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I should still have some disassembled drives around (in theory: not working, but I just hate throwing away that kind of stuff… Doctors would have a lot to say about it, but that’s another story…), so maybe over the next weekend I will try to integrate a drive and see if it can be used for taking...

I recognize my English is not good enough for giving a clear explanation of the method… I will see if I can find the time for integrating some notes and some sketches. But yes, the principle is valid for 400k drives too, at least as long as the alignment of the stator assembly has not been...

Hi Guys, On the infamous “zero track alignment” issue with the floppy drives… I fixed many drives in the past with the most usual “trial and error”, luck-driven and unnerving approach. This time I opted for something more structured, which has proven to be rather successful (read: not much...

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I’m not a big fan of retrobrighting, I find the idea borderline OCD, but I agree the results can be extremely rewarding. For boosting the effects of Sun (UV rays) and speeding up the reaction, I would try to seal the items into ozone filled transparent bags...

Eventually, I built shims by overlapping layers of thick aluminum tape. The idea is to pack enough layers to prevent the head to be parked too far, but not enough for preventing the brake to engage. The drive is now fully functional again. Surely, I wouldn’t store the keys to a cryptocurrency...

I confirm it should be possible to glue a calibrated wedge stopping the cantilever and the head from being parked ”too far”, without interfering with the break. Not easy to fabricate and install one, though, as the margin is very tight.

Quantum Prodrive ELS, 160 Mb, 1992. Apple ROM, originally installed in a Color Classic. When powered up, it spins, but after a few secs it spins down and that’s it. Now, I managed to fix a couple of PowerBook internal drives with similar issues. For those drives the root cause was the stuck...

Did some checks. 1 - after some strokes, F5 key is now fully… functional 2 - Switches are really high quality 3 - Sanwa is still selling this keyboard, for some serious money (15k yen, plus taxes) 4 - I still have to figure out what is needed for installing the Japanese extended layout profile...

Yes, it’s exactly that one. On mine, all keys are responsive, except F5, which seems to be dead or not mapped.

Excellent, thanks for sharing! I will surely give it a try! Besides, right today I received a very interesting “Mackey” ADB mechanical keyboard, with a fancy, compact extended Japanese layout. Keys (should be black Alps) are much better than those on the Apple Extended II I normally use with my...

Back in the day and before falling in love with MATLAB, I had a crush for Think Pascal. Elegant, simple, compact, powerful and - above all - funny to use, it ticked all the boxes.

I have installed a SCSI2SD v5.0 on a handful of machines (Mac and NeXT) and they all work very fine. On the “workhorse” SE/30 I use the most, it’s indeed flawless, never missed a beat since I installed one a few years ago. Set up always the same: 8 Gb micro SD, 4 virtual units from id 0 to id 3...

Grüezi! Mmm… Too bad to read your printer did not cooperate for long. The ugly sound is not very promising, but the fact that the leds remains off might indeed mean that it’s just an electrical issue. I’d definitely open the case to peek inside and test the power supply.

Hi Guys, some updates from my side in regard to the Image Writer I refurbishment. The unit came in the original box and in excellent aesthetic conditions. However, it would just turn on and off and do nothing more. First issue: a lot of rust. Yes, plain rust on the lower head rail. I had to...

Thanks a lot!

I’m based in Japan, one of the few countries for which eBay has no localized operations, making everything horribly difficult. Still, if you could please indicate the seller of newly fabricated or refurbished units in Germany, I will give it a look and see what it is possible to arrange. Thanks!

Sounds promising, thanks for sharing! I may have found my next project for the end of the year break! :-)

Hi everyone, never been too much on vintage printers, but recently I could not resist to getting a first gen Image Writer in very good conditions, which will perfectly mate my early Macs for occasional dot matrix printing fun. To no surprise, the ribbon cartridge is completely dry and the...

Got into PB100 craziness a couple of years ago. Out of a bunch of machines sold “as is” which I tried to refurbish, all of them except one were suffering the same type of damage. Unfortunately, glues and other materials used for lcd screens were simply not designed for lasting this long...