europlus Refurbapalittle – Retrochallenge 2016/10 Recap

OK, it’s “Tools Down” for Retrochallenge 2016/10!

As previously mentioned, this was my first Retrochallenge entry.

I’d noticed the frequent lament of Retrochallenge entrants about real life impacting on significant progress on entries, so I feel I entered with my eyes wide open on that front.

Whether that meant I didn’t work as hard as I might otherwise have, or that I had realistic expectations of what I might achieve, I’m not quite sure. With ongoing renovations, I like to think the latter is the case.

The bottom line is I did not complete the tasks I originally envisaged for refurbishing all of my europluses…but this month has been anything but a wasted effort, and I’ve certainly achieved a lot more than if I hadn’t entered.

For example, I likely wouldn’t have spent a day driving to our national capital to pick up two extra europluses if I wasn’t documenting the ones that I had. The chance to secure an extra two machines to go towards my collection and refurbishing efforts (well, one complete machine and one for spare parts) was an opportunity I felt I couldn’t pass up.

I almost certainly wouldn’t have paid so much attention so soon to the look of the motherboards and noticed my new favourite europlus, a motherboard from very early in the europlus’ production run. And, of course, I now have a good idea of the vintages of all my europlus motherboards, which will help me align them with their base plate serial numbers and PSU serial numbers.

Speaking of PSUs, I have now brought together all six gold Astec PSUs I have after removing them from the cases they were in (or grabbing them from my shelves if they were already removed) and I’ve opened them all up in preparation for testing their capacitors. I’ve also discovered that 110V PSU cases were repurposed/relabelled for use in europluses – I’m hoping one day to get more info on this.

While testing the PSU capacitors was a part of my original entry scope, I decided to wait until I had all six in the same open state before even considering testing them as I can then test all PSUs’ capacitors at the same time.

If it weren’t for my entry, I wouldn’t have refurbished my Disk ][ drives when I did. This was in preparation for hooking them up to my newly operational europluses at the end of Retrochallenge – I’m obviously not at that stage yet, but it’s nice to know the drives are all operational.

I don’t think I would have bought 6502s nor rubber feet yet – I now have enough of both for all my europluses for when I need them. And I also know the best solvent for removing the gunk left behind by the original adhesive for the rubber feet.

While I don’t have a comprehensive list of which machines are non-functional (nor what their problems are), I now know I have at least one working motherboard (8237). This gives me a good test base for other tasks, such as checking PSUs after testing/recapping, and possibly as a source of known good ICs and ROMs. I’ve also downloaded a copy of a diagnostics disk I can use when I continue my refurbishing work.

Overall, I’m pleased with what I have been able to achieve this month. Yes, I would have liked to be further along, but I am realistic about how much time I can dedicate to what is a hobby while work and renovation commitments are present.

I’m hoping to do a bit more work on my entry scope before WOzFest 5¼″, but I also have a heap of work to turn my attention to for that as I have some very special things lined up for it and it’s less than three weeks away!

Good luck to all Retrochallenge 2016/10 entrants as we enter judging!