41–50 of 52 posts
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If you're in to period dumb terminals see if you can figure out what the hell this thing I uploaded to Wikipedia used to connect to: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/4800-52-...
Not that I would be able to help, but do you have a picture of the back and the connectors?
I can't help but wonder what sort of maintenance might these machines require before starting up again? I imagine, at the very least, cleaning corrosion from the contacts of all mechanical switches and changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be suspect? Are the boards salvageable or would the cabinets just be gutted and a modern (MAME?) machine be substituted (…
Speaking as a guy who grew up in a family of boaters, the nearby presence of seawater seems to greatly accelerate the degradation of electronics on ships, probably via salt corrosion.
I can't help but wonder what sort of maintenance might these machines require before starting up again? I imagine, at the very least, cleaning corrosion from the contacts of all mechanical switches and changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be suspect? Are the boards salvageable or would the cabinets just be gutted and a modern (MAME?) machine be substituted (…
> changing out the filter capacitors in the power supply and CRT. What else? Would every capacitor be suspect? Given the timeframe the article quoted for the most recent cabinet (1980-1981), they all predate the capacitor plague [1] by nearly two decades. It is possible that the capacitors in the PSU's of these games might still be close enough to spec. to not need any replacement. But given the folks who picked them…
The best part of getting the game is that it came with full (hand drawn!) schematics!
Perhaps this is just my inner poverty showing, but how does something like this even happen, from a monetary perspective? I'm assuming the owners had investors or loans or some other financial reasons that would prevent them from spending a lot of money and then simply parking it forever. And wouldn't property taxes or city nuisance abatement fines nibble away at the property over the years? It can't be completely fr…
This article is nearly 5 years old. I'd be curious to know where all the arcade games ended up and what the total value of them were all worth after resale. As for the ship, apparently in 2019 there were plans to host a zombie-themed event on it, but the plans are now delayed indefinitely: https://www.dailypost.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/zombie-ev...
Perhaps this is just my inner poverty showing, but how does something like this even happen, from a monetary perspective? I'm assuming the owners had investors or loans or some other financial reasons that would prevent them from spending a lot of money and then simply parking it forever. And wouldn't property taxes or city nuisance abatement fines nibble away at the property over the years? It can't be completely fr…
>Even if there is no ongoing cost for the ship, wouldn't the owners rather have sold the furnishings rather than leave them to rot? Organizations with more lucrative things to spend their man hours on tend to let abandoned projects just sit rather then liquidate them because the ROI of whatever they usually do is better than the ROI of liquidating a failed project. Property tax and other upkeep costs often wind up bu…
who would believe it - northwest Wales. if you're not familiar with the area, be sure not to ask George Bush https://youtu.be/S0ZG5-WB_ho
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Not that I would be able to help, but do you have a picture of the back and the connectors?
Nope. It was donated to ACMS https://www.acms.org.au/
A lot of equipment used keyboards that are not necessarily dumb terminals.
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That's more true for early 1980's and earlier electronics with through-hole caps (though a shorted cap could easily ruin your day), but I've seen a lot of mid-80's and newer vintage computers and game systems destroyed due to leaky SMD electrolytics.
I recently fired up an old Mac Plus that has stayed in the family and everything seemed to work fine until it started smoking, the display started to go wonky, and then it quit... Almost certainly an old-capacitor issue
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Nope. It was donated to ACMS https://www.acms.org.au/
Anything written on the PCB? Switch type/brand? A lot of equipment used keyboards that are not necessarily dumb terminals.