Sick 380Z

I spent this evening rearranging the junk^H^H^H^Hcomputers stuff in my loft so as to retrieve the RML 380Z which was languishing under a pile of BBC micros, DEC and Sun Type 4 keyboards.

Anyway, after a couple of hours I managed to get it down and onto my workbench along with an old composite green-screen monitor. I had to lash up a monitor cable as I don’t have a BNC to phono adaptor.

So, I plugged it all in, turned the key switch…. The RESET/POWER light came on, and the monitor program came up on the display, then almost immediately there was a pop and a crackle and a wiffy smell which came from the area of the floppy disk drives. Oh dear.

The A drive seems totally dead. The B drive spins but won’t read disks, the monitor says “DRIVE NOT READY” I’m guessing that a capacitor on the A drive went foom and has probably taken out either bits of B drive and/or bits of the floppy controller board.

Anyway, I’ve offered the whole kit and caboodle to this Nick Ryman-Tubb who contacted me a few weeks ago. He’ll have to collect it as it would be uneconomical to ship it.

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