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Sharp MZ-80K

I fully disassembled my K, but did not manage to extract the ARGO emblem plate. My K case is also very dirty (after its preliminary clean) but I was exploring further 'cleaning' rather then repainting as I was worried about the finish I would get. An 80A then fell into my lap at the local house clearance and that took priority for now. Though I know they are totally different machines, I repainted the A as the plastic had suffered terribly with sun damage and the plastic seemed more 'accepting' of paint that the K's case. I tried very hard to find paint colour matches for both, but didn't succeed. In truth the A looked better in the primer than the top coat I used which from certain angles has 'hint of' the wrong colour in it.

On the A, the dark plastic shroud though showing clips would not budge and appeared to have glue applied as well.

I previously repainted a Commodore Pet but the texture of the case made getting the paint to look good and not lose the texture was tricky.

Good luck with it.
 
Its quite badly chipped all along the front (though, oddly the Argo badge is free from blemish) so I needs addressing. The monitor surround is also a little bent from something heavy being put on it, and of course the interface unit's new panel will need painting too.

I have found an advert for a local car repair place that hints they can mix cellulose paint to match any colour, but not sure if they put it in rattle cans. Will have a word. Texture is difficult. My IBM XT needed major repairs and though the colour is right, the matt texture has lost some of its effect due to the large amount of tin bashing required, but in the end it looks fine.
 
Capacitor replaced, powered up and regulating perfectly.

With a 12V lamp as a test load, the voltage now drops from 12.7V to 12.6V whereas before it fell from 18.7V to ~10V. The screen is now stable and doesn't begin to shimmy like it did after about 15 minutes.

Case strip down now in progress for restoration.
 
Also noticed the screen linearity top to bottom is improved too. I suppose the CRT was having a difficult time running on 10V
 
I have now powered the Gotek via the ribbon cable by jumpering the 5V from the interface card to the unused pin 4 then at the gotek with jumper J5 removed and a header pin installed in the adjacent 5v hole, wire wrapped it to the cable side of J5 and now the Gotek powers up when the interface unit is powered.

I stripped down the case and gave it a good wash and scrub. A lot of the marks were on the surface and it now looks a lot better so not sure if I will paint it or leave it with its patina. The monitor casing must have received a good whack as a couple of the plastic location pins inside the surround have broken, but with it bent back into shape, it now fits around the bezel nicely.

The plastic screen was quite badly scratched, so a bit of T-cut and most of it has polished out, but I did notice that this slightly smoked screen completely hides the screen burn on the tube. With it removed I can see text from its original use in a double glazing works as I can see things like 'load cut file' (and I picked it up from a closed down double glazing factory).

Makes me wonder about the interface unit. The floppy card has some signs of a 'battery' style corrosion but no card has a battery. With the side panel missing and the screws badly damaged, this unit must have had quite a bit of use. Wonder if they had an interface to the cutting equipment itself ?

Just need to find a suitable 3.5" gotek housing now.
 
Just a quick note of thanks to Nama for the programs

Sat on a day off loading in wav's and writing them to native .dsk files directly to the Gotek.

Working wonderfully.
 
Found a box to put the Gotek in. Its a spare Amiga external drive case which has the advantage of already using the main cable to carry the power.

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So its about done.

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Shame I can't find an original disk drive box.
 
Got the keycap size right, but need to lighten the contrast slightly as the white is a little dull.

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But it looks ok.
 
I think the key you produced looks really good. My one owner machine keys have different 'colouring' I assume from the sun exposure.

I love the look of the patina of your system as it sits on the bench. Though I am biased at keeping some patina on old stuff (its only original once).

I think the screen filter on the 80k is a really nice feature. The 80a has one, but its not as good.

You have added to my resolve to at least get the memory chips swapped in my K to get it to not error out and get some software loaded into it. I posted a question on the 80a forum about the 80k asteroids game which I saw way back and cemented this machine in my 'must have one day' memory. The fella their kindly uploaded the file so I have the chance to travel back to a long lost youth.

Thank you for the continuing thread.
 
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