Florida humidity is a real killer for unprotected electronics! I'm sure
Joe has seen lots of horror stories down where he is. I put in 27 years
in St Pete [just across the bay from Tampa] and watched tapes & disks
grow fuzzy white mold & black mildew spots after only a few years in
non-climate controlled storage. All sorts of nasty, subtle [and NOT so
subtle] corrosion problems. Makes trouble shooting anything electronic
lots of fun!
Craig
Sellam Ismail wrote:
>
> On Fri, 2 Mar 2001, Geoff Roberts wrote:
>
> > Looks a bit ratty (sorry, couldn't resist) but I've seen worse looking
> > stuff still clean up pretty well.
>
> :)
>
> > Looks like there's a very good chance it's restorable to functioning
> > condition.
>
> I'm not betting on it. The humidity really did a number on the boards,
> although upon casual inspection it doesn't seem they are too bad off. Just
> some slight corrosion. The problem is that many of ICs on the boards are
> custom Four Phase chips. Finding replacements for ones that may turn up
> bad will be difficult, to say the least.
>
> The other problem is that the backplane seemed to have some corrosion, so
> the slots will need clean-up. I'm expecting that after I inspect it more
> closely I will find that it is a big mess, but we'll see.
>
> The most important thing is that the machine was preserved. We did also
> find a couple tapes laying about that may or may not have the OS on them,
> and then may or may not even be readable anymore (I'm guessing towards
> not). We also found a couple hard drive platters, one in the drive and
> one sitting out. I left the one sitting out, as I figured it was a total
> loss.
>
> Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
Received on Thu Mar 01 2001 - 21:07:12 GMT