Category Archives: Retroputing

ImageWriter II Color Ribbon Fix

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If you’ve attempted to use an original color ribbon in your ImageWriter II recently, you’ve quickly found out that the pinch rollers inside the cartridge have disintegrated over time. More specifically, the foam that goes around the rollers that pull the ribbon through the cartridge have fallen apart and turned to sticky dust.

I recently got a few new NOS color ribbons for my ImageWriter II and I wanted to see if I could salvage them. Sure, brand new ribbons are being made again [MacEffects, $29], but I wanted to see if it was possible to clean these up and get them working again.

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iPod 3G: SD Card Upgrade, New Battery, and Flex Cable Repair

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My first iPod was the iPod 3G so I was a little late to the game. I’ve own several iPods after that but the iPod 3G I felt was a perfect distillation of the original iPod experience. Four separate buttons in a row and a touch wheel (nothing moves) seemed like peak iPod design to me (not necessarily UX as you’ll later see).

In this blog post, we’ll cover facts about the iPod 3G, which compact flash and SD adapters work (and which ones don’t), how I prepared my SD card for the iPod, and replacing the battery with a higher capacity one.

My original hard drive no longer works so an update to solid state memory seems like a perfect upgrade.

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HP 7585B Pen Plotter Repair

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This blog post is a repair thread from social media that began on February 24, 2018.

February 24, 2018

So, this happened. My latest retro delivery. Any guesses?

It is, yet, another plotter. An HP 7585B wide format plotter with a 36” wide paper path.

Unfortunately it failed the first power on test and now it smells bad. So it’s been taken to bits to find the culprit.

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Hayes Please: Preserving Software History

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Hayes is best known for modems and for establishing the ubiquitous AT command set as the standard for all modems that followed. Their external modems, made of aluminum, fronted with jewel-like LED status lights were the top shelf of modems. As a kid, Hayes modems were a status symbol. Hayes also made other hardware products like the Chronograph, Transet, and InterBridge all with the same footprint designed to stack on one another– the “Hayes Stack” was a brief marketing campaign.

Say… please button from the Computer History Museum catalog.

While you may be familiar with Smartcom, the series of terminal programs for their Smartmodems, you may be surprised to learn that Hayes also created a database application.

What follows is my journey over several months in 2021 in researching, salvaging, repairing, and archiving an unknown piece of computing history.

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Hayes Chronograph Display Repair

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(This was originally a Twitter thread from January 24, 2022.)

January 24, 2022

Many of you know that I have an affinity for the Hayes Chronograph. I have several of them, I made a WiFi controller to set the time automatically, and I’ve repaired several of them. Here’s another page in the repair chapter.

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Zenith ZL-1 MinisPort Laptop repairs

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(This was originally a Twitter thread from June 14, 2020.)

June 14, 2020

Say “Hello, World” to my new Zenith ZL-1 MinisPort laptop from 1989 with an 8088 running 8Mhz, 1MB RAM, and a backlit LCD display. Weighs just under 6 pounds.

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Modding a Timex Sinclair 2068 to a Switchable ZX Spectrum ROM

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(This was originally a Twitter thread from December 2, 2014)

Did you know the American Timex Sinclair 2068 is largely a clone of the popular ZX Spectrum from England? Well, the hardware is but the ROM is different enough to keep ZX Spectrum titles from working. Which is a bummer because there are hundreds of titles for the ZX Spectrum and only a handful for the Timex Sinclair 2068.

However, it is possible to replace the ROM in a TS2068 so it’s more compatible with ZX titles, making a “ZX2068.” And you can make it switchable so you can go back to the stock ROM. And no drilling holes for a switch! Sound interesting? Read on!

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Commodore SX-64 Repair and Refurbishment

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(This was originally posted to Twitter on February 3, 2015.)

February 3, 2015

Today, I’m going to tackle this new-to-me Commodore SX-64 computer. I bought it cheaply from a seller that said it wasn’t working. It has a few faults that we’ll take a look, including the keyboard which has a few unresponsive keys.

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