Xerox Alto Restoration Part 1 - power supply restoration, disk drive surprise
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- We begin our very gentle and progressive power up of the seminal Xerox Alto. No magic smoke, but one power supply is faulty. Opening it up reveals that it had a tough life, having suffered a catastrophic short of some sort, hastily repaired, and some traces almost entirely corroded through. But the source of the malfunction seems to be a somewhat classic case of bad electrolytic capacitors, way too far gone for any hope of reforming. After replacing them and repairing the supply, we turn our attention to the Diablo disc drive and cartridge, and have a bit of a surprise.
Many thanks to my CHM restorers colleagues Ron Crane, Ken Shirriff, Carl Claunch and Luca Severini.
See previous video introducing this historically significant machine:
• Seminal Xerox Alto arr...
For much more details and references, see Ken Shirriff's blog entry corresponding to this video here:
www.righto.com/...
Wow, what a legendary machine. Great to see one getting some well-deserved attention!
I found this video because I just watched your "Strangest Computer Designs of the '70s" video, and here you are.
I knew I would find you around here on this channel at one point or another!
I have little electronics knowledge but watching a group of people trying to bring a classic machine back to life brings me great joy. I loved every second of it and looking forward to watching part 2 in a few minutes.
Why did i just find out about this channel?
This is exactly the kind of projects i like to see!
"Lets restore an 80's transistor Pioneer AM receiver" just doesn't cut it anymore. Meh did that when i was 12
As a fellow vintage computer enthusiast, I have really enjoyed watching you and your teams work through each of the challenges encountered and the processes used to overcome them.
I am so happy to discover your channel.
I was not born when theses computer ruled the world, but they always fascinated me.
You deserve a lot more views and subscriptions.
In disassembling those power supply modules, I'll bet these guys took *A LOT* of reference photos!
Oh man I just found this series! Can't wait to watch all of it!
one of the most fascinating channels on TH-cam.
the alto is so so sophisticated, its monterous but i think its aged really well all things considered
That power supply reminds me of what I used to see in old video games in the early 1980s like Pac Man.
Absolutely amazing!! Good job!! The computer Apple and Steve Jobs owe EVERYTHING to.
Not just Apple, but really all modern personal computers with mice and GUIs.
@@r7calvin yeah, you're right. Too bad Xerox executives never saw the potential of their machine.
The "Mercedes SL300 Gullwing" of Computers.
What is the disc storge capacity of those things? O.o
They mentioned it in the "unboxing" video: 2.5 MB
Those 30 year old fans look surprisingly modern.
Is that one of those inexpensive Chinese made variacs? ;)
NICE.
It's still a long way to go I assume, but I wonder if you'll discover something new (or rather old and forgotten, heh) on those platters when you get to them :)
this is amazing !!!!
And what a great fan base you have. 15.000 views and not a single troll leaving thumbs down.
I really appreciate and enjoy your restoration videos on the Alto. Look forward to seeing more :-)
Cool! Can't wait when you actually boot it up and get the GUI running. I don't think I've seen any videos (only pics) of people using the GUI to do word processing, etc.
I have that same shirt, the computer history museum floppy disk one.
Brings back fond old memories of my grandfather fixing old radios in his workshop some 30+ years ago.
Great to see people working on restoring such an important machine. I do have a question. Why not replace all three big can capacitors in the failing power supply? You showed two where as good as dead, the third one was fine (at low testing voltage). But who knows for how long. It might start failing anytime and ruin the machine.
I agree too.
Thx for shortening my day to seconds! And a 10 for the acrobatics.
I think you also should replace the good capacitor on the first power supply because it's very luckily to fail due to its age and that might damage some othe components on the rest of the system.