in good condition despite the knock it must have received when the bezel and case were damaged.
The included monitor works but there must be a bad connection inside as it sometimes needs a tap to get the contrast bright enough. Probably the pot.
Came with several boards, one to act as a 3170 terminal to an AS/400 and a ubiquitous Quadram Quadboard to provide the 256k as its an early XT mainboard. These boards include a real time clock and of course the battery has leaked removing lots of copper from the two chips below it. Chips removed and rebuild of the missing tracks is in progress.
Also have built my Mult.ibus 286/10A into a 4 slot cardcage with a suitable multibus original PSU. It starts up and gives a green light indicating that the board is running ok, but cant get to the Intel monitor via the J3 RS-232 connector.
Not sure what the issue is yet, or even if the installed ROM's will startup to the monitor but first step is to ensure the multibus and the CPU card are set up for serial arbitration, then need to do some tests.
My XT 5160 is a bit battered, but the bezel is glued back together and the case has been hammered back into about the right shape. Just need some car body filler to remove the surface defects then it will be time to paint. Not sure how to make the splatter, might experiment with nozzle modification of rattle cans. Reading up, a nozzle fitted with a short straw can be used to create a splatter.
Will report on the success.
System given a complete stripdown and clean. Several chips in the PSU's airflow path were completely choked with dust and at work I have seen this cause crosstalk and cause our sigma graphics units fail. PSU powered up with fingers crossed, and worked fine. Plugged into board and failed to run. Blown tantalum capacitor which is apparently a common problem. Interestingly its a three legged unit, designed to make it impossible for the cap to be soldered in the wrong way around, what a good idea but I could only find three leg units from the US with a daft delivery price, so a fist full from RS obtained for pennies and board now sorted.
Powered the unit up with the hard drive and the floppy and what do you know, it works ! The hard drive seems to be in good condition despite the knock it must have received when the bezel and case were damaged.
The included monitor works but there must be a bad connection inside as it sometimes needs a tap to get the contrast bright enough. Probably the pot.
Came with several boards, one to act as a 3170 terminal to an AS/400 and a ubiquitous Quadram Quadboard to provide the 256k as its an early XT mainboard. These boards include a real time clock and of course the battery has leaked removing lots of copper from the two chips below it. Chips removed and rebuild of the missing tracks is in progress.
Also have built my Mult.ibus 286/10A into a 4 slot cardcage with a suitable multibus original PSU. It starts up and gives a green light indicating that the board is running ok, but cant get to the Intel monitor via the J3 RS-232 connector.
Not sure what the issue is yet, or even if the installed ROM's will startup to the monitor but first step is to ensure the multibus and the CPU card are set up for serial arbitration, then need to do some tests.