Lmst

Oops. I thought I'd clean the heads of the disk drives on the Tandy TRS-80 before trying them with the machine. The head on the top side fell off.

It seems it was just glued on, so I applied some fresh glue and stuck it on again. The good news: this was not the boot drive. The bad news: it doesn't seem to be working. Maybe I messed up the head alignment? Guess I need to hook up the oscilloscope and check the signal coming from the head.

At least the boot drive is working, and for the first time in my life I booted up a TRS-80 from disk.

Interesting mods as well, to select between 40 and 80 track operation.

Oh, and it turned out the heads weren't that dirty to begin with, probably didn't need a clean anyway.

#RetroComputing #Tandy #TandyTRS80 #TRS80 #Electronics #ElectronicsRepair

Two 5.25" floppy drives with a black front mounted on top of each other in a beige metal casing. A mains power lead and ribbon cable behind it are just out of focus.

Two 5.25" disk drivers mounted on top of each other in a metal frame, the outer casing is removed revealing a green printed circuit board mounted on top of the top drive.

A black plastic rectangular part bent out of the casing of a floppy drive, the read/write head dangling from a flex pcb that is no longer attached to the plastic that is supposed to hold it.

A black plastic rectangular part with a read/write head on a flex pcb stuck in place where it should be.

Well, the main CPU unit is all back together and working fine, so turned my attention to the system expansion unit. Someone obviously went in there to replace the bridge rectifier, and there was some dust but otherwise it seemed OK and it powered on stand-alone. However, something is not quite right, because the computer won't boot with it connected...

#RetroComputing #Tandy #TRS80 #TandyTRS80

A metal box with it's lid removef revealing a small transformer and a green PCB, and a ribbon cable coming out the top.

A 70s home computer with integrated keyboard on a desk. It is connected to a metal box with its top removed. Next to it is a small CRT monitor displaying garbage.

Succes! After replacing the faulty video memory chip, there is no more corruption on the screen.

Next up: to inspect the expension interface box and disk drives and hook them up.

#RetroComputing #Electronics #Tandy #TRS80 #TandyTRS80

Green PCB with a bare keyboard attached by a ribbon cable. A small CRT monitor stands to the side, showing a 2-line BASIC program, with no screen corruption.

Right, thanks to the Hakko, the faulty video memory chip is out, only to discover I am out of DIP-16 sockets...

#RetroComputing #Electronics #Tandy #TandyTRS80 #TRS80

Top half of a green PCB with rows of DIP-16 ICs, where one is conspicuously missing.

Hand holding a blue desoldering gun, its pointy business end hovering above the back of a green PCB.

Look what finally arrived in the mail! A bunch of (supposedly) 2102 1kbit SRAM chips for the TRS-80. I can finally replace that faulty video RAM chip and continue testing the expander and disk drives.

#RetroComputing #electronics #TRS80 #TandyTRS80 #Tandy

6 DIP ICs labelled 'MM2102AN-L' on pink anti-static foam.

El 28 de noviembre de 1983, Tandy Corp., lanza al mercado su computador TRS-80 Modelo 2000. Con CPU 80186, 128 Kb en RAM, dos floppy drives, costaba 2750 usd. Un modelo superior con HDD de 10Mb y 256 Kb Ram costaba 4250 usd. Usaban MS-DOS 2.11 y Xenix
#retrocomputingmx #tandytrs80

Meet a friend to pick up some #PhilipsP2000T micro cassettes, walk away with said cassettes, two #AtariST 520s, one 1040, two monochrome Atari monitors, one #EpsonHX20, a #TandyTRS80 MC-10 with 16Kb memory expansion, a couple of 28k8 modems and some other bits and bobs. Do I have a problem?

#RetroComputing

Look what found its way to me. I wonder whether it's complete and works, but I'll have to wait till we're back home in #Sweden to find out.

It's interesting to find one here, they're not all that common in Europe. I wasn't looking for one specifically, but I won't refuse a free retro computer.

#RetroComputing #Tandy #TandyTRS80 #TRS80