Whitechapel MG-1 workstation questions

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Sat Apr 24 17:34:09 2004

On Sat, 2004-04-24 at 21:34, Tony Duell wrote:
> > Does anyone have OS install media for these? We've got the manuals, but
>
> Yes, but on 3.5" (720K) disks. You can put a 3.5" drive in place of the
> standard 5.25" 80 cylinder one, at least temporarily, to do an OS install.

Phew - it's just good to know someone has them. I doubt there are many
of these machines about any more.

> > Don't suppose anybody has schematics / service information?
>
> Yes I do, inclduing schematics of the bits that weren't in the oficial
> manuals...

Well I'll see how things go; hopefully it won't come to that!

> > Predictably, the batteries inside the machines are toast and have taken
> > half the circuitry with them (grr!). I'll clean everything up and then
>
> Well known problem. The 0.1" header connector between the power
> distribution board and the mainboard often suffers, BTW. Clean things up
> with a dilute solution of citric acid, the battery electrolyte is alkaline.

ta - I've given the power distribution board a wash and got the worst of
it off. I didn't bring the system board home with me so that one will
have to wait a few days (and the other machine!)

> I think you need the batteries to act as a shunt regulator for the RTC
> chip. You certainly do on a Torch XXX.

Hmm, it does feed around 3V to the system board when the power's off,
presumably for the RTC. It'll get voltage from the PSU (switched via a
transistor on the board I have here, although it looks like they
originally just fed +5V in via a diode) when everything's running, so in
theory it doesn't need the batteries for anything once running from
mains power.

> > 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
>
> WD40 is not really a lubricant!

It's better than water :-]
Problem on those rodime drives is that everything comes apart from the
top IIRC, so there's no way of getting at the spindle bearing without
taking the lid off and all the platters out :( Squirting some WD40 in
through the little gap between the motor shell and the drive chassis
managed to get enough onto the bearing assembly to disperse all the
crud.

I imagine it'll do nasty things longer term when everything's at running
temperature, but if the drive just runs long enough to copy anything
that looks useful off it, then that's better than a drive that was
locked solid.

> Hmmm.. I prefer healthy cats...

Me too!

> If you have the IBM slot adapter (which adds 3 8-bit ISA slots), then
> presumanly you could put a tape controller in one of those slots and
> write software to talk to it. I've never heard of it being done, and the
> IBM slot adapters are not exactly common.

Nope, no adapters in either of these machines. One has a 2MB memory
board, the other hasn't been expanded at all. At least they have
Ethernet, so I can hook it up to the LAN and copy anything useful off
that way.

cheers

Jules
Received on Sat Apr 24 2004 - 17:34:09 BST