mojoatomic

Only if your local hardware store sells liquor :-) - girl at the liquor store sees me in a suit and tie and says "Huh... you don't look like the type to drink Everclear" Your normal bar wouldn't have it, unless your normal bar is under a bridge near a bypass, but your local frat house would.

Ha!, yeah... That has raised quite a few eyebrows over the years... Used to buy electronics grade alcohol by the gallon back then, but I just don't use that much now. Doesn't take much when you have the right stuff... That bottle on the bench is going on 3 years worth of contact repairs now, and also removing flux residue. There was was a phase in the late 80's through mid 90's when all manner of chemicals were sold to pro shops for electronic related cleaning... Some were great, others just snake oil. Trouble is, none are produced anymore in their original format because they contained fluorocarbons - and you can't sell them any more. Some companies tried to reformulated some of them... None are worth jack now. Anyway, anything electronic can be put in water and washed, so long as you flush it with distilled water afterwards and heat it to dry. Used to run click key IBM keyboard boards in a dishwasher. Switches and all... It was the best way. Same thing with TTL logic boards for terminal servers before repairs, just washed and scrubbed them with a brush. Grain alcohol displaces water and leaves absolutely no residue., and washes away flux like it was never there. Except for DeOxit... I love that stuff and have used it for 30 years now. I'll complete the post when I get some parts in, shouldn't be too long.

They came like this... attached to the center piece card. At least, they did this at one time. Might have also done it other ways as well in addition to this.

Thank you for that :-) I hope that other's can learn from ramblings like mine and we can keep these consoles running long past my time.

These two just showed up at the office... they're breeding like rabbits!

I introduced myself i the appropriate forum about a week ago and mentioned that I had started to refurb and overhaul 2600's after a looooong hiatus... some of the guys requested details/pics and I figured this was a better forum for that. As to not step on any toes, this is not a sales post - just a "How I do it" type thing. I do it now for fun more than anything else :-) I'm a network admin for a fairly large company now, but when I started in the early 80's it was as a lowly board tech. I had 3 scopes, logic analyzers, logic injectors and all manner of test equipment on my bench, and I was good. I'm proud of those days - it may seem silly now to younger folks who have never seen that type of environment, but back then it was a big deal to be a respected and capable bench/board tech. Sometimes manufacturers would implement your repair fixes and apply them to the assembly line if they were good enough, and you trained field techs in the ways of repairs. For those that weren't around or don't know :-), nothing electronic was thrown away back then, if it had value, it was fixed and put back into service. That happened at several levels of service... the lowest level was repair - basically just make it work. Think mom and pop repair shops. Farther up the food chain near the top was refurbishment and overhaul - at this level, you tried to make everything you touched as close to "factory" as possible, including applying service bulletins and anything else that needed to be done. That's where guys like me came in. I worked on Unisys, IBM, Daisytech dumb terminals (among others), various brands of CRT's, Bang & Olufsen, Macintosh (not the computer), Apple ( the early ones - think IIe and +), Atari's - basically anything worth working on that we could get a manufacturer to set us up with depot style repair work for, complete with proper parts, manuals, supply chain, etc. There was no monkey repair or shotgunning of parts - you either knew what you were doing, or you didn't. There's no where to hide when the final test if flipping the power switch :-) Anyway... this hit the bench last night - Before you ask - there's a bottle of Everclear on the bench - I'm not an alcoholic and I don't drink it :-) it's one of the finest solvents available for electronic work; miles and miles beyond that oily drug store isopropal. No residue, and cleans like mad. A hack has been into this for sure... but no matter, I think we can straighten it out. See the heat sink compound?? Waaaaaay to much. You just need a film of it, that's all. Too much attracts dust, and that's builds up heat and ultimately causes failures. Also, this power switch and it's parts (minus the leaf spring contactors) was rolling around inside... will need a new one, because I don't have any leaf spring contactors lying around. See the hole blown in the 7508 voltage regulator? That'll cause an issue. Need to check for shorted caps or a bridged ground.. You only need two things to clean the leaf spring contactors and make them look and function like brand new... a solvent, and a soft brass brush. Why a brass brush? Well, the solvent (Everclear in this case) softens the gummy shellacked buildup on the contactors and leafs, and the brass brush removes the residue without harming either, because the brass is softer than the leaf springs and contactors, yet harder than the buildup. They shine up like new, and you cause no wear cleaning them. Just like new - notice that there are no scratches? You won't get this outcome if you use sand paper. These contactors are ready for another 30 years. Hit these with the alcohol and then the brass brush and they shine up like new money as well... On that note... I'm going to tell you something that a lot of folks don't believe, don't want to hear, or just don't understand. Every electrolytic can on these boards is bad. Period. Electrolytic caps have a useful lifespan of around 10 years... beyond that, the electrolytic degrades and the ESR of the cap goes through the roof. The in circuit ESR reading of the big 2200uF cap was deplorable. Same for the 4.7uF caps - they're even domed now. Bottom line - when they pop, they will take something with them. Just because they "work" doesn't mean that they are working correctly or within design specs. I pull these out and replace them with new, fresh caps, and return the old parts with the unit - I return all pulled parts, actually. A watch that doesn't keep time has no value as a timepiece - it may have historical or other significance lying in it's broken state... but it has no value as a timepiece. That really is the essence of my restorations - to have something as close to factory spec as possible, but still working. That's it for the moment - I've tested some parts, they need replacement and I'm out :-( time for a parts order. I'll go over the rest of the refurb when they get here, including the anatomy of the difficulty selector switches. Basically, 8 caps need to be replaced along with the 7508, and then we'll see what else.

This is good advice. These switches aren't as easy to reassemble when attached to the board as the power/reset/selection switches by nature of their design. As a caveat though, I will say that if contact cleaner doesn't fix your issue, one of two possibility's remains. Cold/cracked solder joint on one or more of the 3 legs, or the internal sliding contractor is sprung and not making good contact. The anatomy of these switches is 3 fingers with a sliding sprung contactor that is captured and actuated by the plastic switch portion. On occasion, the sliding contactor spring tension weakens and pulls away from the contacts, causing intermittent operation. This contactor is not easy to reform and at $1 each for the switches, it really is just easier/better to replace them at that point.

Hi all, looking for a temp source for CB101710 torrid choke RF cables like Best sells. I really like these and they work well, but I guess a lot of other folks like them to as they're sold out :-)