Recycling Old Commodore Equipment

By Gil Parrish

I was in a thrift store in Oklahoma City a while back, and they had a number of computer items marked
"as-is". These included a TRS-80 Model 4 computer (which has a built-in monochrome monitor and
two disk drives) for $4.98, and a Commodore 8023p printer (complete with interface cable) for 99
cents. Now, while all items are purchased from a thrift store "as-is", with no guarantee, items marked
"as-is" are "known to be defective." As if to emphasize this point, the store had cut the electrical cords
off the items, perhaps as a way of saying, "Don't even bother to try."

Of course, non-working items can be a source of parts to fix something else, so I purchased these items
and took them home. However, I needed to know exactly what was not working so I would know
what good parts were available. I started with the Model 4, patching together an electrical cord and
turning it on. Nothing displayed on the screen. But that is normal for a Model 4 because the computer
puts no text on the screen until you insert a boot disk, and the brightness on the monitor is typically
turned down so low that you can only see text and not a bright background or border. I happened to
have a Model 4 boot disk so I inserted it and the computer proceeded to boot up normally The
monitor, chip set, keyboard, both disk drives--everything worked just fine. Apparently, the thrift store
had no boot disk and, upon switching on the computer and seeing nothing, concluded it wasn't working.

I turned my attention to the Commodore printer. If you've never heard of an 8023p, it was designed for
Commodore's old PET/CBM line of computers (not the VIC/64/128), and is a nice printer for those
systems. Anyway, I patched together another electrical cord and turned it on. The carriage for the print
head/ribbon stuttered an inch or two and came to a stop, instead of running back and forth the length of
the print area as it is supposed to do. The carriage seemed to be having trouble sliding on its track
Well, what do you do when something like a door hinge doesn't slide well? I pulled out some oil and
started lubricating everything in sight then pushed the carriage back and forth manually to distribute the
oil. It took a while, but by the end the carriage was sliding fine, and the printer was powering up
normally. There was nothing broken on that item either.

We have for some time been in an era when many people did not know anything about the old eight-bit
systems. But we seem to have entered a different and more dangerous phase ("dangerous" from the
standpoint of preserving the old eight-bits) in which people (a) not only don't understand the eight-bits,
but don't even realize they don't understand, and (b) absolutely do not care in any way, shape or form.
Computer-wise, they expect every system to act like a PC, booting from the hard drive when turned
on. Any boot process that does not result in a DOS "A>" prompt or a Windows menu means the
hardware must be defective. And, these people expend no effort whatsoever if the item does not seem
to work immediately. Go to the trouble of turning up the brightness or dropping on a little oil??! You
must be kidding!!! This seems to me to be the equivalent of junking a classic Model T Ford because it
does not power up when you depress the starter, without even bothering to open its tool box and
discover its hand crank.

I shudder to think how many perfectly functional eight-bit items are hitting trash cans all over America
right at this moment. I can only hope that, whenever that occurs, someone with a little more knowledge
and motivation is standing next to the can.

(From Tulsa Area Commodore Users Group, via Tri-City Commodore computer Club, December 1996, via the
Commodore Information Center http://home.att.net/~rmestel/commodore.html)