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Osborne 1

I

im_an_alien

Experienced Member
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
121
Location
Waleska, GA
So I just picked one up for free on craigslist. I got it home and hooked it up, and when I turn it on, there's a short, quiet beep followed by a click, like a floppy drive trying to read a disk, but only one click. Then, nothing. Blank screen, no fan running, nothing. Suggestions?
 
Hmm..sorry to hear that.

Trolling around the web should get you quite a few documents for repair like Sams Facts and a fieldservice manual. I know they are out there because I've downloaded them. I couldn't tell you now from where though (bitsavers?)

The Osborne 1 doesn't have a fan so power can be getting to the board and it can still remain silent. If nothing appears on the screen though, inspection of the power supply would be a good start.

They can be tricky things to take apart. My advice would be to try to find some manuals, disassemble then start testing starting with the power supply. Check it's outputing the voltages it should be.

Tez
 
And take lots of photos - before, and during disassembly.
You'll find them helpful when you put it back together, because like Tez says, being a portable they're kind of tight. I use the photos to figure out which wires go where, rather than tagging everything.

If it comes down to it (ie: once you've diagnosed the problem), I've got a parts Osborne (or two).
 
Thanks for the replies. I won't be able to disassemble it now, but I'm moving into a new house where I will have a lot more space for things like this. In the meantime, I found a few manuals on bitsavers, so I'll be reading through those.
 
I agree that you should be careful when taking apart, but I found that these were very easy to work with, no notes were needed personally to know how to put it back together again.
 
There is a monitor terminator plugged in the front of the machine (under the disk drive on the right side), correct?
 
Evan if you don't have a working boot disk in the drive, you should see this when you turn on the system with any old disk in the left drive bay:
thm_osborne1a_boot-error.JPG
 
My money is on the Ext Video terminator.

This thing that says "Do not remove while power is on".

Ext Mon Adaptor.JPG

Without one of those, you'll get exactly the symptoms you mentioned. IE: "a short, quiet beep followed by a click"

There will be nothing of any sort on the screen.
 
im_an_alien said:
I have the terminator plugged in, but is it possible that there's something wrong with it?
Click to expand...

I don't know - I'm not sure what's inside these things.

Does it look the the one in the previous photo, or like this one?

EXMON.JPG

If it looks like this one, you could test it by hooking it up to another monitor (I'm not sure which type of monitor it needs though).
 
OK, so now you're going to need to open it up, and make sure everything is connected to what it should be connected to.
I've had a couple where boards were no longer connected to their connectors.
 
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