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Restored Mark-8

Moonferret

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2003
Messages
488
Location
Northwest (UK)
Hi Folks!

I've spent the past couple of weeks working on restoring the Mark-8 boards I picked up and after re-flowing the solder on a couple of connections and adding two small bodge wires to fix bad connections on an IC, I have a working Mark-8. Yay! I didn't want to remove the original switch panel nor did I want to use them as they are pretty poor quality so I decided to fit a new set in the base along with the new switch mode PSU. Also wired up the I/O ports to the rear of the base, using the same connections / pinout as the SCELBI (So I can use the same peripherals from my 8B replica)
Only job left to do is add a couple of vent holes to the top of the cover and figure out what interesting things I can get it doing :)

Cheers,
Dave

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Absolutely Beautiful! And I mean that!

I like the old style toggles that came with it, but I'm sure they're pretty fragile. They remind me of the DEC computer toggles. Did you make the black base completely from scratch? If so, it has a great vintage look. Those little "small-sized" banana plugs, and specially the "vacuum-tube" like electrical plugs really look like it right out of 1973! With the big solid base, and the cards sticking up, I would have suspected it was a Scelbi if you hadn't told me it was a Mark-8!

Years ago, I had a little Mark-8 web site where I showed off my Mark-8, and showed various other Mark-8's throughout the internet, most of which were terribly ugly piles of boards. One of those is below on the left. My "much prettier" one is in the middle on the right. It really is worth the extra time to make it look nice!

I'm sure you now have the best looking Mark-8 anywhere! Well done!
 

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Thanks! Yeah, the old switches look great but the whole front panel wobbles if you try and use them. Figured it would be safer just to add a new set. I did build the base and it uses a BUD AC-1424 chassis, very similar to the SCELBI (I used an AC-413 when I built my SCELBI replica)

I've seen photos of your machine before. Very nice! I love the different ways people built these early machines from, just get it working to well engineered machines such as the one you posted in the other thread :)

Cheers,
Dave
 
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