State of the Ark - Projects

	This page covers the systems I'm currently working on, some times this will only involve cleaning and testing but often there are parts that need repairs. I'm starting to take pictures of systems before and during working on them as often this is one of the few times I'll get the cases off and pull them apart enough to get good pictures of the internals. I'll post these on this page and at some point will migrate some of these to the collection pages.



	Apple LC II Webserver (Started 01-03-2006) (Completed 01-04-2006)	\| Top \|
	Looking for a low cost, low power webserver I looked at turning an unused Apple Mac LC II I had lying around into a web server. This project turned out to be somewhat of a learning experiance for me however it has been completed sucessfully and I now have a working Mac webserver. For those of you interested in how to do this I'm putting together some instructions that I hope to have posted shortly.

	Sega SC3000H (Started 14-01-2005)	\| Top \|
	Donated to my collection a while back I was only able to test this out after getting another SC3000H with a known working PSU. After finding it wouldn't power up I opened it up to discover that the solder joins between the power switch and the motherboard and come apart. In the end the fix was fairly simple, I heated the existing solder on the pins and joined them together again. After doing this the Sega SC3000H started up fine. As I also have another Sega SC3000 with the same problem I suspect that this issue could be common with these computers, it would seem to happen because of the way the power switch is connected to the motherboard. Any movement of the switch, which is going to happen with a power switch will eventually weaken the solder joins to the point where they break apart.

	ACT Apricot Xi	\| Top \|
	Purchased from an online auction site, this ACT Apricot Xi is working but requires some repairs to the keyboard. Specifically, new silver contacts for some keys where the original has come unstuck and been lost, and a number of replacement springs for the keys. My thoughts on repairing this are that I may be able to salvage the needed parts from another older generic keyboard, however tracking down one of these isn't easy. There was a time where I had boxes of old XT keyboards lying around but now they're pretty hard to find.

	Atari 130XE (Completed 26-09-2004)	\| Top \|
	I found this Atari 130XE on the side of the road in August 2002, unfortunately it was raining at the time and this unit had seemed to have gotten more than a little wet. Not been one to pass up a chance to get another computer I picked it up. I stripped it down to dry it off as soon as I could and on doing so found it wasn't all that wet on the inside. The casing and keyboard I washed in a mild dish washing solution and left to dry. The motherboard being reasonably clean but a little wet I just left out to dry for a couple of months. I've recently reassembled this and will test it out when I'm able to track down a suitable power supply unit. Update 26-09-2004 - I've been able to test this out using the PSU from my Atari XEGS and to my surprise have found it still works. I've successfully played Lode Runner from cartridge, but won't be able to test out the driver interface until I pull some more of my Atari gear from storage.