Whitechapel MG-1 workstation questions

From: Bernd Kopriva <bernd_at_kopriva.de>
Date: Sat Apr 24 16:20:40 2004

Hi Jules,
i got that one formTony Duell some times ago :

>There's a trick if the machine won't power up at all...
>
>The power switch on the MG1 is software-controlled (!), and it runs off 5
>AA NiCd cells on the power distribution board (these also keep the RTC
>running). They're charged when the machine is running, but of course if
>you leave it powered-down for too long, they go flat, and you can't turn
>it on agaain.
>
>The way round this is to connect a 9V battery (a PP3 or similar) to 2 of
>the pins of one of the connectors on the power distribution board (I can
>get the exact details). The machine will then power up, and you leave it
>running until the NiCds are charged

The connector is J13 ...

Btw: do you have a spare power supply (or maybe some schematics) ? Mine
is dead, so i never got my machine up and running :-(

Bernd


On Sat, 24 Apr 2004 17:53:22 +0000, Jules Richardson wrote:

>
>A few initial questions after a couple of these beasties turned up at
>the museum:
>
>Does anyone have OS install media for these? We've got the manuals, but
>no floppies and I'm not sure what state the hard drives are in yet.
>
>Don't suppose anybody has schematics / service information?
>
>Predictably, the batteries inside the machines are toast and have taken
>half the circuitry with them (grr!). I'll clean everything up and then
>bypass the tracks which have been damaged / eaten away. Presumably
>there's a trick to starting these things after battery failure by
>feeding power straight to the internal relay - any ideas what voltage it
>needs though? And once running will I still need to keep the relay
>energised or will the PSU circuitry take over (even in the absence of
>batteries - I'm just going to remove the damn things completely)?
>
>
>I've got one hard drive to spin up and become ready after dumping half a
>can of WD40 onto the bottom spindle bearing - it wouldn't even turn
>before that. Now it just sounds like a sick cat. :-/
>Hopefully it'll last long enough to get any useful data off it though.
>
>I notice what seems to be a SCSI connector on the system board - can I
>pull out the ST506 disks and just run a more modern (and hence reliable)
>SCSI disk from here? Or is the SCSI connector (if that's what it even
>is!) just designed to support a tape drive, and the machine always
>expects the boot drive to be an ST506 disk?
>
>
>cheers
>
>Jules
>
Received on Sat Apr 24 2004 - 16:20:40 BST