New Toy

Have had the composer unit running, had to change the cooling fan as the bearings were well shot, but it all powers up OK and the ROM and system checks that were provided all show OK.

We have a manual....

One thing I have managed to sort out today (thanks to John S and Andrew Mawson) is that the damaged tape drive was also used on Denford Triac and Orac machines, albeit in possibly two formats, Micro and Mini-cassette (Japanese and Philips versions) neither of which fit the other!

Andrew gave me some contact details for a chap up north, and I have put an advert on Chris Heapy's excellent site (well done, Chris!) for a replacement tape deck.

At present, we can use the existing deck on the composer and transfer it to the control console and transfer stuff that way, or we can use RS-232 cabling for certain items, but not all. There is some limitation on what you can transfer across by cable for some reason.

So, if anyone has a Denford tape deck that they would like to exchange for a reasonably substatial amount of folding stuff (no beer tokens here!) please let me know.

The machinery looks to be in excellent nick, and was serviced annually by the makers up until the time it was taken out of use.

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

Pictures of the old cassette units are at:

for example:

Looks like a little bit of wear on the head under that rust :-)

Mark Rand RTFM

I don't think it's rust, it looks more like the tape oxide that has got into the worn surface.

Peter

As far as I am aware, most tapes are ferric (or ferrous) oxide. Isn't rust the same? I always thought it was.

Regards, Dave.