I just finished the last of some important upgrades to my EII+. I don’t think there is anything else that I can do to it to improve it! The EII is working fine I am happy to say.
1. Power supply. This started the whole thing when the original PSU died a few months ago. Based on advice I found here, I bought a MeanWell T60C PSU off Ebay, used. They are not made any more and don’t show up very often. The PSU doesn’t offer 12 volts to power the 5.25 floppy drives. I made an attempt to power the floppy with a separate MeanWell 12 volt PSU, but I couldn’t get it to work. So instead of looking into it any further I decided to pull out the 5.25 floppy drives and put in an HxC rev. F. This only needs 5 volt to operate.
On the power supply harness I simply removed the plastic connector for the old PSU and exposed a bit more bare wire, then attached the wires to the screw down connectors on the T60C in the proper places. No cutting or soldering required! I left the orange 12 volt wire unattached. Also connected the wires for the power and ground.
2. HxC rev F. I bought the one that has the optional black or white faceplate stickers and used the black one. There is also a model that is painted black (powder coat) with no graphics. Apparently there is a difference with the screw holes for attaching it to the 5.25 adapter. The model with the faceplates has no threads in the screw holes, which makes it hard to install. I got it to work however. Of course you also need the proper power cable adapter to hook up the HxC. One came with my 5.25 to 3.5 drive bay adapter. Along with the 5.25 to 3.5 drive bay adapter I also got another blank drive bay, so I could remove the second floppy which is now useless. The part is called “Supermicro 3.5 to 5.25 inch (Non-Hot Swapable) Harddrive Mounting Bay” on Ebay. I think it looks great filling in that empty bay! Much better having a dead drive in there.
I also constructed a new floppy ribbon cable with the correct connectors for the HxC. Parts purchased off Ebay.
So, I got those 2 things working but had an issue that was solved with an IC replacement.
http://eiiiforum.com/index.php?topic=2775.03. VFD display. When I got the EII 3 years ago, the backlight still was working. However it soon died. The LCD still worked but was hard to read. I did a lot of research on the best replacement and decided on the Noritake VFD. The model that fits best is the cu16025-uw2j. It is still available to buy but you have to go the Noritake website and order it. They email you an order form, you fill it out and fax it back to them.
https://www.noritake-elec.com/display/uversion.htmI made a new 14 wire ribbon cable from a floppy drive cable. The inverter and wire from the old LCD can be de-soldered and removed. I did have to file away at the PCB a bit. The VFD is thicker than the LCD and needs to be spaced farther back with washers, or the front panel buttons will not protrude far enough. Just a bit of filing was needed to make it all fit well. Also, IC 25 on the digital board (make sure you don’t replace IC 25 on the analog board) needs to be replaced with a 74LS04 Hex Inverter. These are on Ebay cheap. You can get a filter to put over the VFD to color it and make it look a little better. These are hard to find, but there is a place you can get one.
http://www.matrixorbital.com/product_info.php?products_id=1110&osCsid=2uh1aspel336apm9pnjfv36o65This would be very expensive, over $50 with shipping, so I didn’t get one. I tried cutting a piece of blue plastic film and using that, but in the end I found it looks better without it.
4. I also bought a bag of screws that fits the EII case. The screws are:
#8-32x1/4 Pan Head Phillips Machine Screws Steel Zinc Plated
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