New to list -- Many Issues -- Many Parts Available.

[Tony Duell]

> 
> Hi List,
> 
> I've been a collector (and user) of obsolete computer systems for many 
> years. This list looks like a great source of information. Anyhow... 
> 
> Until our basement flooded a couple of weeks ago, I had:
> 
> IMSAI 8080 with NorthStar Disk, KSR33 Teletype and Lear-Siegler ADM3A Terminal
> A very strange home-built S-100 system
> Apple II plus with Pascal Language System
> Intel intellec 800 and MDS230 development systems
> Sun 3/160 Solaris (some version or other)
> HP64000 development systems with HP7912 disk
> HP9816 computer
> IBM PC and XT, 286, 386... (yeah, who cares)
> 
> One thing I have learned form this experience is that computers do 
> not, in general, swim well. Anyhow, I now have a whole lot of partially 

Actually, I think you may be pleasantly suprised. Water does little 
damage to computer hardware if it's not powered up at the time. If this 
happened to me, I'd take things apart (remove all pluggable chips too), 
wash the parts with distilled water, then with propan-2-ol. I would think 
most electronic stuff would be OK.

Mechanical stuff would need a full strip-down, clean and re-lubrication 
job, I think. But having rescued a DEC RK07 demountable hard disk that 
was flooped (when I got it, water was still sloshing around in the 
double-skinned part of the chassis that's used an a air duct), I think 
anything is possible. I bought that RK07 for things like the plastic 
front panel, switch buttons, etc, and hoped that perhaps some of the PCBs 
would have still-good parts on them. In the end, the whole thing was 
fine. 

I would not fancy repairing a winchester if the HDA had been flooded, though.

> useful computers, boards, documentation, software etc. 


> The IMSAI box and the terminal are ok, but the disk drive (an SA400, I 
> believe) and (worse) the box of floppies didn't make it. The drive might 
> be salvageable, but I'm afraid the diskettes are toast. Does anyone out

Have you tried carefully tearing open the seal on one side of the disk 
jacket and sliding the disk itself out. Then clean that with propan-2-ol 
and put it into a new jacket with one side slit open. You may find 
they're fine.
 
> As for the HP64000s, the consoles are ok, but the disk drive drowned. 
> From a quick search, I'm not real optimistic about finding another HPIB 
> disk drive and I'm not too excited about plunging into this one to try 
> and fix him (he was running when the waters came and he smells very 

What model of disk drive is it? I have some _real_ service data on 
certain HP drives, and we might at least be able to see if the PSU is OK, 
if it's not, if it's still repairable, and if the controller is OK.

-tony