Re: How to care for an old computer?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Michael Black wrote:

>Michael J. Mahon (mjmahon@aol.com) writes:
>> 
>> Power supplies are certainly the most likely things to fail, but they
>> are easily replaceable, since more modern equivalents will always
>> exist that could easily fit within the original box if desired.  And,
>> old ones can be repaired, too.
>> 
>It is easy to replace the function of a power supply, and even
>many of the parts inside will be replaceable.

Agreed.

>I'd be most worried about the floppy drives.  Being mechanical,
>they actually have something to wear out.  I've never had one fail
>on me, but over the years I've taken in many old computers and there
>have been drives that didn't work.  To compound this problem, the
>Apple drives were not standard, so there is a smaller pool to pull 
>replacements from. 

But the mechanical parts, which are the ones likely to wear, are
standard, and pretty easy to replace (motor, belts, disk doors).

The mechanics of a 5.25" drive of the SA390/SA400 vintage
are really very simple, and are both reliable and easy to maintain
or repair, if there is any need to.  There is such a glut of 5.25"
Apple drives at the moment, that there is no reason to spend
much time fixing them.

Further down the road, most 5.25" disks will have taken up
residence on CD-ROMs and hard drives, with the only holdouts
being the heavily copy-protected disks that no one has taken
the time to deprotect.  (Of course, no one can admit to doing
deprotection in these dark DMCA days.  ;-)

In the end, we'll have .wav files of the charming sounds that
these little drives made to accompany our emulator "disk
accesses".

-michael

Check out amazing quality sound for 8-bit Apples on my
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/