Dynamix II EIII Restoration Project

[djscratchd]

I'm very excited to have joined this Forum in an attempt to resurrect my ancient EIII Keyboard beast.

Here is the fist initial video of the power up and a few pix of the machine

Any help / comments are all greatly appreciated as I know this is going to be a challenge.




Best Wishes,

Noller


VIDEO
http://youtu.be/kGjtFauF6fE















I'll need to replace the A Key and the B Flat due to cig damage :(




The contrast knob needs a top :(




I need a button top for the Analog Processing section.  :(



I also noticed that I will need a new electro luminescent display :( if anyone has a lead on the part number I think I would like to replace it with a yellow display vs the blue one which I have always hated...




Thanks!

[djscratchd]

   OMG Success & huge luck has struck!  

I unplugged and replugged in the ribbon and power cycled the beast and low and behold the LCD began displaying information !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fcK YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Its looking for the SCSI drive which isn't showing up then looking at the floppy drive. I need to get my hands on the OS Boot floppy.


This is very exciting!

[who]

This is a friendly word of warning:  Mine was behaving the same way (blocks in the display, buttons lit and unresponsive) and I discovered that I made the same mistake others have made.  The ribbon cable between the front panel and the motherboard was pinched and caused the cable to short out. 

My EIII has been in the shop since.

[djscratchd]

Who, read post 2 ^^ above I got past that and its now looking for the boot floppy or scsi drive.


I'm going to download the image and write EIII os 2.4.2 to a floppy and report back.

Thanks for the heads up! any help is mega appreciated!

[who]

That's good news!  You can see what happened to mine because of the pinched cable:

http://eiiiforum.com/index.php?topic=2026.0

And here's my original post:

http://eiiiforum.com/index.php?topic=1636.0

Hope this all helps.

[djscratchd]

Woooooooah, I spoke way too soon! I powered it back on after copying the image of the 2.4.2 EMU EIII OS to a double sided floppy tossed the floppy in the disk drive and flipped the power on and to my dismay... nothing ....

seems like the ribbon cable that is connected to the underside of the faceplate has one side broken off and guess what happened? I just made the other side match     

Holy crap

[djscratchd]

Guess I am in the market for one of these >

http://www.digikey.com/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?vendor=0&keywords=C1PXS-6036G-ND

[djscratchd]

Can you or anyone point out the part number for a new cable as well. Maybe I should change out that cable too. 

[djscratchd]

on the list of things to do this just got added


http://eiiiforum.com/index.php?topic=2168.0

[djscratchd]

So I put the top back on and screwed it all back together and for the hell of it plugged the power cable in and turned on the power and this is what happened>





At least we have characters showing instead of black squares.





It appears to be booting from the old internal SCSI drive OS 2.4.2





Then we arrive at this screen, none of the buttons seem to be getting me into any menus


That's my update.

[djscratchd]

Added to the list of want to upgrade


http://eiiiforum.com/index.php?topic=4.0

[powmax]

Just for testing:

Unplug the Y-powercable from the internal HDisk, let the 50 pin SCSI cable connected. Boot with the OS Floppy Disk...(takes time). Does any of the Knobs now reacting ?
!!! Also unplug any external SCSI Devices & 25 PIN SCSI Cable !!!

regards
marcus

[djscratchd]

Thanks I will test and report back!



 

[djscratchd]

No luck, it powers up and lights come on but its locked up and nothing i press has any affect.

 

[djscratchd]

Can anyone point me in he direction of a replacement ribbon cable used to attach the bottom of the keyboard top to the computer section?


A part number for the ribbon and place to order it at would help a lot.

I know I will need a new one of these too

http://www.digikey.com/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?vendor=0&keywords=C1PXS-6036G-ND