Can anyone help?

@eruptionchaser You didn’t see the state of my first one before I started working on it, though at least rodents hadn’t lived in it 😆

@DavidCWG I used one for a phone in the late 90s too, dialling with the keypad was much better than an actual phone.

@musicandwords 154 words, though I did manage to get *some* filth out of it. Went on to become the star of the National Lottery in the 90s.

@cantanko Beware the hidden RIFA smoke generator in the monitor housing.

@HancocksHalf @ZxSpectROM Yup. The Teledrive contained 64K RAM and a Z80 as well as the twin floppies. I’ve got pics of the bones of one somewhere…

@HancocksHalf @ZxSpectROM It was. STC’s version of ICL ruggedised the Microdrives and made them more reliable, and the QL chipset made it easy to have the instant software portfolio available which was transferred into ROM like the CST THOR did.

@therealjpster Sorry, Lisa2 when Apple dumped the Twiggys in favour of Sony’s new little micro marvel. ’84-ish.

@therealjpster Remember the 3.5” microfloppy was introduced at the same time as the Apple Lisa in 1983 so by ’86 it was well established.

@therealjpster Bog standard 3.5” floppies, one of which has Wordstar on it. Can’t have a CP/M machine without Wordstar running.

@forelioned Definitely went out with a bang.

@fredrobot One of my first jobs was operating a twin node 2966 which had just replaced the 1900 I used to dial into from school a couple of years before. Fun times!

@ukscone All-in-1 (or ‘all in pieces’) was DEC’s office offering for VAXen. The software for OPDs was Xchange as per the QL.

Today’s random pic is my ICL One-Per-Desk from 1986, the logical followup to 1983’s STC Executel 3910. In 1985 STC bought ICL and the Executel’s project manager also worked on this. Here it’s hooked up to a PCML Teledrive allowing it to run CPM 3.0.

@jon_schneider Smelly indoor fireworks, excellent.

@HereBeDragons3 @computermuseum “Has someone’s Sharp just gone off?”

RIFA PME271 delayed smoke generator fans! I remembered I’d said on the next fine day I’d explode one in slo-mo. Turns out it explodes so quickly that slo-mo on the camera isn’t slo enough. Still, enjoy! Oh, for some reason it’s portrait 🤷🏻‍♂️ #tweetsYouCanSmell

@froggersw Is that a transmitter valve? Looks impressive.

@anachrocomputer Indeed. For double confusion the PSU is mounted upside down so that label was hidden on the ‘bottom’. Thanks, positron engineer!

#positronJapes That PSU did NOT want to come apart. Awful case aside though it looks fine inside. It’s only 5V 10A though so I think I’ll sideline it and fit something more modern.

#positronJapes while trying to ID the mystery DIP-22 I noticed teethmarks on the decoupling caps down the right of the board. Thank flock that’s all the little fluffy gits had a chew on!

#positronJapes can anyone spot what’s wrong with this (curiously) Milspec PSU? Also, it’s an ASTEC and therefore will contain Magic Smoke Generators. Unless they weren’t used in Milspec supplies...

@Lord_Arse Whatever you do, don’t drop it. I did that to mine and it stopped working. Many years later this led me down a LED watch rabbit hole resulting in me learning far more than I ever needed to know. Mine needs a new crystal.

#positronJapes Some good news. The boards are rust free but I’m getting ‘mouse house’ vibes from the case. Not found any poo though. Time to take it outside for a blast. Pic 2 is the CPU, honest.

@Lord_Arse @CommodoreBlog I’ve just done a search for the Grandstand SD070 cartridge pong that he also starred on and there’s only 2 crap pictures of the box! Must dig mine out and put that to rights. The pic I have on Binarysaurs is 20 years old and sized for dialup 😆 (oho, WOW!RARE!L@@K obvs)

@CommodoreBlog They obviously got someone to draw our Kev who’d never seen him before.

@geoff_suniga Yup. Seemingly all the machines I used at college BITD used this, from the ICL DRS20 workstations (with that lovely clacky keyboard) to these, we had Sirius1’s to use as terminals onto the PDP11/44s.

@geoff_suniga My favourite screen phosphor, always been a fan of it right from the beginning.

@ComputerLove_ @adafruit Ah, the famous Mog Modular.

@bowdie @smay4finger Note to self: read description instead of just looking at the photos 😆

@bowdie @smay4finger Oh nice! I wonder what the 3 flipflops were for given that the rest looks like a serial/parallel board.

@HancocksHalf @ZxSpectROM @Devilish_Design So would I, I might not be able to fix it without one.

@loudscotsbloke It’ll keep your right hand warm if nothing else.

@ianparr @Devilish_Design 2nd processor 😆

@Devilish_Design I know you’re not on faceborg but I’ve just put a load of pics up there and it’s public, or should be.

@biglesp Happy birthday! I hope your cake is in 8 bits.

@Devilish_Design Ta. ’Tis a pity the lad who had it got it out of a damp shed clearance, I didn’t dare ask him if there were some unremarkable rectangular boxes also with it that got binned - this one still had the IEEE cable on.

Yay! Over 3k followers today \o/ 🎉🎉 I said I’d do something special so I did. May I present the 1982 Positron 9000 from Newton-Le-Willows, UK. These ARE rare so thanks to @Devilish_Design for tipping me off originally 😁 Revel in its multiuser OS9 Viewdata goodness. And size.

@TheGavNinja @thilographie_de Following this, I need a new NC switch for my Tandata PA, but one with actual round pins rather than the spade legs as seems common these days.

@drkninja2k5 Sounds familiar. I did that cleaning my A500+ expansion pins before writing that machine off too and putting its good bits in my original A500. Still got it though, just in case.

@bowdie Oh awesome, thanks very much! I’ll DM you.

@bowdie It would be interesting to see how much is required to get this one going again. When I saw what the battery had done I all but wrote it off.

@drkninja2k5 I’ve not seen that particular one before though.

Today’s pic is yet another example of what happens when VARTAs go rogue. This is the keyboard connector of my Schneider EuroPC that worked when I got it, sadly not 20 years later when bits of it literally fell off :/

@geoff_suniga That was quick! Splendid, let me know how you get on with them.