Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Hell Razor5543]

Something that may help you in this heat, Zel, is an air cooler. I got some a few years ago (when B&M were selling them at a silly price) and (for what they are) they do a good job. Imagine a cube 6" per side. There is a fan at the back, with a framework inside that has fabric fingers that hang in a trough. There is also a tank that you fill with water (this then keeps the trough filled up). Once the fabric has wicked up some water it cools the air by a couple of degrees, so the fan blows (slightly) cooler air. It does not make much of a difference, but it can turn a bad night (with little or no sleep) into a tolerable night.

https://www.bmstores.co.uk/products/bla ... ube-368417

[Zelandeth]

Something that may help you in this heat, Zel, is an air cooler. I got some a few years ago (when B&M were selling them at a silly price) and (for what they are) they do a good job. Imagine a cube 6" per side. There is a fan at the back, with a framework inside that has fabric fingers that hang in a trough. There is also a tank that you fill with water (this then keeps the trough filled up). Once the fabric has wicked up some water it cools the air by a couple of degrees, so the fan blows (slightly) cooler air. It does not make much of a difference, but it can turn a bad night (with little or no sleep) into a tolerable night.

https://www.bmstores.co.uk/products/bla ... ube-368417

That for me would just make it worse as humidity gets me just as bad as heat. We did have one of those albeit a bit bigger, think it got used once.

Plus this house is so well set up for thermal gain (which is great in the winter!) that left to its own devices in the current weather it will end up well into the mid 30s in here, not really dropping noticeably overnight...so knocking a degree or two off isn't going to really cut it.

These days I'm okay for my room as I've got an ex rental portable split air conditioner in here. It does a decent job of keeping my room habitable, albeit costing about £0.50 an hour to run when the compressor is active given the current energy prices. I'd be absolutely miserable without it though, so worth every penny.

Worlds away from the hose out the window type you usually see though. Think they were something like £1500 each new, so when three popped up on eBay for £60 each I grabbed them very quickly!

[Hell Razor5543]

I am sorry to hear that, Zel. I have not noticed the humidity much, but it has helped me even on 'muggy' nights.

My Mum came up with a 'concoction' that might help. Rose's Lime Cordial with a dash of Elderflower Cordial. It MUST be Rose's (any others are too sweet!), and the Elderflower Cordial takes the edge off the 'sharpness'. I have found it unusually refreshing.

[myglaren]

I used to run a bath of cold water and submerge myself in it ever couple of hours during the night.
That was in Sweden though, the temperatures there far exceeded anything here.
May help you though.

[Zelandeth]

Being able to keep a couple of rooms comfortable means it's more of an annoyance than anything. At least I can sleep (well, as well as I ever do but that's a whole different complaint!), and work at the computer or work on electronics projects.

However it gets mighty frustrating that after 15-30 minutes trying to do anything outside those habitable areas I just start crashing hard. I need to be very careful of trying to just power through it too much or it's migraine time and those are absolutely no fun.

Doesn't help that I still have seriously limited stamina following COVID which obviously just makes the heat intolerance even more of an issue.

[myglaren]

[Zelandeth]

Decided this afternoon I was going to just swallow my pride and order a proper cooling vest. I'd been putting that off simply because they're really quite expensive at around £150. Though if it allows me to function properly outside for extended periods again that's a small price to pay.

I know several folks who have these - Link here and swear by them. If I ever do get around to dragging the half finished costume project out of its seven year and counting hibernation it's something that I will *definitely* need then anyway. Only one way the price is going to go as well.

Of course...they're now out of stock. D'oh! Oh well, will keep an eye on the website I guess.

-- -- --

Had the scans for a film from a couple of months ago come back today. This was a bit of a throwaway example as it was very ordinary Velvia 100 which was several years out of date. It hadn't been stored well, being found at the bottom of a box in our loft where it gets hotter than the core of the sun. So wasn't expecting much.

Cue surprise when quite a few decent shots turned up on it. Here are some from a local classic car club meet at the start of May. This was an evening event on an already cloudy day so the lighting was poor. So I was having to shoot these generally wide open, especially as being so far out of date I was treating the film as about ISO 80.



Would have been nice to get a more neutral background for this. May need to try desaturating the background in post processing and see how that looks.



Really happy with this shot though. This was pretty much spot on in every way what I was aiming for.



Hailing from the same corner of the world was this absolutely gorgeous Nash. Which I'm massively irked that I messed up the focus on the main photo of. There were only two photos on the whole film out of focus, this being one of them.



Interior on that was lovely.





Whole car was...the little details on it meant I could probably have used a whole film on the one car.



This one was precisely as painfully orange as this photo makes it look.



I had deliberately dialled the exposure back a little on this as it suited the subject better I thought.





Lovely to see a Mini that's not been "upgraded" into a Cooper replica.



Frustrated with myself on this one...I absolutely should have moved a fraction to the right and totally hidden that car in the background behind the subject. Never occurred to me at the time. Oops.



Another one I wish I had a clean background to, but was very happy with how it came out otherwise. Was seeing quite how far I could push depth of field while still keeping the subject sharp.



Couple of non car related ones. The spectacular sunsets I used to see regularly up north are something I very much miss, though we do get them here occasionally.





Speaking of keeping things sharp, the definition in the next few shots really impressed me.







Definitely shows that you can get some decent images out of that camera and lens. Not bad for a film I nearly didn't bother using!

[Zelandeth]

Oops.



So much for self restraint. Insomnia and eBay are a dangerous combination.

I always keep half an eye out for T1200s going cheaply as they're a big favourite of mine, despite being machines that don't cope with decades of hibernation very well. This one was collection only and obviously quite rough so I had a feeling might go cheap. So I stuck a low bid on and promptly forgot about it for six days until an email arrived telling me I'd won it!

This was for a pair of machines, a T1200 and T1600, which piqued my curiosity as I'd never seen one of them before. Obviously from the same period as the T1200 but clearly a more advanced machine.

Being quite used to the trials and tribulations of Toshibas of this era I didn't even think about applying power straight out. The power supply at the very least will need to have the electrolytic capacitors replaced and the inevitably leaked slime cleaned up. So I immediately started to strip the T1600 down.

The odds I gave it for surviving dropped significantly only a couple of minutes in.



This is the frame the drives attach to, the corrosion there being caused by the suspend-to-RAM battery pack leaking. By some miracle Toshiba in this case had sat the pack in a little plastic tray and had also put a plastic shield on the motherboard underneath it, so this is the only actual damage I can see from it.

You can see the rust flakes at around 4 o'clock in the photo below, though the motherboard itself seems to have avoided the corrosion.



The hard drive sits straight above the corroded area yet aside from a bit of surface rust on the outer casing looks to have escaped. Whether it still works is another matter. I thought I'd seen all of the different proprietary drives Toshiba had used by now, but no... here's yet another one.





I believe this to essentially be a 40Mb version of the 20Mb drive used in the T1200, using the same I/O connector.



The model numbers are very similar and the early T1600s apparently had a 20Mb drive, which I'd put money on being the same one as used in the T1200. So if this drive is dead I can probably still get it going with one of the spares I have for them. Only choice I'd have really given finding a replacement is likely to be near impossible, and the proprietary interface means solid state solutions aren't really an option. You can't even use a Gotek or similar for the floppy drive as those are also non-standard. This is the connector they use (the black one below), which carries both data and power.



At least they did use this all the way to the mid 90s so I have a few spares of those. The one in the T1600 is a high density drive too, the T1200 being double density only is occasionally annoying.

With that lot extracted I could wriggle the power supply board out.



Quite similar to the one in the T1200 just laid out a bit differently.

Closer inspection revealed the entirely expected incontinent capacitors. The goop was literally dripping off the power transistors in the foreground.



I can't see any eaten traces though so hopefully we've caught it early enough.

This is basically standard on these things nowadays and is why it's so important to not power them up. On the T1200 it is quite common for the resulting fault condition to stuff unregulated 12V down the 5V rail, usually nuking the motherboard.

Speaking of the motherboard, the CPU isn't attached to it. The CPU and memory both reside on a little daughter board crammed in under the keyboard.



Which being an 80C286 does support the belief this is the big brother of the T1600.

The whole machine was absolutely filthy so in addition to the innards which needed to be cleaned of capacitor slime, everything was removed from the case so it could get the same treatment.



Everything was left out in the sun to dry this afternoon after blowing things dry with the air line. Ignore the heat gun in the photo below, it's just waiting to be ferried to the garage.



The difference is pretty clear to see! These two were identically grubby when we started out.





The keyboard will be getting the same treatment tomorrow having been passed by today as I couldn't find the keycap puller (it's since turned up). This layout was carried over to the T3100SX in 1993, possibly longer.



I will need to get some capacitors ordered up before we can go much further, but I should be able to build most of it back up tomorrow before I have the chance to lose too many screws and forget what order too many bits go together in. I know getting the one flex connector back into place is going to be an absolute pig as fishing it out was a real logic puzzle.

Must have been a real beast of a portable in 1989. 12MHz 80C86, 1Mb (standard) memory, 40Mb HDD, 1.44Mb floppy, full EGA graphics (onboard monitor is grey scale), optional inbuilt modem, 50 mins or so per battery (2x slots, hot-swappable), and a weight of around 5kg - with a much better handle than the T1200. The footprint is barely any bigger though which surprises me. This really couldn't have been made any smaller.

Speaking of dates, based on the codes on things it looks like mine dates from the first few weeks on 1990.

I'll probably pull the T1200 apart tomorrow for assessment and cleaning. Though given the *externally* visible corrosion I don't hold out great hopes for it.



I've found these are usually worse inside than out, so am expecting this to be pretty bad. At the very least it should yield come useful parts though.

Hopefully I'm just being a pessimist...watch this space I guess!

[xantia_v6]

What expansion slots does the T1600 have? I knew someone who had one when they were current, I had a T1200 work machine at the time, and he was forever telling me how superior the T1600 was, and I thought that its benefits included a standard PC expansion slot.

[Zelandeth]

Expansion slot on this is still proprietary, same as on the T1200 I believe.

Earliest Toshiba portable I know of with a standard ISA style expansion slot was the T3200, which is date wise comparable to the T1600, but in a larger mains only format.

[Zelandeth]

The Caddy continues to surprise me and make me realise what a cracking little motor it is.

Today I drove from our house in Milton Keynes up to a friend's place just outside Ellon, Aberdeenshire.

Of course this was a journey I chose to do when the northbound M6 was closed at Carlisle.

A journey I can basically do on autopilot and should take eight hours plus change wound up taking twelve hours twenty-nine minutes. Blarg.

Nevertheless, I got out at this end of the journey not feeling at all frazzled. Despite the last two hours being straight into the sunset then along tiny country lanes in the dark with no road markings. Tired, obviously. However I'm not a bundle of nerves, I'm not sure anywhere aside from my fingers cramping a bit from holding the steering wheel but I get that in any car after a couple of hours. It really is far better a long distance mile muncher than it has any right to be. As an added bonus it looks like we managed to see 54MPG on the run.

[Zelandeth]

Some cars can really surprise you. For instance I fully expected my Xantia Activa to be a fantastic motorway mile muncher...it's a luxury car with big cushy seats and plenty of power.

You wouldn't really expect much in that regard though from the Caddy. Over the weekend she's covered a little over 1000 miles on the motorway plus quite a bit of local running around. Including a run up to my traditional photo spot.





I still reckon that for a car derived van that the Caddy isn't a bad looking little thing. The proportions just seem to work.

She does need a wash now though...I seem to have brought back half the insect life in the country with me. This was clean before I set out on Friday.





The little van didn't miss a beat at any point over the whole trip, even despite me having the return run being done in temperatures hitting 38C, and having "a little bit" of cargo on board on the way home.



The economy over the whole weekend looks to have been pretty much 50MPG on the nose. Absolutely no oil or coolant used.

I really am staggered how comfortable this little van is on long runs like this. If we could get cruise control fitted that would really up the game. I was very much wishing for working AC on Monday though and despite applying sunscreen I have ended up with rather a significant case of trucker's elbow.



So what was I doing messing around doing a 1000 plus change trip on a ridiculously warm few days anyway?

Well you all know I've got a serious problem where old computing equipment is concerned. Sadly a friend has been working on clearing a family member's estate. Quite a lot of old tech was among that which I am very grateful for them offering to send my way as it has given me the opportunity to tick off a couple of wish list items.

The first of which was this. The main reason really for making the trip.



In there we have an Apple ][ Plus, a bitsa badged as a Europlus, and a matching Kaga branded green screen monitor.

I've been after one of these machines for a long while now for obvious reasons as someone with an interest in computing history, but have always baulked at the prices they usually command on the open market.

The top machine looks to be in really good shape and it certainly worked fine about 20 years ago, so hopefully once I've gone through and replaced a few capacitors in the power supply we'll have it up and running again.

The second machine is one that was built over a period of time from spare parts, though we don't know for certain it's condition beyond missing a keyboard. I do have two keyboards though so that isn't a huge issue. Hopefully I can get it going, but if not it should be a good source of spares for the other one at the very least.

Along with the machines themselves there was also a small mountain of floppy drives and probably a couple of hundred discs.



Two of the Apple drives definitely more or less worked when we last had the machine out, though I'm planning on them all needed a good going over and at the very least a good clean.

In the garage I knew there was a small stack of PCs waiting too.



In that stack there lies...

[] Compaq DeskPro 386S.
[] Compaq DeskPro 5100.
[] Packard Bell Club 40.
[] Dell Dimension 4000 and matching monitor.
[] Seikosha SL-90 printer.
[] Commodore MPS1230 printer (intended for use with a C64 as I understand it).

However this wasn't by any means the end of it as you can probably guess from the amount of kit that was crammed in the back of the Caddy. Here's what else ended up coming south with me.

[] Acorn Electron and the expansion unit. Both in box showing very little signs of ever being used.





That's quite nice to have given I've been a long term Acorn fan.

[] Atari 800XL.



I'd never even seen one of these up until a few days ago, will be nice to have lined up next to the ST.

[] Amstrad CPC464.





Again this shows very little sign of use...still had the introductory tape in the drive.



[] Brother Pro-Lectric 6213 electric typewriter.



[] Adler Tippa manual typewriter.



[] Ansafone Model 6A answering machine from the late 60s/early 70s.



[] A pair of portable B&W televisions.



[] Ferguson B&W TV.



[] Fidelity HF42 portable record player. Very cheap and nasty!



[] Samsung A10 laptop.



This thing is a bit painful to use being based on a single core AMD Duron. Might prove useful for automotive diagnostic software though.

[] An Ecko portable record player which I've kept forgetting to photograph.

Most things other than the older computers will be moved on, but much better I spend a bit of time to find them homes rather than winding up in the e-waste skip.

Should keep me out of trouble for a while! Hopefully start digging into the Apple kit at the weekend.

The plethora of computer gear though will definitely come in handy next year if I wind up running the retro computer and technology panel at Scotiacon. Fills in a couple of big gaps. A Sinclair QL, Vic-20, Commodore PET and a BBC Master probably make up the last couple of things on my wish list.

[Hell Razor5543]

I heard a rumour that the British Science Museum is considering asking if they could enter a partnership with you, as your IT display puts theirs to shame!

[Zelandeth]

I heard a rumour that the British Science Museum is considering asking if they could enter a partnership with you, as your IT display puts theirs to shame!

I'm going to need to borrow their storage space soon at this rate!

[Gibbo2286]

I heard a rumour that the British Science Museum is considering asking if they could enter a partnership with you, as your IT display puts theirs to shame!

I'm going to need to borrow their storage space soon at this rate!

I used to collect stuff but now at 87 years old I know when I 'snuff it' it will all end in a skip.