This morning I had three fillings done at the dentist so hiding from the world was the order of the day for the afternoon as I felt like I'd been kicked in the head and my jaw had been half ripped off.
I had a computer needing some TLC, so attacked it.
Not the worst machine to get into, only real grumble with the T3200 is that step 1 in getting the top case off is completely dismantling the display as the cable doesn't detach from the motherboard. Only takes a couple of minutes to do, but I lost a good half hour swearing at it the first time I tried to dismantle one.
It was entirely stripped down and the case went through the wash while I attacked this.
There was no visible evidence of any leakage on this unit, but I decided that all the Nippon Chemicon ones were getting changed. Plus this one.
On account of the brown crustiness at the base - which I think is actually flux residue as there's a lot of on this board rather than capacitor goop. However I figured better safe than sorry.
The underside at least a better picture than the one from the T3200SXC.
Few dry joints on the heavier components but nothing horrible.
Just one capacitor was showing signs of just starting to leak visible once it was removed.
So it was definitely worth doing this job anyway as there was a failure waiting for me down the road if I hadn't, even if I couldn't see anything amiss just looking at it.
Case looks rather better after a good clean.
The case is slightly yellowed, but nowhere near as bad as it used to look.
Astonishing the difference a good clean can make. Despite this machine having quite a few miles on it it's scrubbed up not bad.
All back together and working.
...The second time around.
First time around it was immediately apparent something didn't sound right. Turns out that some idiot forgot to reconnect the fan in the power supply when they put it back together didn't they...which meant I had to basically take the whole thing about 80% of the way apart again. Rookie mistake.
Quite easy to spot though. The fans on these whine quite a bit, and as there are three identical ones they form quite an obvious slightly out of phase harmonic tone with each other - which while I'm sure some folks would find annoying, for me is something I've spent so much time around it is just nostalgic and strangely comforting. It was immediately obvious though it didn't sound right with only two of the three fans running though...which is probably a good thing. The power supply on this thing chucks out about as much heat as your average neutron star at the best of times, so don't imagine it would appreciate running for long without cooling.
Now just to finish writing the page for it.
Oh...and do a lot of web page updating...it turns out that having switched over to using HTTPS that my visitor tracker no longer works. I need to update the code embedded in the pages to fix that...all 184 of them. Not difficult, just tedious.
In news for other machines (albeit related), here's a sneak preview of what will be on the page for the T3200SXC. Got the annotated diagram of the motherboard made up for those who are curious.
Yes there's one messily corrected error on there which will be tidier in the finished version. This machine dates from 1991, and it's astonishing how much more integrated a lot of things are compared to the T1200 from 1987.
I really need to label those images to show what system they relate to...that's a derp on my part. Excuse me while I add it to the to do list.
The one for the T3200SXC took me about a quarter of the time the one for the T1200 did...you know why? Because I had the service manual in front of me rather than entirely reverse engineering the thing from scratch then realising when I was basically done that I had a manual literally on the screen to the left of where I was working on it! To be honest I'd probably have struggled with the T3200SXC one anyway when there are things like the "system integration controller" thrown in...
Funny how I'd virtually not touched this hobby aside from bits here and there for a good few years, but I've been really enjoying this lately.
I had a computer needing some TLC, so attacked it.
Not the worst machine to get into, only real grumble with the T3200 is that step 1 in getting the top case off is completely dismantling the display as the cable doesn't detach from the motherboard. Only takes a couple of minutes to do, but I lost a good half hour swearing at it the first time I tried to dismantle one.
It was entirely stripped down and the case went through the wash while I attacked this.
There was no visible evidence of any leakage on this unit, but I decided that all the Nippon Chemicon ones were getting changed. Plus this one.
On account of the brown crustiness at the base - which I think is actually flux residue as there's a lot of on this board rather than capacitor goop. However I figured better safe than sorry.
The underside at least a better picture than the one from the T3200SXC.
Few dry joints on the heavier components but nothing horrible.
Just one capacitor was showing signs of just starting to leak visible once it was removed.
So it was definitely worth doing this job anyway as there was a failure waiting for me down the road if I hadn't, even if I couldn't see anything amiss just looking at it.
Case looks rather better after a good clean.
The case is slightly yellowed, but nowhere near as bad as it used to look.
Astonishing the difference a good clean can make. Despite this machine having quite a few miles on it it's scrubbed up not bad.
All back together and working.
...The second time around.
First time around it was immediately apparent something didn't sound right. Turns out that some idiot forgot to reconnect the fan in the power supply when they put it back together didn't they...which meant I had to basically take the whole thing about 80% of the way apart again. Rookie mistake.
Quite easy to spot though. The fans on these whine quite a bit, and as there are three identical ones they form quite an obvious slightly out of phase harmonic tone with each other - which while I'm sure some folks would find annoying, for me is something I've spent so much time around it is just nostalgic and strangely comforting. It was immediately obvious though it didn't sound right with only two of the three fans running though...which is probably a good thing. The power supply on this thing chucks out about as much heat as your average neutron star at the best of times, so don't imagine it would appreciate running for long without cooling.
Now just to finish writing the page for it.
Oh...and do a lot of web page updating...it turns out that having switched over to using HTTPS that my visitor tracker no longer works. I need to update the code embedded in the pages to fix that...all 184 of them. Not difficult, just tedious.
In news for other machines (albeit related), here's a sneak preview of what will be on the page for the T3200SXC. Got the annotated diagram of the motherboard made up for those who are curious.
Yes there's one messily corrected error on there which will be tidier in the finished version. This machine dates from 1991, and it's astonishing how much more integrated a lot of things are compared to the T1200 from 1987.
I really need to label those images to show what system they relate to...that's a derp on my part. Excuse me while I add it to the to do list.
The one for the T3200SXC took me about a quarter of the time the one for the T1200 did...you know why? Because I had the service manual in front of me rather than entirely reverse engineering the thing from scratch then realising when I was basically done that I had a manual literally on the screen to the left of where I was working on it! To be honest I'd probably have struggled with the T3200SXC one anyway when there are things like the "system integration controller" thrown in...
Funny how I'd virtually not touched this hobby aside from bits here and there for a good few years, but I've been really enjoying this lately.
