EII Cleaning Front Panels

[Paisley]

Hi all, newbie here.  Always been a huge fan of the Emulators, and have recently acquired an EII; albeit one that requires a bit of TLC. Probably not going to be a project for the faint hearted, as it hasn't been used for 15 years & comes with no disks whatsoever; however it'll be well worth it if I can restore it to its former glory.
It does power up, although somewhere along the line when I was transporting it home, the fuse cap went missing - and believe it or not, finding a replacement cap in Australia has proven just about impossible!  At present I'm waiting for a new cap as well as a memory test disk to come from the US, so the project is on hold at the moment.

One thing I am looking to work on in the meantime is the front panels. There's an unusual discoulration on both the front panel & the data wheel panel; it almost looks like water damage (which I hope it isn't). I haven't been able to trawl up much information on the cosmetics of Emulator panels, so I'm not sure if this is a common thing that happens with them or not.
Is anyone familiar with this sort of marking (see pic) and if so, what's the best way of cleaning it, if possible? If I scratch at the edges of the whitish markings with my fingernail, it does remove small amounts of whatever it is that's caked on there; however it's going to need a lot more encouragement than just my fingernail to shift it, & I'd hate to wreck the panels by doing the wrong thing.

Any advice greatly appreciated.  Cheers all. 

[dr.c]

Concerning the fuse cap, it must be hanging around. Next time, put a piece of duct tape to keep it in place.
Be carefull with the voltage selection if it comes from the States.

To be dona absolutely : with a friend, grab one side and him, the other. Lift while he ghoes down, and the inverse, just to see if there are no screws hanging around in the machine. Shake it (gently), for the same reasons).

Front panel : yeah, I've seen this by times, I don't know if its used, or what. Nothing to do, I think. I always used a product named KF F2 wich is great (nothing else or "similar").
You may find it at Farnell, for example.

[Paisley]

Concerning the fuse cap, it must be hanging around. Next time, put a piece of duct tape to keep it in place.
Be carefull with the voltage selection if it comes from the States.

To be dona absolutely : with a friend, grab one side and him, the other. Lift while he ghoes down, and the inverse, just to see if there are no screws hanging around in the machine. Shake it (gently), for the same reasons).

Front panel : yeah, I've seen this by times, I don't know if its used, or what. Nothing to do, I think. I always used a product named KF F2 wich is great (nothing else or "similar").
You may find it at Farnell, for example.

Thanks for that reply dr.c.
I couldn't find anywhere that had KF F2 in Australia, but I'm sure an electrical store over here like Jaycar will have something that's an equivalent. I was going to stock up on contact cleaner anyway, as I'm 90% sure I'll end up having to clean some IC contacts (if not most of them!).

Voltage is ok, as it came from interstate; it previously belonged to a very well known Australian Musician who sadly passed away before his time about 15 years ago. The fuse cap actually went missing while it was en-route from Sydney to Melbourne.

I'll chase some contact cleaner up tomorrow; will let you know how it goes. Thanks again! 

[Paisley]

Hi all, just checking back in; no go with cleaning the panels, so I'll just have to live with it for now. However the fuse holder has arrived!

When I got the unit it had a disk in it labeled Drums. The first time I fired it up it up brought up "Emulator EII Software Rev 3.0" followed by "Null Preset". The disk spun for a while, but stopped without loading anything. I tried the disk in both drives with the same result. When I tried to load via the Disk button, only the second Drive responded; however it still didn't load.

Unfortunately it went downhill from there. Next time I turned it on, it got as far as the EII Software 3.0 screen & that was it; the disk just continued to spin & it wouldn't go to the Null Preset page. Also when the Disk was ejected, the Disk LED remained on (this happened for both Drives). Anytime I turn it now, the same thing happens.
Has anyone else experience a similar thing to this?

As I said I only got a single Disk with it, so one thing I'm going to do is try to source some Disks locally tomorrow & see if I can format them; hopefully that will give me some idea if I've got a dead Disk or a dead Drive (or possibly both!).

Cheers.  

[dr.c]

Hi,
If you buy floppies (not "disks", be carefull to have the right YPI (it was 96, if I remember well).
If you are a bit fluent in electronics, something that should be done on EVERY E2's : take off the solder off the connectors of the power supply, and put new. Its often crackled and it brings bad problems of that kind.

[Paisley]

Hi,
If you buy floppies (not "disks", be carefull to have the right YPI (it was 96, if I remember well).
If you are a bit fluent in electronics, something that should be done on EVERY E2's : take off the solder off the connectors of the power supply, and put new. Its often crackled and it brings bad problems of that kind.

Thanks again Dr C.  Yeah I think you're right on the money there; about the third or fourth time I fired it up, I detected a bit of an odour!  It wasn't a "something burning to a crisp" kind of smell, but it was definitely power related.
Won't have a chance to get to it for another couple of weeks; will report back once that's been done. Thanks again!

[dr.c]

Hi, I wrote YPI for the floppies, but it was "TPI" (Tracks Per Inches).

So, take off the power supply, look under, the male Molex connector solderings (with the colored wires female connector going to it), take off the solder.
Some tracks are narrow, so when you re-solder, put a piece of electric wire inclided into the solder, wich will make the track "thicker", but verticaly.
Look as well to the female connector : it may have an overheated region, especially where the yellow wires located are. Clean the contacts, but that's not gonna be easy.
The best is to replace the whole thing (male and female) by another type of "heavy duty" connector. See at you local store, a computer or TV repair tech, hobby club...
Where are you located ?