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Another new guy

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Moondog

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 12, 2015
Messages
279
Location
Michigan
Hi everyone! My name is Moondog, and I'm a retro computer enthusiast. Back in the 80's my first pc was an Atari 400 with a cassette drive. I later moved onto a C-64 and 1541 floppy and the barely legible 1526 printer. After I graduated high school I received an Associates degree in electronics and got a job working in the repair department for Zenith Data Systems. At that time Zenith Electronics sold off ZDS to Groupe Bull. In depot repair we repair down to the field replaceable unit level (system board, power supply, hard drive.) It was mostly portables. I got to work on the ZF-171 series, Z181, Z183, Z184, Z200, Z300 up through to the Z-Note series laptops. We even serviced some Honeywell Bull, HP Vectra, and the 386sl version of the IBM Thinkpad (which were either re-badged ZDS systems or co-designed.) I then transferred to component repair (acutally got bumped. union shop) and worked on the older Z-248 desktop motherboards. I then moved to another team in the department then worked on 486 motherboards that went in the systems we sold to the government under the Desktop IV contract. In 1996 ZDS was merged with Packard Bell and NEC, and everything was packed up and shipped to California. Since then I have worked for a place that dealt with ZDS salvage, a small computer shop, then I entered the IT field doing desktop support. No matter where I went, there was always some peice of of vintage or legacy hardware /software that forced me to clear out the cobwebs in my brain.

My last project was resurrecting a Compaq Portable II, and I'm building up the courage to dig into an inoperable CBM 2001 Pet (calculator keyboard and built-in floppy.)

When I'm not doing that I'm re-purposing newer (less than 10 y/o) computers and playing with linux.
 
What was wrong with the 1526 that it was barely legible?

I had fun with the 1526. I was irritated at first because I didn't see the point in a dot matrix printer that couldn't print graphics.

Then I discovered the one programmable character, but it could only be used once per line. Then I found if you carriage return and feed back one line you could use reprogram that character and use it on the same line. It took an eternity and wrinkled the paper pretty bad but I was able to print high resolution graphics!
 
Thanks everyone! I'll do my best to contribute here. I've forgotten alot over the years, however I'll share what I can.

Of the years I did perform component repair, It seems like the majority of that was spent replacing broken simm sockets, keyboard fuses, Uarts, serial driver chips (1488 and 1489,) or cold solder connections that somehow left the board manufacturing plant.
 
Welcome aboard!

I like the ZDS machines, I should work on adding a few to my collection, I remember being quite young and my dad had a ZDS laptop (I use "laptop" generously, it was huge, lol) he took home from work now and then, don't recall what model it was though.

I am a Compaq Portable fan too, I've got a I, II, and a III in my collection.
 
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