Maintenance Guides
| RetroTechCollection Maintenance Guides |
|---|
| Preserving yesterday's technology for tomorrow |
This is the index to the wiki's maintenance and repair material: the general procedures that apply to any machine, and the routes into the machine-specific guides.
Every link on this page goes to a page that exists. If you find one that does not, it is a fault — please report it or fix it.
Read these first
| Guide | What it covers |
|---|---|
| CRT Discharge Procedure | Anode charge, the earth return point, discharge tooling and the implosion hazard. Read before opening any machine with a picture tube |
| Battery Explosion, Capacitor or Corrosion Damage | Cell chemistries, which residue needs which treatment, and board repair after corrosion |
| Capacitor Failure Symptoms | Symptoms, testing, and what the manufacturers actually say about replacement |
| Recommended Tools | What you need, what a specification actually means, and static and electrical safety |
General procedures
- Capacitor Failure Symptoms — recognising and testing failed capacitors of every family
- Battery Refurbishment — replacing and refurbishing battery packs
- Battery Explosion, Capacitor or Corrosion Damage — cleaning up and repairing corrosion damage
- Floppy Drive Repair — cleaning, lubrication, alignment and common faults
- Hard Drive Maintenance and Repair — stiction, head bumpers, controller boards, and what is realistically repairable
- Retrobrite — the hydrogen peroxide process, its hazards, and the evidence on whether it is worth doing
- CRT Discharge Procedure — high-voltage safety before opening a monitor or all-in-one machine
- Recommended Tools — equipment for the bench
Diagnostics
- Sad Mac Error Codes — decoding compact Macintosh start-up failure codes
- Sad Mac Decoder — the interactive decoder
- Diagnostic Serial Console — the Macintosh diagnostic serial port
- Commodore 64 Diagnostic Instruction and Troubleshooting Manual (326070-01) — Commodore's own diagnostic procedure
By manufacturer
| Family | Maintenance | Troubleshooting | Capacitor guides |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | Apple maintenance guides | Apple troubleshooting guides | Apple capacitor guides |
| Atari | Atari maintenance guides | Atari troubleshooting guides | Atari capacitor guides |
| Sega | Sega maintenance guides | Sega troubleshooting guides | in the general capacitor category |
| Osborne | Osborne maintenance guides | in the general troubleshooting category | in the general capacitor category |
| Commodore, Sinclair, IBM, Acorn, Amstrad, Nintendo and the rest | all maintenance guides | all troubleshooting guides | all capacitor replacement guides |
Starting points
Storage devices
- Storage Devices — the drives themselves
- Floppy Drive Repair · Hard Drive Maintenance and Repair
- Disk II · Tandon TM100-1 · Tandon TM100-2 — worked examples with manufacturer figures
- Macintosh Floppy Drive Maintenance · Macintosh HDD Maintenance
Parts and documentation
Machines documented here but not yet written up
Some manufacturer documentation on this wiki covers machines that have no maintenance, troubleshooting or capacitor guide yet. The documents are the starting point if you want to write one.
- Sega Game Gear — Sega Game Gear Maintenance Manual (1992) (Sega's own, 82 pp: assemblies, disassembly, spare parts, PCB repair procedure and IC data for all four boards, but no schematic), Sega Game Gear VA1 Service Manual (Sega's own, 24 pp, the one-chip machine, with schematics, circuit board diagrams and a full electrical parts list) and Sega Game Gear TV Tuner PAL Service Manual (the MK-2101 tuner pack, with seven alignment procedures)
- Commodore 1541 — Commodore 1541 Troubleshooting & Repair Guide (Sams, 1986: theory of operation, schematics, parts layouts and parts lists, with the drive motor servo circuit documented separately for the 1540, 1541 and 1542)
Documentation categories
- Service Manuals — manufacturer service documentation hosted on this wiki
- Schematics — circuit diagrams and board drawings
- Documentation — datasheets, application notes and technical literature
- Capacitor Replacement Guides — machine-specific replacement lists
Contribute
Corrections are more valuable here than new pages. If a figure on this wiki has no source behind it, it should be corrected or removed — see Help:Editing, or raise it on the RTC forum.