From: joe@user.com   
      
   "Mark Whitlock"  wrote in message   
   news:1144259687.967083.108420@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...   
   > Bill ,   
   >     If you had one of the early model I's   
   > with the early expansion interfaces.   
   > After the hundredth time it crashed   
   > due to memory bus errors ,I know   
   > you felt RS had 'stuck it to you' This   
   > must have been us feeling the chip   
   > inserted. :^) .Also many of the model   
   > 2000 owners and subscribers of 80micro   
   > in 1985 felt it.   
   >     This news group will remove it ,the   
   > feeling at least. After talking to all the   
   > helpful people here I doubt anyone feels   
   > ill will toward RS.   
   >    Another nut case ,   
   >                Mark Whitlock   
      
   Well, the Model 1 was finally made reliable.  Mostly.  Mine never would   
   reset.  Except when the girl that lived in the apartment came home.  I   
   swear,   
   my computer could be on every day, all day, no problems.  Then she would   
   get home about 6pm and the Model 1 would reset every few minutes until   
   about 6:30 or a little after.  Then be fine.  All night.  Even over night.   
   I tried   
   everything, but I never found out what it was.  I ended up with the Radio   
   Shack filtered power strip with a home-made 'press to start' self latching   
   on   
   switch, fed by a box with a Corcom 10R1 bypassed at both ends.  Still   
   never solved the 'girl upstairs' problem.   
      
   And it was her.  If she came home late, the computer wouldn't start   
   resetting   
   until she came home.   
      
   I had this suspicion as to what electronics she had in her apartment...   
      
   MOST of the crashes of the Model 1 were because of noise-corrupted   
   Ras/Mux/Cas timings.  Those signals were originally generated inside the   
   keyboard case and went across to the EI.  The second generation EI   
   generated those signals 'on board' instead of trying to get them across.   
   The 'buffered' EI cable tried taking them across through the cardedge   
   and it sorta worked.  Well, ok, it sucked.  The dongle took them across   
   over twisted wire pairs and that was a fairly decent fix.  If the memory   
   was good.  Turned out there were a LOT of bad lots of memory.  Some   
   of the best turned out to be the cheap 'consumer grade' NEC stuff in the   
   plastic case!  The TI stuff was just plain garbage.   
      
   As to the 2000, that was shitty mechanical design more than anything else.   
   And they gave a bonus to the guy who designed that shit!  I mounted my   
   board to the rear of the pan (taking up all possible slack) and put small   
   'washers' under the card-cage plane so they had full seating of the eurocard   
   connectors to the options.  I also hacked my memory so that it had a SINGLE   
   memory (was 128K) to be 512, and made sure the interconnect was good.   
   Finally, I made sure I had a full 8Mhz part for the 80186.   There were some   
   'reduced temp' parts that ran fine at 8MHz if they were kept cool.  Then   
   the only other thing to do was to make sure the power supply boards had good   
   solder 'rings' where all the connectors went through.  My 2000 was pretty   
   reliable...   
      
   Although not like my Model II.  That was solid!  (My Model III wasn't bad   
   though.)   I won't even start on my rant about the really shitty mechanics   
   and   
   case design of the Model 12!   
      
   Oh, and that 200 'floor stand'?  What a piece of junk!  I just set my 2000   
   on   
   it's side on a foam block on the floor and used a velcro strap to the table   
   leg.   
      
   Mike   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)