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I could use a hand locating hardware bits and pieces and/or technical documentation for repair.

Newsgroups	comp.sys.3b1
Date	2015-12-18 16:43 -0800
Message-ID	<11f11849-2c2c-433a-ad2f-555403129d14@googlegroups.com> (permalink)
Subject	I could use a hand locating hardware bits and pieces and/or technical documentation for repair.
From	Chris Smith <protheus@byteorder.net>

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Hey everybody,

I've had a 3B1 since the mid 90s, which I love, but recently it had to move out of the house for a while due to space constraints. This was bad news since apparently the storage area we were using became a nest for a small animal. Now, well, I've cleaned the system and popped the case apart again to double check everything. It's mostly fine (thankfully), but...

I believe the keyboard is not functioning properly. This is not a surpise since it was full of some liquid the origin of which I don't really want to know. It's clean now but corroded in spots. I've removed and discarded the metal shielding around the outside of the keyboard and the (now very musty) cardboard insulating panel between the keyboard and shielding. Caps lock light flashes when the system comes on, but I can't get the keyboard to do anything, even though the switches do seem to be making contact from what I can see with a multimeter. If you pull the cable and re-insert it, you can get some characters to show up on the screen, but they keyboard itself isn't doing much.

Nothing obviously wrong with it upon inspection except some corrosion and the switches are a little stiff. I've tried to clean any dust of corrosion that seemed to be located between traces or wires just in case. I strongly suspect I may need to rebuild all or part of the keyboard. I'm willing to try that if I must, but I'm not really sure where to start. I don't know the electrical specifications even, and I'd much rather if somebody could tell me what they are than have to prod the machine to figure it out. In fact, if anyone has a keyboard schematic, I'd love to see it.

All that said, does anyone happen to know if there are still keyboards for these things floating around somewhere? Also, does anyone have document describing the protocol that should be spoken to the keyboard port? I might not mind building a converter. I'd be very tempted to buy a spare keyboard at this point, even if the original can be recovered.

On another, similar note, the hard drive (which I pulled from a pile of parts and installed into the system in '95 when I got the machine) has finally given out. Not a bad run for a disk, at any rate, and who knows how old and well-used it was before I put it into service, but it's a lot harder to find these than it used to be. What does everyone else do for that problem? Is there a good source for these drives? A piece of modern replacement hardware? There has been some talk (and apparently some success) about emulating the old Shugart interface with a CPLD, though the price may be a bit high on such a device.

Anyway, if anyone has recommendations on how to proceed here, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks,

Chris

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