Gary C
Veteran Member
Just a blog on things this year at the Northwest computer museum (leigh spinners mill, Leigh, Greater Manchester, WN7 2LB 
).
Museum is doing well. All 5 star reviews on Trip Advisor so far and everyone seems to enjoy the hands on approach, letting people get to grips with vintage machines. Well, everyone except me, because inevitably machines have their odd 'hiccups' and that has meant too many machines need attention to really make much headway in actually restoring them.
Our working Act Sirius after working for some months, decided to call it a day and refused to boot. Thanks to the wonderful forum, a member volunteered (thanks Dave) to take the unit and repair it. Now its back on display wowing everyone with its combination of graphics and sound. Not sure of the cause of the fault yet, but the disk interface and the drive itself were defective. While it was away, the DMA card got tested so at least I know that works before I start testing the XEBEC interface.
The Lisa video decided to fail. Hugo came to the rescue with help and advice, identifying a defective width coil (which still needs to be rewound, though the machine now works without it) so that was good.
The coffee machine caused the biggest headache. A RIJO42 machine was bought second hand, only for it to throw a 'grinder blocked' error despite the grinder being perfectly free. A second machine was obtained but within a week, that threw up the same error ! After some 'negotiation' by the boss (Joe), one of the maintenance companies let him have the codes to reset the 'error'. Apparently its a maintenance feature that forces a service visit after a set period and resetting it needs this code without which the machine is useless. The buggers !
The second problem was the air conditioning. The building is ~120 years old and has little ventilation, so a chiller unit was bought (second hand again ! will we learn) but made horrible noises and only blew warm air about. Stripping it down revealed that the fan for the evaporator had snapped off its spindle and was being bounced around in its housing ! A bit of judicious modification with some big washers and the fan was successfully remounted and blowing cool air.
So we progress and I am looking forward to taking my pension and reducing my hours at work in 18 months so I can spend more time swearing at computers
).Museum is doing well. All 5 star reviews on Trip Advisor so far and everyone seems to enjoy the hands on approach, letting people get to grips with vintage machines. Well, everyone except me, because inevitably machines have their odd 'hiccups' and that has meant too many machines need attention to really make much headway in actually restoring them.
Our working Act Sirius after working for some months, decided to call it a day and refused to boot. Thanks to the wonderful forum, a member volunteered (thanks Dave) to take the unit and repair it. Now its back on display wowing everyone with its combination of graphics and sound. Not sure of the cause of the fault yet, but the disk interface and the drive itself were defective. While it was away, the DMA card got tested so at least I know that works before I start testing the XEBEC interface.
The Lisa video decided to fail. Hugo came to the rescue with help and advice, identifying a defective width coil (which still needs to be rewound, though the machine now works without it) so that was good.
The coffee machine caused the biggest headache. A RIJO42 machine was bought second hand, only for it to throw a 'grinder blocked' error despite the grinder being perfectly free. A second machine was obtained but within a week, that threw up the same error ! After some 'negotiation' by the boss (Joe), one of the maintenance companies let him have the codes to reset the 'error'. Apparently its a maintenance feature that forces a service visit after a set period and resetting it needs this code without which the machine is useless. The buggers !
The second problem was the air conditioning. The building is ~120 years old and has little ventilation, so a chiller unit was bought (second hand again ! will we learn) but made horrible noises and only blew warm air about. Stripping it down revealed that the fan for the evaporator had snapped off its spindle and was being bounced around in its housing ! A bit of judicious modification with some big washers and the fan was successfully remounted and blowing cool air.
So we progress and I am looking forward to taking my pension and reducing my hours at work in 18 months so I can spend more time swearing at computers
