guys comment about the soldering work.. found this in my old project box.

[magnatro]

To my surprise, it was still working!
it's a 434 Mhz communicator using atmega8

 

[cr0sh]

With all that dirt and rust?

The solder side looks OK (maybe some flux removal needed), but the component side...is...just where/how did you store it? How old it it?

I've got projects nearly 20 years old that don't look that bad; but then I store everything in a plastic baggie, then inside a box of some sort - currently a plastic container...

Great pics, tho!

 

[magnatro]

With all that dirt and rust?

The solder side looks OK (maybe some flux removal needed), but the component side...is...just where/how did you store it? How old it it?

I've got projects nearly 20 years old that don't look that bad; but then I store everything in a plastic baggie, then inside a box of some sort - currently a plastic container...

Great pics, tho!

it was lying at the bottom of an old box at the basement. i was just going through some old stuffs and got this. may be 5-6 years old..! i don't store stuffs well . no baggie for me!!

 

[cr0sh]

it was lying at the bottom of an old box at the basement. i was just going through some old stuffs and got this. may be 5-6 years old..! i don't store stuffs well . no baggie for me!!

Ah - that would explain the way it looked (I thought I saw some rust!)...hehe.

 

[magnatro]

yeah.. but it worked..!

 

[cr0sh]

I'm still amazed that it did! It makes me wonder about my Altair 8800 and its caking of dirt and dust! I found it at a local electronics junkyard after it had sat for who-knows-how-many-years inside a trailer with busted windows - fortunately, no rain got to it!

Seriously though - I don't intend to just "power it up"; the electrolytic caps in the power supply need reforming first (assuming they even pass that). I intend to give it a solid bit of restoration work - I want to ultimately put it to museum display condition.

One of those "for-the-future" projects...sigh.

 

[magnatro]

wow an altair! good find..
some how mine worked.. the rusted pads need some "pushing" and "pulling" but finally it worked like magic!

 

[cr0sh]

wow an altair! good find..

Yeah - the crazy thing is that I had been going to this place for nearly 20 years, and likely it had sat inside that trailer that long (they use the trailer mainly for cardboard box and other recyclable storage); someone was there, pulled the Altair out thru the broken window, sat it on a chair, then left it. I went up to one of the guys who works there, asked how much they wanted for it. His response was something like "Well, some guy pulled it out of the trailer, said it was an antique - $100.00!"; I immediately tried to dicker him down to $50.00, but he wouldn't budge. I told him he drove a hard bargain, and paid him $50.00. I got the Altair and a bunch of peripheral cards: RAM, I/O, a hard-sector floppy controller, and a Z-80 CPU card. There wasn't a top for the case (I am still hoping it is somewhere in the trailer - but I have yet to find it), and no 8080 CPU card (the Z-80 was a common upgrade), but it is otherwise "complete". I knew that even $100.00 was a bargain, and even if it were my last dollar I probably would've bought it. It needs a ton of TLC, though. Since then I've managed to get a few more peripheral cards and other things for it from various people and places - but I still have yet to find some time for restoration...

some how mine worked.. the rusted pads need some "pushing" and "pulling" but finally it worked like magic!

I think "magic" has to be the operative word here; I've never seen something that rough work - I guess electronics are much tougher than we typically think!

 

[chaman ali]

gud yar...................