On Thu, Mar 9, 2023 at 2:22 PM John Maxwell via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> On 9-Mar-23 10h36. Grant Taylor wrote: > > >On 3/9/23 6:20 AM, Bill Degnan wrote: > >> First and foremost, try to boot the computer to make note of the > >> configuration, if there is one still stored in the system. > > Nowhere do I see any mention of a Model 80 Reference Disk. If you don't > have one of these, you will not be able to configure the machine. I > _should_ have a copy of one lying around (or already imaged/archived) - the > main problem is finding the ADF (Adaptor Description Files) for the added > features/cards. My copy of the Reference Disk would not likely have any > ADFs from obscure cards, but should have the common files. Let me know if > you need a copy. I recall that I had a 'master diskette' with many > collected ADFs which came through the lab. Would have to look for that one, > if interested. ADFs were text files with descriptions of hardware addresses > and the like. > That's my point, at least try the system see if it works as is, but assume the battery is just about dead if not completely. May have enough juice for one or two more boots. so get the info out of it you can. The chances a model 80 will smoke out or catch fire is less enough to make that a secondary concern. > > >Hum. That sort of surprises me. I naively assumed that there would be > some work that I should do before powering the system on to make sure that > there >weren't any spicy components that would make me regret my choices. > Did IBM not use Rifas? Is there any other hardware concerns? > > Not sure of what you mean by 'Rifas' in the last question. Probably an > acronym or other abbreviation of something I may know about, but nothing > comes to my foggy brain presently. no caps like that, this is an IBM. > >I am somewhat worried about stiction on the old hard drives. > Even if there is stiction you should still try to boot and capture as much info as you can first before you replace the battery. > > "Stiction" is probably not your biggest concern regarding the hard drives. > The real problem could be stuck bearings - depending upon HDD model > installed. "Stiction" is the condition where the spindle motor did not have > enough torque to free the head from the platter surfaces - the drives used > in all of the PS/2 Model 80 machines that we saw were beefy enough to > overcome any "stiction" condition. We, in the repair lab (years ago, of > course), used to see this on the original Apple Mac SE and SE/30 machines > where a Sony 20Mb drive was used (the model number has long since been > forgotten and is irrelevant to our discussion, of course) but we used to > give them assistance to last a couple of startups (or at least one!) for > backing up data by using our "inertial rotation" technique to physically > spin the drive using hand motion. We would (wrist-strap grounded, of > course) grab with our free arm the drive in axial alignment over the > spindle and rotate the drive a few times around back and forth in a > snapping action. 95% of the time it would work to retrieve the data before > we would RMA the drive back to Apple. > > >But I tend to not work on systems this old that have been sitting for a > long time often enough to know what I should check. > > <snip> > > I used to work at IBM when they sold these. Bill
