Adrian "I can't believe it's freaking working!"... Adrian's viewers "He can always make it work" Thanks again Adrian for rescuing all these iconic computers.
I'm very glad you like the Haribos, Adrian! They're from the Netherlands. And to me, it's freakin' cool they fueled you while making this TRS-80 freakin' work!
Its supposed to be 2 chips. The weird looking bits are the legs of the chips!! Chips were special back then and they were telling everyone they can do chips! Its kind of ironic when a lot of your video was about the legs of the chips and you looked at the logo and thought the legs in the logo looked wrong!
16:46 _"Can that be 1987, seems kind of late?"_ Perhaps, but the company I worked for bought hundreds of 20 MHz Z80 processors from Zilog about two decades later (around 2007 or so). We used it as an embedded controller just as we did several times before, in the 80s and 90s. I think they are still made, to this day.
@@TheErador I don't know. To me, washing machines sounds more like Z8, 8051/48, 68hc11/08, PIC, TLCS-870, or even small 4-bit BCD machines like TLCS-47, or similar. But it's totally possible, of course. Our products were technical/scientific instrumentation in pretty small series. So cost per unit wasn't critical, only development time. And we already had people knowing the Z80 in and out, including me. Many routines and principles could be reused. (The Z80 here controlled a small graphical LCD display as well as buttons, knobs and serial interfaces. It also did the actual measuments along with floating point calculations of results and feedback adjustments.) I don't think it's all ARM. There are at least a couple of dozens microcontroller families still sold that are not (yet) ARM based. There are more to the world than the PC and mobile phone markets :)
Yep, the Sega Master System and Game Gear both used the Z80, and they were still being manufactured in the late 90s in Europe (The Master System is *still* being manufactured in Brazil, but I expect - but don't know for certain - that it's using a SoC rather than a discrete Z80)
You can clean the rust off of iron-containing pins and tin them with solder, then they'll be a lot less susceptible to rust. That is essentially tin/lead plating them. Great channel, holiday cheers!
And do use leaded solder. Nothing in that machine is RoHS compliant anyhow, and tin will act as a sacrificial anode so you don't want that to be the only or even the bulk metal in your new plating if you can help it.
Electroless tin plating solution would be a lot faster and just leave behind a thin layer of tin. I used to get it at Radio Shack to plate my homemade PCBs back in the early 90s.
Had the same thought. If they are so hard to find, maybe do a better job restoring them so they last longer. Then again, probably more content to be made if they do die and you need to make an adapter. 🤔😆
The Z80 is perfectly capable of disconnecting itself from the bus. BUSRQ and BUSAK are involved in that. The Z80 is designed to work with a plethora of support chips (DMA, CTC, SIO, PIO, etc) and no special interfacing is needed for it. Bringing BUSRQ low completely tri-states the address and data bus and halts the CPU.
Yeah, I was pretty sure this is how it works on the Z80. For completenss´sake: once the Z80 has finished tri-stating the buses, it then asserts the /BUSAK signal, so the other device can know it´s safe to take control of the buses.
@@AureliusR Well, a CPU disabling itself would essentially render it useless until you reset it. When a CPU is removed from the bus via tri-stating the bus and control lines, it can't read an instruction to wake it up again. If CPUs could tri-state themselves in software, a simple malicious hacker could simple send the CPU instruction to remove itself from the bus, then nothing could restore it. Tri-stating a CPU MUST be done with external hardware, otherwise, what's the point of removing the CPU from the bus?
@@AureliusR As long as BUSRQ is low, the Z80 is DISCONNECTED from the bus. All address, data and control lines are tri-stated. It has the same effect as unplugging the chip. I don't know what your defininition of "can't" is, but you're wrong. NO CPU has an instruction to tri-state itself from the bus. That would have the effect of locking up the system. The 6502 cannot tri-state, but the 6502C (the Sally Atari variant) has a HALT pin that tri-states it. The Z80 has BUSRQ, that tri-states it. Other CPUs have similar pins to "disconnect" the CPU from the bus by having a control pin that does it. Absolutely no CPU can tri-state itself. They all need an external control to do so. Some CPUs have a HALT instruction that essentially halts the program counter until an interrupt is received, but it's not a tri-state "disconnection". Now read all of that SLOWLY.
Sorry to be off-topic, but I just wanted to say that your repair videos and reviews are very much appreciated. I bought the Pinecil soldering iron based on your mail call video (checked a couple other reviews just to be certain of the purchase), and holy mackerel it's incredible. Thank you for showing off how it works, and thanks to the viewer that sent it in. I know I'm gonna get a LOT of mileage out of that iron over the next few years. And it's retro repair channels like yours that gave me the confidence to try repairing my own gear in the first place. THANK YOU!!!
This brings back a LOT of memories. I owned a Trs-80 Model I purchased Jan 1978. I then owned the full Mod I setup: Expansion Interface, Rs232-c, 48k memory, 4 disk drives, Line Printer VI, (numerical keypad added), lower-case graphics chip added. Then owned a Mod 4, with High-res graphics and 15 Meg external Hard Drive. I also worked on and repaired a Model II that had the expansion Drives cabinet of 3 drives. I used to write machine language for the Mod 4 and would translate programs from the Trs-80, IBM PC, and Apple IIC. Those were great computers. The Mod I lasted 21 years. Wished I kept it.
High Adrian it’s me again. I ran the cobra bbs up here in brantford Ontario. I ran the French connection. First of all I worked in a press shop and supported as a single parent of three kids during the day. The bbs ran on a TRS80 model 1. I bought the double density kit from radio shack. It came with a new version of dos. But I used newdos 80 v2. Awesome OS. Pdrive allows you to configure drives. Now to the point. I had tons of problems as it would skip bytes writing sectors. Took it in and they changed the z80 to a z80a. I had one of early ones.
Good to see a line of the TRS-80 family that in my opinion has been overlooked for too long. It seems everyone loves the Model 1, 3 and 4, but neglects the 2, 12, 16 range of business machines which are equally important in my opinion. Good to know you've resurrected an example from deaths door to live again.
I about cried when I saw that TC logo. A model III was my first computer at 4 years old, and I spent a lot of time in Tandy Center when my dad worked on weekends. You brought back a lot of memories just with that little logo.
To see a computer from the 70's that was left out in the elements for a long time. filled with leaves and spiders, and presumed deader then dead come back to life is totally fascinating! It goes to show that these machines are much more durable then originally believed. So cool! Can't wait for the next episode!
The zener on the video controller may be to bias the substrate. Older P-MOS tech ICs sometimes need (or work better) when the substrate is biased at some voltage. I would assume pin-1 is connected to the substrate. Cheers on getting progress on the TRS-80.
It's on my to-do list to buy a 2.5v Zener so I can restore that back to the way it was ... but yeah I have a feeling it's definitely some kind of negative bias thing as well.
Theres and informal internet rule that when the title of something is a yes/no question, the answer is always no. I was so excited to be wrong about at at 29min! This is awesome!
Man I’m so behind on all of these, but I just got RUclips premium so TIME TO CATCH UP. These help me sleep, cause I love the content, and Adrian just sounds so darn friendly and wholesome, it’s like having a friend explain retro computer repairs to you .
Congratulations! That is for sure an impressive repair. I'd even say heroic! Those corroded Fujitsu ICs need a little more treatment than a bit of Deoxid. I'd sand the corrosion away from the legs and then plate them with soldering tin. If the legs are brittle, solder them onto a machine pin socket to make them last the ages.
I saw this computer in Tron when I was a kid and immediately fell in love. I know that the trs-80 was thought of as a "crappy" computer and to be honest my parents bought a commodore for the family but I always kind of wanted one. I think that's why I have such a fascination with single board computers. 2nd time watching this this weekend just amazing.
Great job. A gold star for you. You should keep track of the vintage computers you revive and see which one is the oldest (by production date). Then you could see how far back you could go and keep pushing back to the earliest or oldest computer you can succesfully revive. You should ask your subscribers to send you the oldest machine they have that doesn't run and see how old a machine you could revive. Maybe someone has a non-working Altair.
Adrian gets so excited when this stuff works. Shows how many hours of blood, sweat, tears, and dead bug guts goes into recovering this stuff. That chip tester is freaking amazing!
Three days ago I build a replica Amiga 2000 and it was a sick puppy on first boot. yesterday I final got it working. It works it freaking works It's the best feeling in the world at that moment in time. Congratulations Adrian! You did a wonderful job.
Great video. Just discovered your channel. This brought back some great memories. The TRS80 was one of my favorite computers. Back when they were new I had several clients running their entire companies on them using software I designed and wrote entirely myself. Apps included payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable, order entry, inventory control, and raw materials management…oh, and a complete POS system.
Well... wouldn't have expected it not to work, given your methodical (and meticulous) troubleshooting and repair, as always. Great job, love your videos!
This "TRS-80" series has nothing to envy to many "Netflix" series. 😅 It has emotion and suspense, it's got arachnid invasion, and it promises an apotheosic happy ending. (Even more so). 🙂 Good job! 👌
Adrian, your sheer joy at about 38:35 made my day. I know following along and watching you get the thing going is satisfying, but it must be INCREDIBLY rewarding to see these machines come back to life after the much greater investment in time that you make. Thanks for continuing to share with us!
Adrian, EXCELLEN! It really takes a lot to kill a Model II. Unless you're certain, I wouldn't throw that Z-80A out. It could have been a bit of corrosion too. Your's is a first gen Model II. Over their life they upgraded the FDC, changed the power/reset switches, made board revisions and other improvements. As you know the II was retired to move to the short lived 12. The 12 became the 16 and the 16 to the 6000. They overlapped in some production or sales but that is their lineage. A very robust, if limited platform for what it was in the late 1970s and 80s. I started computing on one in 1981. Over the decades I've owned five of these IIs. Your bad CPU seems odd but possible. I've NEVER found one that had a bad processor or any bad ICs. Even a nasty corroded one I saved from the trunk of a crusher car was saved and worked with a little cleanup. As for their power supplies failing, YES! That is usually because of the caps. Replace any epoxy potted RIFA caps. They crack, take in moisture and will smoke worse than a speakeasy in the 1920's. Thank you for the great series. It's now time ...make it do stuff Tandy never thought of.
It's always amazing to see a computer recovery like this. But we should keep in mind how difficult this would have been if you would have gotten the computer in the 1980s or 1990s. It would have cost serious money to put together a workbench like yours, and to get your hands on the information that you used to troubleshoot. And those 8" floppies with 40 year old software... It's cool to live in the future.
For the "oxydized" pins on the chips, I found that fiberglass pens work like a treat. Just prepare for some good cleaning of the workspace or some painful "glass fiber extractions" from fingers and hands.
Spider balls and guts n things . Great job Adrian, I Used this Machine a bit growing up as I was born in 67 so by the late 70's these were all over , Liked and shared :) QC
Congrats! You did great on it. Now to get it fixed up and together and connected to the network through some serial to Ethernet converter and have it run a BBS on it.
This is just proof that they don't make 'em like they used to. Personally, I just had an i7 system go out on me about 6 weeks ago. After watching many retro tech videos recently, I was disappointed that a machine can be found in the back of someone's garage full of dirt, spiders, and crud, but I can't get a modern system to last more than a few years. It just shows how much more durable the old systems were.
Well done! How exciting! I recall peddrling to Radio Shack as a little kid to go spend hours programming on those back oh so long ago. Cannot wait to see it all back together and running something retro! How exciting to go with you on this journey. Awesome!
Great success !! as Borat might have said. I've been stuck in an Influenza meaning difficulties sleeping and I have used that time, sometimes in the middle of the night to watch the whole series on your YTS-80 Model II - Obviously I would have watched independently on me being sick (still have some difficulties, and not COVID) but this has been great "companion" for me. Keep up the good work Adrian!! Hi from Sweden.
Great Job! I owned a couple of model IIs, one with the disk expansion unit along with a model 12 & 16 w/1MB of RAM as well as a 5, 12 and 74 MB hard disks. It was a glorious din when doing sorts on the model II across the floppies in the expansion bay. The model 16 had a 5 port serial card and ran Xenix. It was a blast to log into five terminals and run the accounting and inventory control suite all at the same time. It also supported two printers which made some even more exciting noises. I really appreciate your patience and persistence towards getting this machine to work again. There's nothing like the sound of a model II booting from a floppy! Music to many of your viewers' ears, I'm sure!
Nice, congrats. I've got fond memories of hanging around the Tandy store around 1979. A very serious place with a lot of business oriented equipment. It was all like magic to me, very mysterious.
I do really wish these multi-part repairs had the part number in the title. It's really hard to go through and find the older videos if you've missed a few or just want to refresh on something.
I also came to say this. This was a great successful video. Really enjoyed it. But, Adrian jumped to a conclusion there. Some of us *love* the little CPUs; we don't want to give up on one - especially an original vintage one - without giving it a full chance. Please, Adrian, try plugging it back in after that DeOxit treatment and see if it is really dead or not.
The thing is, the address lines are outputs from the CPU, and as seen in the video, I had the scope probe on the CPU pins directly. The socket has nothing to do with what signals come out of the CPU package.
@@adriansdigitalbasement Unless perhaps there were voltage drops across the oxide at GND and Vcc. You know, the more current over a certain resistance, the larger the drop.
Star Trek will be your first game on here !!!! I loved TRS-80 Star Trek ! Got me interested in trig ! I’m so happy to see it running ! That’s when stuff was made well. Easy to fix. Mostly ! :)
IT FREAKING WORKS! Even though I've seen you perform miracles on this channel many times, this one seemed insurmountable. I can't believe that you got this machine to work. The expertise involved in diagnosing these issues and resolving them is really impressive.
I always wanted the Model II. My first computer was the Model I with FOUR K of memory! I still have it, and I assume it still works! Had some really bad keyboard bounce the last time I powered it on. GREAT video! I feel your excitement!
I never got to use a TRS-80 back in the day. That OS disk dates to about the time I first got to play with an Apple ][+. This machine was clearly far more advanced. It's quite an eye opener to learn more about it. Thanks a lot!
Great to see the system coming back like this after being left as mere junk. Well done with bringing it back, Adrian. As for the CRT brightness, I wonder if it'll improve a bit more over time since they can get a bit sleepy if left off for a long time. It seems to have decent brightness (as hinted by you commenting about turning it down on the first boot with the disk drive controller installed at 36'42"), so it might just need to wake up some more before committing to a tube swap.
This brought a huge smile to my face when I heard how happy you were that it 'freaking works'! Great to see your continued passion Adrian, keep up the great work!
Adrian, I just have to say you made my day :) I was so looking forward to your next video where you would be able to show us a working TRS 80 and now you have! Well done !
HI Great work, A tip I was tought was Taking blacked Transistors and IC's and put them in some Tarnoff , It seems the Black stuff grows wiskers to pins nearby on old equipment.
It goes to show, when you are looking for anything, don't just glance over, don't just quickly look, you need to dig in and actually search to find whatever it is you are looking for.
Thanks for sharing Adrian. Reminds me of getting my “got at” NES going. Only I had a false negative as I didn’t know the game I was using started with a black screen and faded in. It’s a great feeling.
First video I've seen of yours, it was on my recommendations, love it when people bring old tech back to life, i love doing it too but I'm a basic repairer, dont have an oscilloscope, just a multimeter and knowledge of what not to touch lol, gunna subscribe and go through your videos, great watch, thanks
Congratulations Adrian! It's been a wild ride, but was worth watching every second of this repair odyssey. Can't wait to see this beast fully repaired, back in its case. Do keep us updated what your future plans are with this glorious machine!
Fantastic work. I remember looking through the Radio Shack catalogs in the '80s and being slack-jawed at how expensive the Model II, Model 12, Model 16, and 6000 were. Made my Apple //s seem like bargains. Always wanted to do some software dev on these models.
Never power up or down with the diskette in the drive. The power "spike" can wipe data from the diskette. Wait for the "Insert Diskette" message before physically inserting the disk and closing the door. The video "sharpness" was never extremely sharp, this is analog not digital video {yes it is digital chips making the video but it still is analog}. Try adjusting the focus on the CRT monitor board. We had a breakout board that plugged into the bus and raised the card out of the cage to troubleshoot issues. Great job on the restoration!
hahaha great job, I worked for Radio Shack at the time this was sold. I remember it ran CPM and ran DB2 and proprietary full accounting software. it could be run as a multi company system, also it requires a 132 col line printer. (Good old green bar). It had a 4 bay 8 inch floppy available. I remember that running AR, AP, payroll, etc took lots of time
Cool to see you use a mirror when working on the back of the CRT. My uncle repaired TVs in the 60's and I inherited a bunch of his stuff. In the collection was a metal-framed mirror for seeing the CRT while he worked on TVs, and the frame had a socket? on the back to attach to one of those cheap metal music stands. Good memories! Oh, and I could do without the dead spider. O_O
It is so Awesome to see it working. Very cool to see it booting up. I hope there is another video showing it boots all the way with the keyboard. Another very good video!!
awesome! I work on vintage arcade machines (Pacman, centipede etc...) and find that many of the issues are related to pin corrosion and bad CPUs... just like what you encountered in this repair.
Music to my ears :”It works! It freakin’ works!!!” Great job Adrian, your persistence paid off once again. Thanks for showing us how it’s done.
spoiler alert!
@@shanemshort Anybody who's not been born yesterday knows if you read the comments before watching the video, that will most probably happen.
when this happens i tend to hear Colin Clive from the 1931 Frankenstein movie, "It's alive, it's ALIVE!!!" - Congratulations Adrian!
I like that. Another classic computer saved.
It's been a bit of a ride for this one.
Adrian "I can't believe it's freaking working!"... Adrian's viewers "He can always make it work" Thanks again Adrian for rescuing all these iconic computers.
I'm very glad you like the Haribos, Adrian! They're from the Netherlands. And to me, it's freakin' cool they fueled you while making this TRS-80 freakin' work!
Congrats.... well done. The Tandy Corp symbol is displaying 100% correctly, that's how that logo was done on the II.
Its supposed to be 2 chips. The weird looking bits are the legs of the chips!! Chips were special back then and they were telling everyone they can do chips! Its kind of ironic when a lot of your video was about the legs of the chips and you looked at the logo and thought the legs in the logo looked wrong!
@@jobliss3932 Haha yeah, they’re probably just a bit corroded. ;-) Maybe spray some DeOxit on the character ROMs and they’ll look more right.
16:46 _"Can that be 1987, seems kind of late?"_ Perhaps, but the company I worked for bought hundreds of 20 MHz Z80 processors from Zilog about two decades later (around 2007 or so). We used it as an embedded controller just as we did several times before, in the 80s and 90s. I think they are still made, to this day.
Weren't Z80s used in washing machines and the like up til fairly recently? I presume it's all ARM these days
@@TheErador I don't know. To me, washing machines sounds more like Z8, 8051/48, 68hc11/08, PIC, TLCS-870, or even small 4-bit BCD machines like TLCS-47, or similar. But it's totally possible, of course.
Our products were technical/scientific instrumentation in pretty small series. So cost per unit wasn't critical, only development time. And we already had people knowing the Z80 in and out, including me. Many routines and principles could be reused.
(The Z80 here controlled a small graphical LCD display as well as buttons, knobs and serial interfaces. It also did the actual measuments along with floating point calculations of results and feedback adjustments.)
I don't think it's all ARM. There are at least a couple of dozens microcontroller families still sold that are not (yet) ARM based. There are more to the world than the PC and mobile phone markets :)
Yep, the Sega Master System and Game Gear both used the Z80, and they were still being manufactured in the late 90s in Europe
(The Master System is *still* being manufactured in Brazil, but I expect - but don't know for certain - that it's using a SoC rather than a discrete Z80)
You can clean the rust off of iron-containing pins and tin them with solder, then they'll be a lot less susceptible to rust. That is essentially tin/lead plating them. Great channel, holiday cheers!
And do use leaded solder. Nothing in that machine is RoHS compliant anyhow, and tin will act as a sacrificial anode so you don't want that to be the only or even the bulk metal in your new plating if you can help it.
I was considering that idea too. Will the added thickness still allow the pins to fit in the socket though?
@@misterhat5823 If the excess is wicked away with copper braid, it shouldn't be a problem. We're talking a couple thousandths of an inch.
Electroless tin plating solution would be a lot faster and just leave behind a thin layer of tin. I used to get it at Radio Shack to plate my homemade PCBs back in the early 90s.
Had the same thought. If they are so hard to find, maybe do a better job restoring them so they last longer.
Then again, probably more content to be made if they do die and you need to make an adapter.
🤔😆
The Z80 is perfectly capable of disconnecting itself from the bus. BUSRQ and BUSAK are involved in that. The Z80 is designed to work with a plethora of support chips (DMA, CTC, SIO, PIO, etc) and no special interfacing is needed for it. Bringing BUSRQ low completely tri-states the address and data bus and halts the CPU.
Yeah, I was pretty sure this is how it works on the Z80. For completenss´sake: once the Z80 has finished tri-stating the buses, it then asserts the /BUSAK signal, so the other device can know it´s safe to take control of the buses.
The Z80 can't disconnect ITSELF from the bus though, which is what he meant. An external chip can do it, but there's no CPU instruction to do it.
@@AureliusR Well, a CPU disabling itself would essentially render it useless until you reset it. When a CPU is removed from the bus via tri-stating the bus and control lines, it can't read an instruction to wake it up again. If CPUs could tri-state themselves in software, a simple malicious hacker could simple send the CPU instruction to remove itself from the bus, then nothing could restore it.
Tri-stating a CPU MUST be done with external hardware, otherwise, what's the point of removing the CPU from the bus?
@@AureliusR As long as BUSRQ is low, the Z80 is DISCONNECTED from the bus. All address, data and control lines are tri-stated. It has the same effect as unplugging the chip. I don't know what your defininition of "can't" is, but you're wrong.
NO CPU has an instruction to tri-state itself from the bus. That would have the effect of locking up the system.
The 6502 cannot tri-state, but the 6502C (the Sally Atari variant) has a HALT pin that tri-states it. The Z80 has BUSRQ, that tri-states it. Other CPUs have similar pins to "disconnect" the CPU from the bus by having a control pin that does it. Absolutely no CPU can tri-state itself. They all need an external control to do so.
Some CPUs have a HALT instruction that essentially halts the program counter until an interrupt is received, but it's not a tri-state "disconnection".
Now read all of that SLOWLY.
Sorry to be off-topic, but I just wanted to say that your repair videos and reviews are very much appreciated. I bought the Pinecil soldering iron based on your mail call video (checked a couple other reviews just to be certain of the purchase), and holy mackerel it's incredible. Thank you for showing off how it works, and thanks to the viewer that sent it in. I know I'm gonna get a LOT of mileage out of that iron over the next few years. And it's retro repair channels like yours that gave me the confidence to try repairing my own gear in the first place. THANK YOU!!!
This brings back a LOT of memories. I owned a Trs-80 Model I purchased Jan 1978.
I then owned the full Mod I setup: Expansion Interface, Rs232-c, 48k memory, 4 disk drives, Line Printer VI, (numerical keypad added), lower-case graphics chip added.
Then owned a Mod 4, with High-res graphics and 15 Meg external Hard Drive.
I also worked on and repaired a Model II that had the expansion Drives cabinet of 3 drives.
I used to write machine language for the Mod 4 and would translate programs from the Trs-80, IBM PC, and Apple IIC.
Those were great computers.
The Mod I lasted 21 years. Wished I kept it.
That towel has become such a classic Adrian’s Digital Basement staple! Love it’s retro look! 😆
High Adrian it’s me again. I ran the cobra bbs up here in brantford Ontario. I ran the French connection. First of all I worked in a press shop and supported as a single parent of three kids during the day. The bbs ran on a TRS80 model 1. I bought the double density kit from radio shack. It came with a new version of dos. But I used newdos 80 v2. Awesome OS. Pdrive allows you to configure drives. Now to the point. I had tons of problems as it would skip bytes writing sectors. Took it in and they changed the z80 to a z80a. I had one of early ones.
Good to see a line of the TRS-80 family that in my opinion has been overlooked for too long. It seems everyone loves the Model 1, 3 and 4, but neglects the 2, 12, 16 range of business machines which are equally important in my opinion. Good to know you've resurrected an example from deaths door to live again.
I about cried when I saw that TC logo. A model III was my first computer at 4 years old, and I spent a lot of time in Tandy Center when my dad worked on weekends. You brought back a lot of memories just with that little logo.
To see a computer from the 70's that was left out in the elements for a long time. filled with leaves and spiders, and presumed deader then dead come back to life is totally fascinating! It goes to show that these machines are much more durable then originally believed. So cool! Can't wait for the next episode!
The zener on the video controller may be to bias the substrate.
Older P-MOS tech ICs sometimes need (or work better) when the substrate is biased at some voltage. I would assume pin-1 is connected to the substrate.
Cheers on getting progress on the TRS-80.
You mean disk controller.
It's on my to-do list to buy a 2.5v Zener so I can restore that back to the way it was ... but yeah I have a feeling it's definitely some kind of negative bias thing as well.
@@danman32 yes, I meant the disk controller chip. Small mental derp on my part.
Theres and informal internet rule that when the title of something is a yes/no question, the answer is always no. I was so excited to be wrong about at at 29min! This is awesome!
I spent a lot of time on a friend's Model II and taught myself BASIC programming. Was very cool to see this come back to life.
The spider removal was a nice touch. So glad to see such an old computer brought back to life. I remember learning on one of those back in school.
"It freaking works!" Those words will always be music to my ears when watching a video of yours.
Man I’m so behind on all of these, but I just got RUclips premium so TIME
TO CATCH UP.
These help me sleep, cause I love the content, and Adrian just sounds so darn friendly and wholesome, it’s like having a friend explain retro computer repairs to you .
Congratulations! That is for sure an impressive repair. I'd even say heroic!
Those corroded Fujitsu ICs need a little more treatment than a bit of Deoxid. I'd sand the corrosion away from the legs and then plate them with soldering tin. If the legs are brittle, solder them onto a machine pin socket to make them last the ages.
Congratulations on getting this old beast working. The Tandy Model II/12/16 family is dear to my heart, and now another one is working!
Congratulations Adrian! I’m very happy to see this machine up and running again. Absolutely amazing.
Grats! I remember learning on these things about 1981-82 Great seeing these boot again.
I saw this computer in Tron when I was a kid and immediately fell in love. I know that the trs-80 was thought of as a "crappy" computer and to be honest my parents bought a commodore for the family but I always kind of wanted one. I think that's why I have such a fascination with single board computers. 2nd time watching this this weekend just amazing.
Your reaction is so much fun to witness Adrian! Congratulations on getting it working! Amazing!
Great job. A gold star for you. You should keep track of the vintage computers you revive and see which one is the oldest (by production date). Then you could see how far back you could go and keep pushing back to the earliest or oldest computer you can succesfully revive. You should ask your subscribers to send you the oldest machine they have that doesn't run and see how old a machine you could revive. Maybe someone has a non-working Altair.
Can't wait for the CRT Rejuvination episode! Amazing work, I love seeing old tech get revived, especially the left-for-dead machines.
Adrian gets so excited when this stuff works. Shows how many hours of blood, sweat, tears, and dead bug guts goes into recovering this stuff.
That chip tester is freaking amazing!
Three days ago I build a replica Amiga 2000 and it was a sick puppy on first boot. yesterday I final got it working. It works it freaking works It's the best feeling in the world at that moment in time. Congratulations Adrian! You did a wonderful job.
Great video. Just discovered your channel. This brought back some great memories. The TRS80 was one of my favorite computers. Back when they were new I had several clients running their entire companies on them using software I designed and wrote entirely myself. Apps included payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable, order entry, inventory control, and raw materials management…oh, and a complete POS system.
Well... wouldn't have expected it not to work, given your methodical (and meticulous) troubleshooting and repair, as always. Great job, love your videos!
Loved the bit about misplacing a board 'coz they're all in silver anti-static bags. That describes our workshop.
Best thing about this channel is Adrian's enthusiasm! Thanks.
This "TRS-80" series has nothing to envy to many "Netflix" series. 😅
It has emotion and suspense, it's got arachnid invasion, and it promises an apotheosic happy ending. (Even more so). 🙂
Good job! 👌
It's not repair, it's resurrection literally. Respect for knowledge and patience.
Adrian, your sheer joy at about 38:35 made my day. I know following along and watching you get the thing going is satisfying, but it must be INCREDIBLY rewarding to see these machines come back to life after the much greater investment in time that you make. Thanks for continuing to share with us!
Adrian, EXCELLEN! It really takes a lot to kill a Model II. Unless you're certain, I wouldn't throw that Z-80A out. It could have been a bit of corrosion too. Your's is a first gen Model II. Over their life they upgraded the FDC, changed the power/reset switches, made board revisions and other improvements. As you know the II was retired to move to the short lived 12. The 12 became the 16 and the 16 to the 6000. They overlapped in some production or sales but that is their lineage. A very robust, if limited platform for what it was in the late 1970s and 80s. I started computing on one in 1981. Over the decades I've owned five of these IIs. Your bad CPU seems odd but possible. I've NEVER found one that had a bad processor or any bad ICs. Even a nasty corroded one I saved from the trunk of a crusher car was saved and worked with a little cleanup. As for their power supplies failing, YES! That is usually because of the caps. Replace any epoxy potted RIFA caps. They crack, take in moisture and will smoke worse than a speakeasy in the 1920's.
Thank you for the great series. It's now time ...make it do stuff Tandy never thought of.
"It freaking works" Adrian said the thing and now everyone is happy
It's always amazing to see a computer recovery like this. But we should keep in mind how difficult this would have been if you would have gotten the computer in the 1980s or 1990s. It would have cost serious money to put together a workbench like yours, and to get your hands on the information that you used to troubleshoot. And those 8" floppies with 40 year old software...
It's cool to live in the future.
For the "oxydized" pins on the chips, I found that fiberglass pens work like a treat. Just prepare for some good cleaning of the workspace or some painful "glass fiber extractions" from fingers and hands.
I wonder if the blue part of erasers would work while a little softer. Maybe that's actually what they were made for?
Spider balls and guts n things . Great job Adrian, I Used this Machine a bit growing up as I was born in 67 so by the late 70's these were all over , Liked and shared :) QC
Congrats! You did great on it.
Now to get it fixed up and together and connected to the network through some serial to Ethernet converter and have it run a BBS on it.
I enjoy your enthusiasm when something fires up!
This is just proof that they don't make 'em like they used to.
Personally, I just had an i7 system go out on me about 6 weeks ago. After watching many retro tech videos recently, I was disappointed that a machine can be found in the back of someone's garage full of dirt, spiders, and crud, but I can't get a modern system to last more than a few years. It just shows how much more durable the old systems were.
Your troubleshooting approach is so satisfing, Adrian.
You look so proud of yourself at the end of the video, and so you should be.
Well done! This was a high level geek project, and you rocked it.
That machine is a survivor and you are a persistent. Thank you so much. I've enjoyed a lot with this series.
Well done! How exciting! I recall peddrling to Radio Shack as a little kid to go spend hours programming on those back oh so long ago. Cannot wait to see it all back together and running something retro! How exciting to go with you on this journey. Awesome!
That's awesome Adrian!!! I was cheering along with you when it booted! Congrats!!!
Great success !! as Borat might have said. I've been stuck in an Influenza meaning difficulties sleeping and I have used that time, sometimes in the middle of the night to watch the whole series on your YTS-80 Model II - Obviously I would have watched independently on me being sick (still have some difficulties, and not COVID) but this has been great "companion" for me. Keep up the good work Adrian!! Hi from Sweden.
Great Job! I owned a couple of model IIs, one with the disk expansion unit along with a model 12 & 16 w/1MB of RAM as well as a 5, 12 and 74 MB hard disks. It was a glorious din when doing sorts on the model II across the floppies in the expansion bay. The model 16 had a 5 port serial card and ran Xenix. It was a blast to log into five terminals and run the accounting and inventory control suite all at the same time. It also supported two printers which made some even more exciting noises.
I really appreciate your patience and persistence towards getting this machine to work again. There's nothing like the sound of a model II booting from a floppy! Music to many of your viewers' ears, I'm sure!
Glad to see you're working all the "bugs" out of this machine!
Nice, congrats. I've got fond memories of hanging around the Tandy store around 1979. A very serious place with a lot of business oriented equipment. It was all like magic to me, very mysterious.
I do really wish these multi-part repairs had the part number in the title. It's really hard to go through and find the older videos if you've missed a few or just want to refresh on something.
Cant wait to see more of this TRS 80. I wasnt expecting it to work but you did an amazing job Adrian.
You are the man! Outstanding work bringing that beast back to life. Thank you for sharing.
Just a thought - when you swapped Z80s, you also applied some DeOxit to the socket, so you might want to give the original Z80 another try.
Agreed. Corrosion/oxidation on the pins may have fouled the original signal on Pin 3.
Came to the comments to say this - definitely worth another go
I also came to say this. This was a great successful video. Really enjoyed it. But, Adrian jumped to a conclusion there. Some of us *love* the little CPUs; we don't want to give up on one - especially an original vintage one - without giving it a full chance. Please, Adrian, try plugging it back in after that DeOxit treatment and see if it is really dead or not.
The thing is, the address lines are outputs from the CPU, and as seen in the video, I had the scope probe on the CPU pins directly. The socket has nothing to do with what signals come out of the CPU package.
@@adriansdigitalbasement Unless perhaps there were voltage drops across the oxide at GND and Vcc. You know, the more current over a certain resistance, the larger the drop.
Star Trek will be your first game on here !!!! I loved TRS-80 Star Trek ! Got me interested in trig !
I’m so happy to see it running ! That’s when stuff was made well. Easy to fix. Mostly ! :)
IT FREAKING WORKS! Even though I've seen you perform miracles on this channel many times, this one seemed insurmountable. I can't believe that you got this machine to work. The expertise involved in diagnosing these issues and resolving them is really impressive.
I love when you react that well when it finally works... First Model II I've seen video of working
This is one of the most satisfying video I have watched in a long time, and its for a TRS-80 Model II. Wow!
I always wanted the Model II. My first computer was the Model I with FOUR K of memory! I still have it, and I assume it still works! Had some really bad keyboard bounce the last time I powered it on. GREAT video! I feel your excitement!
Amazing! Such a great journey for the TRS80! This series from part one to now has been your feature length Ben-Hur!
Incredible! I really thought this computer was beyond saving. What a thrill!
Those circuit drawings look hand drawn. I love that!!
I do have to say after many many years of code and hw, well done Adrian. A freaking well done. 😊
Almost expected Ode To Joy to start playing when it finally booted. Congratulations on the awesome work.
I never got to use a TRS-80 back in the day. That OS disk dates to about the time I first got to play with an Apple ][+. This machine was clearly far more advanced. It's quite an eye opener to learn more about it. Thanks a lot!
The joy of seeing it work. That feeling takes me back to when stuff I do works. After all the frustration it feels so great!
Congratulations!!!! I'm so excited to see the TRS-80 come back to life, Good job Adrian!! your amazing!!
I truly enjoyed every bit of this series! Its like I am included and in the room with you! such an amazing story this
Great to see the system coming back like this after being left as mere junk. Well done with bringing it back, Adrian.
As for the CRT brightness, I wonder if it'll improve a bit more over time since they can get a bit sleepy if left off for a long time. It seems to have decent brightness (as hinted by you commenting about turning it down on the first boot with the disk drive controller installed at 36'42"), so it might just need to wake up some more before committing to a tube swap.
This brought a huge smile to my face when I heard how happy you were that it 'freaking works'! Great to see your continued passion Adrian, keep up the great work!
The amount of knowledge you have and used to make this old donkey freakin' work is just unbelievable :D It was my pleasure to watch. Thanks.
Adrian, I just have to say you made my day :) I was so looking forward to your next video where you would be able to show us a working TRS 80 and now you have!
Well done !
HI Great work, A tip I was tought was Taking blacked Transistors and IC's and put them in some Tarnoff , It seems the Black stuff grows wiskers to pins nearby on old equipment.
Isn’t that the best feeling when a hunch proves correct and something starts right up after a simple fix?
I've covered the whole circuit board many years ago on a c64 with silicon seal on both sides. No issues still working fine.
It goes to show, when you are looking for anything, don't just glance over, don't just quickly look, you need to dig in and actually search to find whatever it is you are looking for.
Thanks for sharing Adrian. Reminds me of getting my “got at” NES going. Only I had a false negative as I didn’t know the game I was using started with a black screen and faded in. It’s a great feeling.
First video I've seen of yours, it was on my recommendations, love it when people bring old tech back to life, i love doing it too but I'm a basic repairer, dont have an oscilloscope, just a multimeter and knowledge of what not to touch lol, gunna subscribe and go through your videos, great watch, thanks
Congratulations Adrian! It's been a wild ride, but was worth watching every second of this repair odyssey. Can't wait to see this beast fully repaired, back in its case. Do keep us updated what your future plans are with this glorious machine!
So cool you finally got it working Adrian! Very fantastic work, respect!! Michael....
Fantastic work. I remember looking through the Radio Shack catalogs in the '80s and being slack-jawed at how expensive the Model II, Model 12, Model 16, and 6000 were. Made my Apple //s seem like bargains. Always wanted to do some software dev on these models.
Double thumbs up!! Especially for your diagnostic method on the dead CPU. It's great that that Model II is powering up AND booting.
Never power up or down with the diskette in the drive. The power "spike" can wipe data from the diskette. Wait for the "Insert Diskette" message before physically inserting the disk and closing the door. The video "sharpness" was never extremely sharp, this is analog not digital video {yes it is digital chips making the video but it still is analog}. Try adjusting the focus on the CRT monitor board. We had a breakout board that plugged into the bus and raised the card out of the cage to troubleshoot issues. Great job on the restoration!
Your excitement when something comes to life is something I always look forward to! Great job Adrian!
I am so bloody thrilled for you! I've never seen anything so beautiful.
Congratulations, it's always wonderful when hard work pays off.
Just remember, everything you look for is always in the last place you look ;-) Great job getting this going!
hahaha great job, I worked for Radio Shack at the time this was sold. I remember it ran CPM and ran DB2 and proprietary full accounting software. it could be run as a multi company system, also it requires a 132 col line printer. (Good old green bar). It had a 4 bay 8 inch floppy available. I remember that running AR, AP, payroll, etc took lots of time
Love your enthusiasm when it starts working. Congrats on another successful repair!
Cool to see you use a mirror when working on the back of the CRT. My uncle repaired TVs in the 60's and I inherited a bunch of his stuff. In the collection was a metal-framed mirror for seeing the CRT while he worked on TVs, and the frame had a socket? on the back to attach to one of those cheap metal music stands. Good memories! Oh, and I could do without the dead spider. O_O
It is so Awesome to see it working. Very cool to see it booting up. I hope there is another video showing it boots all the way with the keyboard. Another very good video!!
Nice to see that chip tester being put to use immediately!
Adrian's computer voodoo magic prevails once again! Great job and patience Adrian
Great job! Congrats! Isn't that the best moment, when you have worked on something for hours or days or weeks and all of a sudden it works. LOVE iT!
awesome! I work on vintage arcade machines (Pacman, centipede etc...) and find that many of the issues are related to pin corrosion and bad CPUs... just like what you encountered in this repair.
I’m so pleased for you! Another historical gem saved!