Ferrix97
Well-known member
(not sure if this the right place to post this, technically it's a conquest + repair)
Sometimes I go on eBay and search for "Crazy expensive Hard to find Items", such as the Apple TechStep.
As always, there were just a few units on sale, but one of them caught my eye: It was listed at 99$ AS-IS without bag or manuals, but with two ROM packs.
...and 130€ later, it was mine!
Yesterday it finally arrived (after paying the postman 11€ for customs and import fees) and of course it was dead.
After a couple of quick measurements I found out why: The DC power jack is center negative (and somebody used a regular center positive power brick to test it).
I hate center negative jacks! I killed (and later fixed) a Sinclair ZX Spectrum for the same reason!
Inside I found a blown tantalum cap and a broken MC34063 regulator, after replacing the regulator it came back to life!
Here's a picture of the main logic board:
And what's inside a ROM pack:
Technically you could burn new ROMs and swap them using a single ROM pack. A friend of mine has a TechStep with a few more ROM packs (2 and 4 if I remember correctly), I could try and make a clone of them and swapping them with on my Voume 1 pack.
Sometimes I go on eBay and search for "Crazy expensive Hard to find Items", such as the Apple TechStep.
As always, there were just a few units on sale, but one of them caught my eye: It was listed at 99$ AS-IS without bag or manuals, but with two ROM packs.
...and 130€ later, it was mine!
Yesterday it finally arrived (after paying the postman 11€ for customs and import fees) and of course it was dead.
After a couple of quick measurements I found out why: The DC power jack is center negative (and somebody used a regular center positive power brick to test it).
I hate center negative jacks! I killed (and later fixed) a Sinclair ZX Spectrum for the same reason!
Inside I found a blown tantalum cap and a broken MC34063 regulator, after replacing the regulator it came back to life!
Here's a picture of the main logic board:
And what's inside a ROM pack:
Technically you could burn new ROMs and swap them using a single ROM pack. A friend of mine has a TechStep with a few more ROM packs (2 and 4 if I remember correctly), I could try and make a clone of them and swapping them with on my Voume 1 pack.